Splitting Objects for more UV Space and Texture Details?

Gazu

Hi Polycount!

What is your thinking about spliting as example a weapon into several pieces to bake bigger UV Shells for more Texture Sharpness and Details?

When i would split my AK as example into 1 x 4K Map for the Woodparts and 1 x 4K Map for the Metalparts.

Would that be ok for an First Person Weapon?
Or is this just wasting Memory and Ressources?

What about Portfolio Pictures?
I mean when i see works from LoneWolf:


How he is getting this so sharp?
I think he uses more then 1 Map.

What do you think?
And is this maybe next gen Industry Standart?

Greetings
Gazu

Obscura

I saw many examples for splitting a weapon into multiple textures,and it is a totally usual thing in environment art (buildings, big objects) but I would say you already use 4k which must be enough... A FPS weapon usually takes the 1/6 space of the screen in game and even if we use full hd resolution , the weapon gets estimately 500x500 pixels on the screen. Yep, things are different when the model is just for presentation purposes, but you should still keep in mind the limits and that, what, and how you should do when you would make a model for a real game. If your porfolio pieces are all use overkill texture sizes, and other bad things, people would think that the limitations aren't clear to you. About the sharpness thing:

It looks enough sharp to me if not sharper than Lonewolf's weapon. His textures just has a lot more details than yours. 2x 4k maps would be an overkill. You have diffuse, normal, metalness, roughness, and you would need 2 from all of these if you would split. It would take an insane amount of memory for just one weapon. Unfortunately texture size is one of the biggest limitation nowadays.

You should think about detailing the textures out more, and thinking on learn to texture without ddo, instead of thinking on using more resolution. Don't misundertand me please, these things would be just good to you.

Gazu

Mh...yeah, i asked my professor and he tells me the same.
1 x 4K is ok, 2 x 4K would be to much.

The Problem is that all small details looking a little bit blurry on the normalmap when i go close enough.

But you told me not to do that ^^ ....

Obscura

Yeah, you would never see anything from that close in a game.

Gazu

Hey Obscura! ^^
I just used dDo for EdgeWear. I was a bit lazy to paint the edgewear per Hand in bright Grey to my spec ^^

Obscura

And the problem with your textures is that they has almost just the edgewear as details. If you look at Lonewolf's weapon, that has nice interesting details everywhere. Also the wood still doesn't really make sense to me. I still feel the same as what somebody told you earler, that the scratches on the woods looks like somebody made them with a knife.

Gazu

Yeah you´re right.
Im scared about to overdose the wear of the weapon.
Then i get comments like: Looks tooo old, tooo dirty.... ^^
I must figure out the perfect middle of that

Gazu

I will make the Texture new... Q_Q

But, back2topic ^^

Obscura

"tooo old, tooo dirty" usually looks a lot more interesting than a sterile new, and you can show off your texturing skills better.

Gazu

Then i could used my first Texture with the Blue Stock ^^

Obscura

Personally I didn't had any problem with that blue stock, it made your weapon more unique. But the topic turned to be something that would fit better in your wip thread now hehe.

Noren

the Problem is that all small details looking a little bit blurry on the normalmap when i go close enough.

Tiny scratches on the surface usually don't need to be in the normalmap.
Surface normal needs at least one pixel on each side of a normal scratch and more if you want to have a realistic shallow surface scratch.
Often it makes more sense to have those scratches just in diffuse/specular and related maps, because this way a scratch needs only a width of one pixel, in theory.
(You could experiment with one pixel scratches in the normal, too though, having several scratches with different angles, or darker blue channel, though the latter shouldn't really matter if you already made good use of the other maps. )

Might be part of you problem, might be you're aware of this already.

stevston89

Maybe for a character, but hardly would you ever do that for a prop. Also you would never want anything more than 4k maps total for anything. A gun should probably be 2k at most and thats only for FPSs. If I were to hazard a guess as to the sharpness vs yours it would be texture quality, high tri count in the lowpoly, and a better haigh poly/ bake.