UV layouts

Benjam

Hey fellow polycounters,

I am in the process of creating a new environment and have been wondering about correct UV layouts for ages. With each individual piece of the environment (walls, lamposts, boxes etc.) do you make an entire texture for each particular object or is it better to cram multiple objects into one texture map. Because what i like to do is to cram lots of objects into one texture map.

The texture map from my old project illustrates my point, in it is a couple of windows, the walls i used, a couple of stone bits and a plank of wood. Is this ok or is it usually better to make one texture per object i.e. split the walls, windows, stone pillars etc. into separate textures?

Deadly Nightshade

It depends on the game engine and also on what type of game you develop for.
In modern day FPS games, textures are often ordered by material and texture atlases (combined textures) are avoided. But for say a mobile phone game, it's often wisest to combine many textures into larger atlases.

S_ource

If you do modular stuff i think you usually go the combined route.

Benjam

how about for assets like say a crate and a lampost, would i do one texture for each or would it depend on detail and number of UV shells?

NoisyMonk

I could be off base here, but I think one of the biggest concerns in regards to going atlas or not, is whether all the items in the atlas will always (almost always at least) be seen on the screen at the same time. If you're going to reuse that create in an interior area, there likely won't be that lamp post visible at the same time. This means you're loading a larger texture into memory, and only using half of it, which would be inefficient.

Ark

I agree with what NoisyMonk is saying. Generally everything that requires a unique texture is better of going on it's own sheet. Having 4 textures say that are going to be used in conjunction would probably better off combined since it's saving on drawcalls.
More than likely though this is engine dependant and I would assume texture-streaming plays a big part aswell.

Benjam

hmmm ok i get that, i usually like to combine textures if they are directly related to one another for example i combined the wall texture with the pillar texture because the pillar goes on the wall, and i also combined a bed sheet texture with a bed and mattress texture because they go together and will almost always be seen together. But if i was to make a lampost and a box i shouldn't combine them because the lampost wont necessarily be seen together?

Is that along the right lines?