Questions regarding texture maps
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I am a student, aiming to be an environment artist in the game industry, and I already know I have a million things to learn. One thing in particular I am horrible at is texturing and unwrapping. I have gone and looked at a lot of different tutorials, and have been trying to practice as much as I can. That being said there are some problems/questions I haven't been able to find in any "basic" texturing/UV guide.
1. When an object is composed of multiple sub objects, like a full gun having multiple pieces modeled separately what do you do about overlap? Do you just minimize it? Was wondering because when making the texture maps for those objects some parts aren't ever going to be seen so it is inefficient. But I have been told it is more inefficient to model things of that nature as one mesh. Additionally when going to bake AO sometimes it produces artifacts near overlapping areas. Is this normal? or are there ways to get rid of that?
2. I am planning on doing environments, and have been doing one texture per object. There could be multiples of the object in the scene, but every unique object has its own texture. I have seen that for environments you can combine texture maps so you have fewer maps for a scene. How would one go about doing that? How important is that?
3. With tiling textures, are you just unable to do AO maps? Since the map would be tiled, there would not be a way to make a good AO maps. Is there a way to still get the benefits of AO while using a tiled texture?
4. On the same topic of tiled maps, are you unable to have unique details on something you are also using a tiling texture for? such as a large wall with a window. If you wanted to use a tiling texture on the walls, would you just have to model the window separately? Or is there a way to just tile part of the map, while leaving space to be used for these unique details?
Sorry this is a long post, but These fall in a weird gap in learning resources. They aren't something you teach something in a basic tutorial or overview, but the rest of the material is usually very specific techniques. Any advice/answers you have, or any resources you can direct me to would be incredibly useful. Thanks!
1. When an object is composed of multiple sub objects, like a full gun having multiple pieces modeled separately what do you do about overlap? Do you just minimize it? Was wondering because when making the texture maps for those objects some parts aren't ever going to be seen so it is inefficient. But I have been told it is more inefficient to model things of that nature as one mesh. Additionally when going to bake AO sometimes it produces artifacts near overlapping areas. Is this normal? or are there ways to get rid of that?
2. I am planning on doing environments, and have been doing one texture per object. There could be multiples of the object in the scene, but every unique object has its own texture. I have seen that for environments you can combine texture maps so you have fewer maps for a scene. How would one go about doing that? How important is that?
3. With tiling textures, are you just unable to do AO maps? Since the map would be tiled, there would not be a way to make a good AO maps. Is there a way to still get the benefits of AO while using a tiled texture?
4. On the same topic of tiled maps, are you unable to have unique details on something you are also using a tiling texture for? such as a large wall with a window. If you wanted to use a tiling texture on the walls, would you just have to model the window separately? Or is there a way to just tile part of the map, while leaving space to be used for these unique details?
Sorry this is a long post, but These fall in a weird gap in learning resources. They aren't something you teach something in a basic tutorial or overview, but the rest of the material is usually very specific techniques. Any advice/answers you have, or any resources you can direct me to would be incredibly useful. Thanks!
Replies
2. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Texture_atlas
3. Several ways to do ambient occlusion for games:
a. Create a 2nd UV set for static baked lighting. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Light_map, http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Ambient_occlusion_map.
b. Bake AO into vertex color. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Ambient_occlusion_vertex_color
c. Real-time ambient occlusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_space_ambient_occlusion (other methods for this too).
4. http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture, http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments