Environment Scenery texture organization

NAIMA

Hello I have a question ...

When creating a small environment , let's say a Dungeon set , with a big room , entrance and some tunnels ...

How do you organize textures to not make too many of them and still not have supersized ones?

For example IF I use tiled stone textures , and apply on several different surfaces, I end up with 3d models that are not characterized and do cannot have a surface extrusion in detail that woudl otherwise conflict with the extrusions represented in the normal map ...

But if I make a specific map for let's say a special room or wall then I cannot reuse this ... Are there any trick to get the best of two ways?

Hope I was clear ...

Eric Chadwick

Use a modular workflow.
http://wiki.polycount.net/CategoryEnvironmentModularity

You certainly can use the same texture with different models, with each model having different extrusions. Make the extrusions match details in the tiled map, and don't stretch the pixels.

Here's an example. All these models are different, but use the same tiling texture.
http://ericchadwick.com/img/farmhouse_cliffrocks.jpg

Similar techniques can be used for hard-surface mechanical models. See the 2nd bullet point on that wiki page, Kevin's slides.

CheeseOnToast

If the engine you're using supports any kind of texture blending, you can make a handful of tiling textures stretch a long way. The memory you save doing this can be put into making more unique "hero" props and set dressings.

example :
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xnc1SKGbvmM"]Advanced Vertex Blending Material -- Drywall Destruction Material Demo -- UDK - YouTube[/ame]

NAIMA

@Cheese on toast - Textue blendig is awesome , but I am using at the moment the more promitive Creation engine of skyrim .

@Eric Chadwick -

You mean that for example :
I make a one big blocky tiled sculpture for a nice segmented stones wall like for example

Then After having scupted and got the maps and all I apply on flat surfaces ... it looks good , but in the game they do not have a real extrusion , so I coudl cut out some portions of the wall and extract a bit more out the details , is that whay you mean?

Though I wanted to make some thing much more complex than just a wall .
I could easily model all different walls and apply a generic stone texture , apply a vertex color for darkening the AO areas and simulate it , but not much else I guess...
My main problem though is texture resolution , I do not want to make a supersized texture , but also not make a sert of different ones for something that would be used just once ...

Is there eventually any sample of a complex room or scene that helps understanding texture organization ? I do not mean a modular system for a city or other kind of assets but for something really specific .

Eric Chadwick

Yes, that's what I meant.

Also instead of extruding, you can add detail meshes on top of the tiling mesh, to break it up visually. For example, in this tutorial look at the "09" image. http://www.philipk.net/tutorials/modular_sets/modular_sets.html

For something with more unique pieces... you can usually break down a concept into modular pieces + unique pieces. Sometimes textures are used just once, and that's it. You can use up the texture budget for all unique pieces, just have to incur a load time for entering/leaving that area.