Substance D and zBrush, texturing and details question

Solu9

Hey folks

I am really struggling to wrap my head around this tileable textures vs detailed textures deal.
Let's say I have 3 stone columns for a temple. All three should use the same type of texture to match each other and here comes my conundrum.

How would I proceed if I want each of the tree columns to have unique cracks and such?

-I can make a tileable texture with a normal map in Substance D but then I will miss the unique cracks.
-I could also sculpt all tree columns in zBrush, bake a normal map from there and skip the normal map from the texture from Substance D.

I think I'm confusing myself and is making this harder than it should be, but this is kinda where I'm getting stuck.

I hope you have some suggestions or can shed some light on this.

musashidan

You could just use the tiled texture(from SD) on all 3 columns and sculpt and bake unique maps for each column in ZB
Just combine/blend the Nrm maps in PS/NDO or in the material editor in-engine(UE4)

Solu9

musashidan said:

You could just use the tiled texture(from SD) on all 3 columns and sculpt and bake unique maps for each column in ZB
Just combine/blend the Nrm maps in PS/NDO or in the material editor in-engine(UE4)

Hm. Yeah that's an option. But won't this make the tiled texture kinda obsolete since I will need 3 different materials with this method?

Edit: Or is the amount of materials not really as big an issue as the amount of textures?

gnoop

Second detailed/macro texture layer is  only way to go imo.
There is no soft on the market that would allow to  paint/compose  that on a model  with convenient  real time feedback .       Blender maybe , partly

Solu9

gnoop said:

Second detailed/macro texture layer is  only way to go imo.
There is no soft on the market that would allow to  paint/compose  that on a model  with convenient  real time feedback .       Blender maybe , partly

I guess that's out of the question then.
Is there some kind of golden rule or just a rule of thumb to when a model should be using tileable texture + normal map (read: Designer) and when a model should (or benefit better from) use zBrush normal + unique texture?

gnoop

There is no rule. It's where creative part starts . Often an environment is  a combination of uniquely unwrapped objects  and non uniquely.  Plus a lot of decals.    Depends also  on how close a player could come to the  subject.    Usually  all props about human size  and smaller are uniquely unwrapped.   

ps. Colomns could be unique one. just rotated randomly

musashidan

Solu9 said:

Edit: Or is the amount of materials not really as big an issue as the amount of textures?

Just use material instances to switch out the unique normal texture. This is exactly the kind of thing they're there for.