Vehicle texturing
Hello all,
This is my first vehicle to texture and I'm kinda not happy with it at all.
It's currently "crap" and it needs to become "good".
The concept:
What I have:
This is on a tight deadline so any help is really appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
This is my first vehicle to texture and I'm kinda not happy with it at all.
It's currently "crap" and it needs to become "good".
The concept:
What I have:
This is on a tight deadline so any help is really appreciated.
Thanks a lot.
Replies
It would also be helpful to post an image of your unwrap in the thread, so that people can see how you've packed everything. There are some parts that could easily be overlapped, giving you more space for the parts that are "front and center" on the hull.
The other problem is the low quality of the texture. It's a 2k map but still the metal scratches are so blurry.
Almost in all games vehicles use 2k textures and are so high quality than what I'm having here. Are the UV's above packed wrong?
You could migrate this factor by splitting your UVs/textures into multiple 2k textures for your ship, ie one for the cockpit and centerpiece, one for the side engines and details, etc.
I'd say it's not uncommon for vehicles to be split into multiple textures, especially if you want to maintain detail in say a first-person perspective.
And then there's always tiling textures to keep in mind, which is another solution for being able to have crisp detail up close for objects that are building size and up+
The X-series for example has a lot of different types and sizes of ships, from tiny little fighters to massive 40+ fighter carriers, and they make use of having multiple tiling materials on basically all of their different types of ships + space stations. (At least in x3: tc/ap) I'm not sure exactly on X-rebirth since I only played it for a couple of hours, but I'm pretty sure it's the same method but with a higher-resolution, advanced shaders, and a change in art-direction.
That said, I'd say your vehicle probably could just be split into two or three 2k textures to up the resolution while maintaining unique surface details, since it seems about fighter size/bigger than a car but smaller than a tugboat.
You also might consider having flipped/overlapped UVs if you haven't already, which is another way to up the resolution for larger objects like vehicles while trying to keep a relatively small texture size. IE dividing the ship down the middle and having it basically be a texture map with one half mirrored to the other side. You'll just have to be extra careful of causing a potential seam in the middle, and make sure your game engine supports flipping normals. (I believe Unreal engine 3 and 4 do) You'll also definitely want a second UV channel for things like lightmaps if you're doing any overlapping on your UV's. You can even get a little more advanced with using tiling textures by having the tiling textures in channel 1 of the UVs, and baking out an AO/dirt map using the unique uv set from channel 2 and having it multiply on top. Usually shadowmaps or anything ao related don't really need as a high a resolution as color maps since they basically are just defining dark areas, which are usually inherently blurry anyways.
So yeah, there's multiple ways on having crisper resolutions for objects larger than a humanoid but all rely on having good UVs that make the most out of their space. (well, except tiling textures, since those UVs are usually all over the place)
Each one does come with its own sacrifice though so it's up to you. (more unique details vs basically infinite ability on size without blurring up close, symmetrical details versus mutiple texture maps, possibility of having a tough time with the mirrored seam if using normals, etc.)
And of course there's also things like "detail maps" which are just repeating diffuse/normal/etc textures that are faded in and blended on top of the object's actual texture/materials when getting close to the object. I don't really use them personally but they can be good for adding a little more detail up close such as grit/noise in the metal/porous rocks/extreme closeup skin details/etc
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Materials/Functions/Reference/Texturing/index.html#detailtexturing
I hope that helps somewhat in your consideration beyond making the UVs a bit more compact.
You can also do things like have the scratches and damage values different in the specular or roughness map, and mess around with the metallic value if going the metalness workflow (UE4) route.
Additional elements such as grebble/metal paneling and plating/bolts can be added in photoshop using something like xnormal filter or ndo. And then for the final touches you can add in some actual "paint" work such as strips of color and graphic design work (think hotrods, racecars, bomber plane paint, typography, warning panels, pull here to eject cockpit shield, this slides ->, arrows, flammable, sign work, warning explosive bolts, turboengine mk1 Serial0001337, etc.) which could be put on top of your color map in photoshop using the overlay, color, or multiply layer style with tweaked opacity. (would let some of the surface detail pass through the paint job)
@alex1111, Appreciated. UVs reworked.
@thatdude02, I usually forget to take advantage of sharpening the texture. Thanks a lot for reminding.
@Deathstick, Sir, Thank you for the very helpful and detailed feedback. You helped me a lot on this.
That's the result.