Best Of

UVs for game art is actually not just about cramming things into a single sheet ; it is also and just as importantly about :

- Making the UVs human-readable so that another artist can take care of the texturing (even if the texturing is driven by masks). Meaning, orienting the islands the right way up and grouping parts in a way that makes them as instantly identifiable as possible. Furthermore, orienting the various panels vertically and horizontally allows for maximum clarity of decals and graphics since they would then naturally follow the orientation of pixels.

- Taking into account the fact that the asset needs to behave well when the texture is downresed. Therefore having the appropriate amount of padding around the islands.

Here are some examples extracted from MGS4 (Raiden, Raven, Wolf), Overwatch (Tracer, WidowMaker, Vampire Reaper), Valorant, Zenless Zone Zero, Deadlock, and Arms. These span over 3 generations of hardware and a buch of art styles, showing that things really haven't changed at all over the last 10+ years or so besides the generational increases in texture resolution. In your specific case (futuristic spacesuit) you could probably find some good reference by looking up assets from Death Stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn, or any recent scifi shooter really.



While automatic packing can have its uses, it definitely takes a backseat in favor of the above factors in practice. If anything if two applicants had superficially similar portfolios but one used automatic packing on everything while the other shows care for manual UVs, the preference would go for the one demonstrating manual UVs as it tends to mean that the artist has more production experience under the belt.

(FYI, since this thread is not related to Substance but rather to modeling in general, "Tech talk" would have been the appropriate place and would get you more views. Or if you want to journal your progress on this piece and get help and advice along the way, it could go in "3D art showcase and critique").