Do you always make a High Poly model?

Hayden Zammit

How often do you guys do a high poly for baking props in environment pieces. If it were me I'd do a high poly piece for something that was a large object, or a key piece to the scene, but lets just say its a basic prop, like a chair or desk or something like that.

Would you guys bother with the high to low bake?

I was dissecting Snefer's modular sci-fi lab (found on his site) files in UDK, and unless I'm missing something, he didn't use any high poly models at all and everything still looks amazing. I see in a lot of games they don't always bother as well.

Stromberg90

I would make highpoly's for hero pieces that could not be made with the tileable textures I have from before.
I will do most of the environment and props with tileable textures.

Snefer has a tutorial on eat3D that is well worth a watch, although the site seems to be down atm.

Hayden Zammit

I would make highpoly's for hero pieces that could not be made with the tileable textures I have from before.
I will do most of the environment and props with tileable textures.

Snefer has a tutorial on eat3D that is well worth a watch, although the site seems to be down atm.

So by that, do you mean you would use a texture sheet that has a variety of textures on it? Like one sheet might have a floor panel, metal trim, grating, etc?

I've looked at that Eat3d one. Would love to be able to make environments with 1 or 2 texture sheets only, but I get totally confused trying to manage it all.

Stromberg90

Yeah, thats how I go about it

It can be pretty confusing at first I totally get that, but with proper planning and creative uv mapping you can get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time.

Also vertex painting can play a big role in getting more out of your tileables.

gsokol

Yea, environments usually have a lot of tiling textures, so often you don't need to bake from a high...or you bake stuff to fit on the texture sheet then reuse that texture all over everything.

Most of the time bigger details are tiled like that, and big/medium props are often baked from a high poly, then super small props might be made quickly at the end...often without a high poly.

Hayden Zammit

Thanks for the input guys. You've kinda reinforced what I was thinking. The following pic is from Mirrors Edge. It's the concept for the Monthly Noob Challenge this month.

Using it as an example, with the floor piece that has the 76 on it. I've got that on its own map. It's taking up a bit more than half of my UV sheet. So the best way would be to try and fit other parts onto that sheet, like the black on the rails or the texture for the lights or the pipes or something?

Then for parts like the wall on the left that is green down the bottom and white up top, you could do a square texture that takes up a whole piece?

I'm just trying to wrap my head around it all, and trying to figure out an effective way. Going to take a look at Snefer's modular stuff and see if I can grasp it more as well.

Stromberg90

Most likely the 76 is a decal, cause they use it over both tunnels and it has the exact same look and grime.
So remove 76 from your texture so you can use it in several places, cause just the floor texture can pretty much do 20% - 30% of the texturing in this scene.

Warning! This is a really bad example.
This is how one of the tileable textures could look.

Hayden Zammit

Ah yeah, sorry, I meant to say that I would be using that as a decal.

Stromberg90

Yeah, what engine will you be using for this?

Hayden Zammit

Yeah, what engine will you be using for this?

Using Cryengine 3 for the first time.

That example is good. This might sound stupid, but I never even thought of using a UV sheet that wasn't a square.

Not sure if this breakdown makes sense, but I was planning on breaking up the textures like the following picture.



Only done this texture so far. It's the floor panel with the holes in it. As you can see, I've got heaps of space left over. So that sort of space you would just use for other parts, like pipes and trim?

Stromberg90

The breakdown looks solid.
But try and keep the textures to the edges, like I did in my example, because now you will need a new polygon to map it to for every block, instead of one big plane that extends.
Also the texture inside the tunnels is pretty much the floor texture stretched.

For the rest of the texture make some shapes that can be easily used and repeated.

Hayden Zammit

But try and keep the textures to the edges, like I did in my example, because now you will need a new polygon to map it to for every block, instead of one big plane that extends.

This is the other thing that has been confusing me. At the moment, I have the floor panels like this: it's just two of the panels stitched together. I was going to import that into CE3 and then just duplicate them along.

Stromberg90

Well now you are using 16 tri's, when it can look the same with 2.

So it's not like it's a huge difference but I find it easier to map when making other objects with the same texture.

Not sure if you know this, but the uv's don't have to be inside the uv square, when it's outside the texture will repeat itself.

Hayden Zammit

Yeah, I sorta get that. That's actually how I had it set up originally. The thing is the dimensions of that piece is 2048 by 1209, which is a problem. You can see it here:



Is it better to make texture to the grid first, then make models that match?

Stromberg90

Yeah, it's at least more convenient to make the texture then the models.

Also now it takes up over half the texture which is not really needed and you only got one block so it will pretty easy to see the same block repeating over and over again.

Hayden Zammit

Never even considered trying to texture first then model. I did a quick test.

I've got the UV for the whole long panel taking up the entire UV sheet and it's tiling 5 times:


And this is how I've got the texture at the moment. I suppose I better do two of the panels. I was thinking about going for a cleaner look.


So you'd do it like this, then extend the canvas above or below and add another piece that you were going to tile?


By the way, this has been super helpful so far. Really appreciate it.

Stromberg90

No problem

That is pretty much how I do it, here is a few things to look at.

http://www.poopinmymouth.com/process/tips/thirding.jpg
http://eat3d.com/udk_modular
https://www.3dmotive.com/f101001

Hayden Zammit

Thanks for those links, going to go over them and those videos. Definitely need to understand this workflow more.

chrisradsby

I generally go after this when making environments

1. Be efficient and plan ahead.
2: Spend time to make your textures look good, 90% of all my textures are Tilable Textures used in different ways.
3. Spend polys and use custom normals to make your low-polys look high-poly. No need for baking all the time unless you need some intricate detail on some objects. Making a high-poly of a wooden table or chair is usually just a waste of time, just add more bevels.

Usually I try to break down the environment I work with I start categorizing everything to what I need.

Example: I need a concrete texture, wood, grass, rock etc etc.
Then I usually start thinking about what kind of shaders I need to get the result I want. And this section takes a long time, usually it's about research on how to get the style that I need for the project.

After all that I have some solid ground to start from, then I usually start blocking out my level a little bit just to get a feel for the environment, by then I also have a small collection of tilable textures that I can apply just to get a feel if it'll look good or not in the environment.

Dave Dind

Hayden man, thanks for asking this question. I'm similarly lost when it comes to texturing whole environments as it hasn't really come up for me at work so far.

I'm always embarrassed by this lack of knowledge, so it's great to have it laid out in much the same way that I would've asked!

I'll be following this thread for sure.