Jordan - Take a look at the ptex article. They are showing very will how much is the used memory for textures in games, and how big part it takes from the whole memory usage. Then you will see the reason better. Thats just one thing, there are other benefits too, as the others saying.
I was just referring to the benefits of using efficient uv maps. In that article, they are showing how much of the texture space can be wasted with the traditional method.
Yeah, how would PTEX work with smoothing groups? Every edge would have to be a hard edge, and increase the vertex count the GPU has to deal with by a massive amount. How would normal maps work with PTEX and those smoothing groups? And like JacqueChoi mentioned, mip-mapping. How do you make modular/tiling assets that reuse textures space with PTEX? How do you animate UVs or textures with PTEX?
Yeah, how would PTEX work with smoothing groups? Every edge would have to be a hard edge, and increase the vertex count the GPU has to deal with by a massive amount. How would normal maps work with PTEX and those smoothing groups? And like JacqueChoi mentioned, mip-mapping. How do you make modular/tiling assets that reuse textures space with PTEX? How do you animate UVs or textures with PTEX?
i find ptex is one of those things that sounds amazing at the start, but the more you think about it, you realize it is currently rubbish for what we want. Maybe in the future if the issues can be worked out. But still engines are highly optimized to work wit the current systems in place. Ptex seems to mean dropping everything and starting anew, and not organically growing to something better.
What tools do you think Maya needs to improve for UVmapping? Their forum is quite responsive and we are in good cumincation with Autodesk Soho so I could point them to this thread to help give it some validationation.
Maya needs better...
1, Packing tools (need to be able to controll the different size boundaries)
2, Relaxing Shells (different algorithms for the relax on low level SubDiv)
3, Radial & Linear Align
4, And so on....
I love the "Unfold3D" for quick organic stuff. You can find it in "UV Texture Editor/Polygons/Unfold/Optionbox and use Method Unfold3D
My work mate used Headus UVLayout in the film industry for unwrapping some car models, said he could Unwap a HiRez (what they call level 1) car model ready for texturing in Mari in a few hours. Then changed to a different company and same job would take him a week in Maya (The PCs in the film idustry are locked so he could not export the model to his laptop so he could use Headus UVLayout, infact all you have is a Monitor and Keyboard and the PC is in another room).
i find ptex is one of those things that sounds amazing at the start, but the more you think about it, you realize it is currently rubbish for what we want. Maybe in the future if the issues can be worked out. But still engines are highly optimized to work wit the current systems in place. Ptex seems to mean dropping everything and starting anew, and not organically growing to something better.
I was always under the impression that outside of movies PTex was just a good asset to the workflow: Paint first, then decide from there how the texel density of the uvs need to be laid out, UV, bake. Kinda like how no one would think having only raw ZBrush sculpts inside a game engine is a good idea, but having sculpting and using it as part of your workflow allows you to worry about topology after being done worrying about the looks.
It funny how some people find the uv part of the workflow as the more relaxing part. I find modelling and texturing immensely more fun. UV`ing , which is why I posted this thread, is the part that breaks the creative cycle for me. I`ve just modelled say a network of pipes, I want to slap on some materials to see them in all their glory, but no, all the uv`s are squashed and uv`s misplaced because I welded two vertices together,etc. These kind of general issues.
I dont know it just feels like its a part of the workflow that breaks the flow for me. I realise its an important area for game production but there seems to be such a heavy amount of work these days, modelling is more detailed than ever before, materials with PBR is much more time consuming. Wouldnt it be nice to just have something that helped with the uv side of things.
Like wouldnt it be nice if you assign a brick texture to the side of a house. It automatically scales and tiles the bricks because you`ve set that in the material. I assign a painted wood material to all the window frames. It knows which way is up, front,etc and it maps them polys accordingly as you assign them. I paste a metal shader to a pipe, it knows its curved because of the smoothing groups and it uv`s it as you assign. I`m just thinking off the top of my head.
Like I said in my first post been doing uv`s for 20 odd years, it just feels like something that hasnt progressed.
I guess like alot of things, no pain no gain. And uv`s are my pain ;-)
art73 Alot of it really comes down to not treating UV's like they are a foreign to the rest of the modeling process. I consider how my UV's are going to look and how my normals are going to bake during the modeling process. This makes the UV and baking task much easier. Also there are some things like pipes which you mentioned where the UV's do them self depending on hope you modeled it.
Like wouldnt it be nice if you assign a brick texture to the side of a house. It automatically scales and tiles the bricks because you`ve set that in the material. I assign a painted wood material to all the window frames. It knows which way is up, front,etc and it maps them polys accordingly as you assign them.
This sounds a lot like the benefits of carefully done UVs
The process of UVing has progressed. It's now quicker and easier than it once was. But what you are asking for is to skip the UV process altogether.
Well as he said, he does his organic unwrapping in Maya. Thus leading me to conclude that he hasn't really gone out and looked for a better uv pipeline. So it makes sense why he believes there has been no progress.
I used to think I was a fast uv unwrapper in Max, then bugo introduced me to UVLayout. Now I'm adding iPack that to my pipeline.
tbh honest Uv mapping isn't my favorite thing in the world but it sure does come in handy for some workflows and there a heaps of tricks you can do with them especially for environments.
Replies
Things like Mip-Mapping doesn't work with PTEX, and would need a different type of solution... to avoid flickering/filtering.
I doubt compression works the same way.
We would need to restructure everything to accomodate PTEX.
i find ptex is one of those things that sounds amazing at the start, but the more you think about it, you realize it is currently rubbish for what we want. Maybe in the future if the issues can be worked out. But still engines are highly optimized to work wit the current systems in place. Ptex seems to mean dropping everything and starting anew, and not organically growing to something better.
Maya needs better...
1, Packing tools (need to be able to controll the different size boundaries)
2, Relaxing Shells (different algorithms for the relax on low level SubDiv)
3, Radial & Linear Align
4, And so on....
I love the "Unfold3D" for quick organic stuff. You can find it in "UV Texture Editor/Polygons/Unfold/Optionbox and use Method Unfold3D
Also have you triedMaya bonus tools?
[ame]
My work mate used Headus UVLayout in the film industry for unwrapping some car models, said he could Unwap a HiRez (what they call level 1) car model ready for texturing in Mari in a few hours. Then changed to a different company and same job would take him a week in Maya (The PCs in the film idustry are locked so he could not export the model to his laptop so he could use Headus UVLayout, infact all you have is a Monitor and Keyboard and the PC is in another room).
Then again, I don't know if PTex is bakeable yet?
It funny how some people find the uv part of the workflow as the more relaxing part. I find modelling and texturing immensely more fun. UV`ing , which is why I posted this thread, is the part that breaks the creative cycle for me. I`ve just modelled say a network of pipes, I want to slap on some materials to see them in all their glory, but no, all the uv`s are squashed and uv`s misplaced because I welded two vertices together,etc. These kind of general issues.
I dont know it just feels like its a part of the workflow that breaks the flow for me. I realise its an important area for game production but there seems to be such a heavy amount of work these days, modelling is more detailed than ever before, materials with PBR is much more time consuming. Wouldnt it be nice to just have something that helped with the uv side of things.
Like wouldnt it be nice if you assign a brick texture to the side of a house. It automatically scales and tiles the bricks because you`ve set that in the material. I assign a painted wood material to all the window frames. It knows which way is up, front,etc and it maps them polys accordingly as you assign them. I paste a metal shader to a pipe, it knows its curved because of the smoothing groups and it uv`s it as you assign. I`m just thinking off the top of my head.
Like I said in my first post been doing uv`s for 20 odd years, it just feels like something that hasnt progressed.
I guess like alot of things, no pain no gain. And uv`s are my pain ;-)
This sounds a lot like the benefits of carefully done UVs
The process of UVing has progressed. It's now quicker and easier than it once was. But what you are asking for is to skip the UV process altogether.
Well as he said, he does his organic unwrapping in Maya. Thus leading me to conclude that he hasn't really gone out and looked for a better uv pipeline. So it makes sense why he believes there has been no progress.
I used to think I was a fast uv unwrapper in Max, then bugo introduced me to UVLayout. Now I'm adding iPack that to my pipeline.
Something to note is that UVLayout has been integrated into maya 2016/maya LT. It now replaces the default unfold command.
Unfold3D is an extremely different thing from Headus.
http://developer.amd.com/resources/documentation-articles/gpu-demos/amd-radeon-hd-7900-series-graphics-real-time-demos/
hey
blender can do that too!
looks like I found a new UV mapping technique