Tiling texture and UVs for Rock Props?

Drifter

I know this has been covered before, but I'm not finding a lot of definitive and relevant information. This may be because I don't even know what to search for.

In the past I've used unique textures for rock props, this looks great but has the downside of loading a lot of textures into memory (obvious). I'm interested in the best workflow and methodology for creating seamless tiling textures (and uv'ing props to use them) so that I can re-use one tiling texture across many rock props, possibly with a unique detail layer overlaid in shader independently. Is this the famed 8-sided texture?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

rollin

best way imo is to use shader tricks.

So you create (2) rock base textures and a rock detail texture .. both tiling

then you use vertex colors to blend between the different base textures

and you use shader stuff like world-z value based effects to add moss, weathering or stuff like that.

NAIMA

Whats an 8 sided texture?

Anyway some engines do not allow a double layer of normal map and normal map detail so if only one is available that tech is not usefull...

I guess best is to design a texture for rock that does not have many shadows painted in it or would look odd when rotating the stone model in other than a non original creation . Then use the cavity of the rock itself to hide the seams , by so splitting the rock uvmap ina way that the seams are hidden somehow by the incuts.

Eventually design multifaced intereting rocks that you can rotate in many directions in the game so to look each time as a different rock , but instead beeing always the same istance...

Santewi

If you want to hide seams, either this, or use 2 UV maps with seams at different locations and blend between them using vertex color.

Drifter

Hey all, thanks for the great answers so far.

@NAIMA - 8 sided texture I'm taking from this thread: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=80898

The line that stood out to me was: "The point of mirroring/tiling half of one side all the way around the texture is so you can not only rotate the texture on each quad, but you can also mirror it, so you get the most variation possible."

@rollln - yes, shader tricks seem to be a good place to start. I'm also thinking about using UV blend at distance, so this'll be a pretty heavy shader it seems...

@ Santewi - that's something I'll have to look into, thanks!

I appreciate the ideas, I'm probably going to have to write a shader, but keep the ideas coming!

SlyRipper

I would try a method within 3dsmax where you could use 3 uv-map modifiers and let them project the texture from each side and then use a fall off to blend those textures nicely into each other, that way you could possibly texture everything with a tileable texture.

Here's a simple image of the effect i think of:

RohinParmar95

Just hand paint the entire thing in zBrush for example and add natural effects like erosion and wear then unwrap it

NAIMA

Unfortnately those links are all expired and I still do not understand what's a 8 sided texture lol ...

perhaps does it means that you have the four border seams equally tileing and also mirroreable? so to be able to rotate and invert the textures eventually? Doesn't seem much worth hough as you still would have to sacrify quite a lot of the borders for them to work .

I think eventually a thirthing technique might be more handy , but for a rock the best so far that I can think of is a wise placement of seams inside incuts of the rock and eventually hide them with some vertex coloring perhaps .

as long as the engine doesn't allow multiple texture layers ofc .