Need help texturing a tree

Zodd

Hello, first i feel the need to apologize in advance if this has been written about on the forums, but I've been digging around the google and polycount for a whole day now and i kinda found what i was looking for but not exactly ( hence the thread )

I've been working on a tree model, and all went fine until i got to the texturing part, i did not expect this problem to occur, but i should've, because it is logical.

The problem:

The tree has a lot of visible roots and branches protruding from the trunk, now
I'm interested in how should these be textured/UV-ed to avoid seams showing
The "solutions" I've implemented and have tested for now are:
- Making a big tiling texture ( noticeable seams )
- Hand painting the bark ( a little better but still very hard to make continuous
line along the branch-trunk-root line ) Also expecting problems when i add
shading to the bark
- Apply moss to the seams ( hides the problem areas but ... you can see the
result... out of place and eye poking )

Here is the image of the model, UV's and color map ( currently only one applied to
the mesh )



So how would one deal with the seams that show up, the obvious solution i
thought of would be zbrush and baking the details directly to low poly and then
process the normal map and AO pass in photoshop,
So i was wondering if there is a way to do it without the "helping" tools, if anyone
remembers ( and if i remember correctly ) the trees in morrowind, i think they were
seamless.. and had diffuse only, also i think the trees ( more important/bigger ones
) in world of warcraft have seamless textures and also ( i think ) diffuse only.


Thanks in advance

Synaesthesia

You could solve several of those seam issues by connecting more of the UV shells and relaxing them. There's several places on your UV layout that could be utilized more effectively - you're losing a lot of resolution the way you're going about it. I'd personally lay out your UVs for the trunk in such a way that they tile horizontally and make sure to have a seamless texture set on that portion of your layout.

After that, I'd combine as many UVs as possible for the branches and spread them out across the texture to maximize texel density. If you end up with seams, just make sure they're on top instead of on the bottom as to avoid having them be visible. If you add moss at that point, it'll look natural instead of the "band-aid" approach you've taken.

If you want, I can load it up in Max tonight when I get off work and explain exactly what I mean if my write-up is confusing at all.

Zodd

Thank you, i greatly appreciate your input, also ( if it isn't obvious ) i have very little to none experience dealing with trees, and UV-ing them the "right" way.
Now to expand a bit on my problem, now that i examined some more of the trees used in games.
I previously stated that morrowind and WoW have trees that don't have visible seams on branches and roots that are protruding from the trunk, <- this statement is false since i found some resources around the internet and in morrowind construction set they all have seams difference is the morrowind ones have high frequency and a lot of detail to them so you can only spot the hard edge normals and not the seams in the texture itself ( until you zoom in on the branch at scientific level, but that is asking too much ).

Now, I've understood the part of wasting too much texture space and resolution, also the way its UV-ed now it's a big problem to hand paint the bark since i ( think ) need at least a few continuous lines from the trunk to extend to branches/roots to give it some continuity, and those i could do with some pixel moving but when the shading part comes in i don't think there is a way to match all those pixels over the seams.

One thing i did right it seems is to put the seams ( no pun intended ) of the branches on top side and roots have seams on bottom, but i can't wrap my head around how to connect the trunk to the roots/branches part, do you mean to slice trunk vertically lets say into lets say five UV islands each having part of the trunk and root and pin the horizontal UV's in a straight line so they tile horizontally ?

I can't explain it either so here is an image of what i understood you've suggested






Make these tile horizontally and fix seams so the can be tiled ( pin them to be in a straight vertical line )

If i misunderstood anything and this is not what you've meant, it would be great if you could find time and go a bit more in depth.

And thank you again

Synaesthesia

It's difficult to explain, so I'll paint over.



I'd set the bottom 25% to 35% of your texture to the trunk and make sure it tiles horizontally and vertically.

The blue branches would benefit from being laid out in such a way that the shells are as large as possible. I would honestly suggest painting something like this in Mudbox because the way I'd go about it would be a nightmare in Photoshop. I might be missing something here - because it's certainly possible to do it without "helper" tools - but you'll likely run into distortion problems as you paint over the UVs in Photoshop and it'll just be a big pain in the ass.

Mudbox would fix this issue entirely and make the painting process a lot more enjoyable. If my explanation sucked, feel free to upload your tree. I don't mind taking a stab at laying out the UVs.

Zodd

Yeah from what i saw people usually do is do a high-poly sculpt in zBrush or Mudbox and then the standard procedure of HiPoly>LowPoly>UV>Texture and use gathered information from normals and ambient occlusion and other info gathered from hi-poly sculpt, that and painting the texture directly on low poly in 3D-coat or as you suggested Mudbox, while these are all very valid, rational and time saving steps i would like to know if there is a way to handle this "the old timey" way ...
Somehow i think that the geometry itself is nearly impossible to layout the way i imagined it, too many sharp angles and of branches/roots that make up for big UV islands make it almost impossible to relax and connect them to each other without losing the texture space... Maybe I'm wrong but that's what i have so far.

Here is another screenshot of the UV-ing tests. I've took the trunk and split it along center ( well not exactly because it's 11-sided cylinder ) and set it up so it touches the right side of the texture ( btw which is tileable horizontally and vertically ) and two root parts set up to attach to the trunk, now you see the problem,
First I'm running out of wood texture and it seems to have to make the whole texture wood grain to fit all of the UV's on it
Second problem stems from first one, if i make grain image bigger ( squared ) i the trunk part looses meaning no point in splitting the trunk in half if its not going to match and tile horizontally.
While this is not a very good tree mesh, i would like to learn as much as i can from it before i go on to making more trees , so they get done quicker ( a LOT quicker i hope ).




Oh and here is the fbx, its on sendSpace i hope that is ok ?

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8zmdzy