Antitank Gun

CharlesL

One of my more recent game art endeavors has been a low-poly antitank gun. My major issue is texturing. This is my first try at a real texturing project. Any suggestions would be appreciated .
[SKETCHFAB]dgTIrfDG2VSPYE8AZbNjmF0Pi25[/SKETCHFAB]

Current texture for the barrel:

I know it sucks and I'm not sure what to do. It's ~3000x2000 pixels but I'm still having resolution issues.

JoshWilkinson

I'm pretty confused over your workflow.

1. What resolution issues are you having?
2. Why did you choose a texture resolution that is neither powers of two, nor a square?

Brian "Panda" Choi

1. 3000x2000 for a AT gun is too much. 1024x1024 should do the trick, and at most, 2048x2048. For both length and width, these resolutions MUST be in powers of 2.

2. Are you planning for everything to be clean green metal?

CharlesL

@BringMeASunkist The main resolution issue I'm having is that I can't put enough detail into the tank (i.e. a 1px thick scratch is too thick). My UV map is long and thin, so I chose a map that I could get the most detail out of (without any wasted space).

@JadeEyePanda OK, maybe my UV map is screwed up. Here's my map (just the barrel):
[IMG][/img]

I'll be using green as the base color, but I plan on painting scratches/dirt/grime on top.

DanConroy

A 1024x1024 should be well enough for this for a game asset, even smaller depending on what kind of view the player would have etc.

Is that UV all the model or just certain bits?

silkroadgame

Very good!Can't wait to see more!

Brian "Panda" Choi

@CharlesL: No maybes, your UV Map does need work. And if that's just the barrel, then no, you need to pack all the UV's onto a 1024 x 1024 square from all elements of the prop. EVERYTHING.

The reason why I'll say it needs to be packed into one square is because if I need to instance that cannon, say, 20 times in a game scene, the number of texture maps that I'm assuming you have and the size of them will cause the game to scream and wail, and you'll prolly get an FPS of under 30 as the game is making draw calls for not only that cannon, but the 1000 other things going on in the game at any one time, like AI calculations, Animation adjusting for slopes, and sparkly explosions VFX.

There are ways to pack in whole character textures onto one square, so there's definitely a way for you to pack a small cannon into a 1024 square. You can do it!

CharlesL

OK, thanks for the tip @JadeEyePanda. It took a little while, but here's the new UV map:

And the tank now looks like this:

DWalker

I'm not trying to be too picky, but the days when a texture MUST be a square power of two are long gone - back to the 3dfx days, really. Modern engines will support textures of any size, they just store them internally as the next convenient size - so a 200x300 texture, for example, will be stored as a 256 x 512. Since you are paying the price the full price, you might as well use the full area. While square maps are most common, there are some times when they just aren't terribly efficient; as long as both dimensions are a power of two, you're fine.

CharlesL

Thanks for the explanation @Dwalker. I think the square works out fine with the UV's for now, though.

CharlesL

I haven't been able to post in a while because I was doing some other work, then switched to a new (mega-awesome) computer. Anyway, I've managed to do the first diffuse texture pass:

(I threw in rough spec/normal maps, so please excuse their crappy-ness. I'll work on them later)

Suggestions for the diffuse map?

EDIT: Crap, and I still can't get the images to display correctly :P

Brian "Panda" Choi

Use IMGUR. It give you easy to copy paste BBC code.

CharlesL

@JadeEyePanda, cool, thanks

TheRealFroman

Its a start man :P When it comes to metal though, diffuse will be a very dark, deep color depending on what material you are trying to make. However the spec map will be much higher, and the gloss map will take care of the specular power. So basically for metal, you want a really dark diffuse map, a really bright spec map, a gloss map that is really dark (What I like to do is invert the spec map in photoshop and then play around with the levels to make the gloss), and a normal map that makes sense of course ^^ Hope that is clear.

CharlesL

OK, thank you for the explanation. I've never done gloss maps before (always stuck to just a spec map), but that makes a a lot of sense.

CharlesL

Shot from the back of the gun:


I'm fairly happy with the diffuse, so I'm going to move on to spec/glossy now.

Brian "Panda" Choi

The tip of the cannon shouldn't be so clean if it's been in use.

Go over your diffuse, see which areas need more dinging and damage than others.

Use reference. See how other games like Company of Heroes do their textures on the same type of weapon.

CharlesL

Good idea. Here's an update on the diffuse:



Do you all think the diffuse map is good enough? If so I'll move on to specular, gloss and normal.

CharlesL

New Spec/Normal maps: