Question regarding modular game assets

Andy Horns

So i have gone down a path of learning how to create modular game assets and i have been wondering how this would work from a texture sheet point of view, before i make no sense the question really is as following:

Should all the modular pieces fit on one texture sheet even though when using the modular pieces you might not use all of them or in my case you def wouldn't use all of them to create a specific object. The other option is to make each modular piece fit on its own texture sheet but then i have a scenario where i cant fill the sheet and it seems like a waste of space.

So from a game engine's perspective would it be better to have a texture sheet loaded that has parts that aren't used or have multiple texture sheets loaded of which some might have wasted space. Sorry if this makes no sense at all....

Brian "Panda" Choi

I think I have an answer to this. Engineers, please correct me if I am wrong:

It depends on what you want to add the costs.

For example, lets just say all the gun textures for a game are on ONE texture atlas.

This means at each run time, you're loading in this HUGE texture sheet for the guns. Problem is, you're maybe possibly only using less than 25% of the texture space 'blocks' for the guns that are ACTUALLY in-use during run time. So you're having to load in, for each gun, a HUGE texture sheet. Once it's loaded in though, the game is just constantly referencing only one sheet, so it's faster DURING run time. You preserve processing time potentially.

Multiple separate textures for the guns:

On the load of a level, you're loading in a more precise number of texture sheets you need. Problem is, you're potentially just adding up a bigger memory imprint for the whole game size with separate textures. AND, say if a NEW gun needs to be rendered in game, the game has to go back in memory to call in the new gun texture, which uses up processing time.

This was how I remember it being explained to me at a place I was doing weapons at a previous studio.

TheAxiom

Hmm I've been hearing that multiple texture sheets is better on memory costs than one huge one. I'd like this to be cleared up as well.

modsoft

You may find this relevant to your research:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=89682

For weapons and hero assets (character assets) I would say use unique texture sheets. For environment pieces, I would modularize as much as possible and utilize a standardized UV layout, tiling textures, and material graphs to get the most unique combinations out of the smallest amount of data in texture sheets.

This too:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=144838
(one way of breaking up environment maps)

Andy Horns

Thanks for the feedback, I went through those links and thats very impressive stuff, it was extremely helpful so thanks for that. I guess it's as JadeEyePanda said and it depends where you want to add the cost.