Best method for making modular textures into varied final maps?

Mr Whippy

I'm working on a project where I have around 100 buildings to texture.

They are all your usual UK type houses, so bricks etc.

I can get away with a diffuse slapped on with some UV tweakery and photo retouching/clone brushing and leave it at that, but I like the idea of making life harder for myself so I'd like to make the 'hero' buildings have a bit more interest to them with windows that have some nice glancing reflections and spikes of intense specular sunlight at the right angles, some nice running specular spots along gutters etc as you move by the houses.

Current plan is to use a shader with diffuse/normals/gloss/IOR maps, but obviously that is 3 texture LUT's with data that all aligns.


So I can create base sets of elements, like gutters with the appropriate rounded normals profile, a glossy black paint etc.
But that info is spread over 3 maps... so authoring a combined map set is really hard, and multiply that by many houses/buildings might get a big heavy going!



Is this something that Substance Designer does?

Can I create masked elements that are just windows with all the normals, diffuse, IOR, and gloss elements attached, so I can just build up the right bricks, windows roofs, chimneys and so on, and then press save and get 3 textures out the other end all looking correct?


I watched the nDo videos and it kinda looks like it does this, but again I'm not sure.


Any advice would be much appreciated on which way people think I should go!


Thanks

Dave

Equanim

What engine are you working in?

If you're the one actually placing these buildings, you have a few options.

Jerc

Substance Designer could definitely help. You could create a building template and quickly change or randomize the inputs you use for bricks, roofs etc. on all maps at the same time and batch that process through your 100 buildings, getting 100 different but consistent texture sets.

Can you elaborate on what those textures would look like ? Is it an atlas with the whole house on it or do you have different texture sets for different parts of the houses ?

Lazerus Reborn

Look at the monthly noob enviro challenges there excellent

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=121580

Look at break downs etc and you;ll be happy

Mr Whippy

Equanim, I'm modelling and placing the buildings, then UV, then textures too.

The graphics engine isn't anything main stream so no access to obvious automation systems for certain tasks or effects.

The buildings are all around 100-400 triangles for the more detailed buildings. In the end you pass by them quickly but if you do get a good look I want the textures to do the work.

It's not a train game, but imagine you had buildings behind trees a bit, but then some were right up near the tracks, then others were right up near the tracks at stations... then it's those ones near the tracks and also near places you travel slowly that I need to worry about the most! But they are still generally not the focus of the user.



My current plan is to author a 512px sheet for each building, maybe a 1024px for the larger ones, and 256px for the smaller more distant ones.

There are probably 50 buildings that are very open to view from all angles that will need good quality shading and texture sets. I'm hoping that maybe 10-20% can possibly share texture sheets, or apply bits from other buildings texture sheets which will combine when atlased. Ie chimney stacks look pretty generic on some buildings so no point storing 50 unique chimneys haha.
The other 50-100 buildings are increasingly obscured/distant so I'll probably just use a diffuse texture and shader on those, or a specular control alpha at the most just for some extra detail.




Jerc, that sounds like an interesting route. I might install the demo tonight and try achieve the build method I want.

The logic is to have say 5 main brick sheets with appropriate normals and spec/gloss maps... store them in 16bit per channel and then I can push/pull those 5 around to create more variety.

Same with roof tiles.

That seems possible in substance designer then, to author in one project with all layers in one (just like when you cut, paste or mask in PS it applies to RGB, so it will in substance across all the information channels)

This way I can also have some grunge layers and building prop elements like drain pipes and windows which I can just paste in place and it'll bring over the correct IOR/gloss values, and normal map for the frame etc.


I was thinking about using a method where by I cut into the mesh for windows, adding extra details like that then using repeating/tiling textures for the bricks etc but it's really going to be too much work.

Current plan is to have photo reference of the real building (since this is a recreation), unwrap my low poly building, block in the elements from the photo, and then go back over with clean sheets of brick and decals like drain pipes, windows, doors etc to remove all the baked in lighting, reflections and obscured elements I'll likely end up having in raw photo sourced material.


Obviously the new textures might vary a bit vs real life but I'm sure people won't notice slightly wrong window frame shapes for example.



I'm still a way off this stage but just wanting to get a figure on memory usage and GPU process cost.

I'll probably unwrap them all as a next step then apply basic photo reference elements into them.

Then I'll simply go through and pick out the ones that need more work.

I'm guessing it'll be around 50 buildings, maybe 75... though that is still plenty to justify a streamlining process via a tool like Substance Designer!




Sorry Lazarus, are there any specific break downs I need to be looking out for? The overriding thing I got from that thread was don't use much VRAM if you can help it, and reference materials are king

My problem here is more how to author a massive data set of tens of buildings with all the other control maps 'tagging along' for the ride while editing, masking etc


Thanks for your thoughts so far.

I'll have a play with Substance Designer demo tonight!


Thanks

Dave