Is this an OK thing to do? (Modular Textures & UVs outside grid)

RossHildick3D

Hi all.

I'm learning environment texturing for games at the moment; I have a modular texture set up with some wooden beams on it and a model with planks varying in length. There is one beam that I want the wooden texture to tile twice along and so have extended the UVs for it twice the size of the UV grid in the texture editor... Is this ok? Or should I tile it in the texture and make everything I want non-tiled only half the width?

Simple version: Can UVs go off the grid? Is this common practice or will I be crucified for it in the industry?

Thanks

antweiler

From my knowledge, thats absolutely ok

Steppenwolf

That's fine. Normal thing to do when working with tiling materials/atlases.

musashidan

Not only is it ok, it's often used as part of a workflow, so you're adjusting uvs to match the texture (as you've done with the plank) rather than the other way around.

RossHildick3D

Amazing, thanks guys!

cptSwing

Getting it all onto an atlas later.. that's the tricky part

Steppenwolf

cptSwing said:

Getting it all onto an atlas later.. that's the tricky part

I tend to make atlases before i even begin to model. Or i work with placeholders, color coding some areas that will be used for certain materials or trims, maybe throw in some quick photo sourced areas for better visualization. Just takes some analyzing and planning ahead of what is needed.

cptSwing

Yeah, sure.. I'm just recovering from the terrible annoyance of cutting geometry into walls (etc) for tiling within an atlas for a mobile project.. and with Autodesk insisting on keeping UV mapping bound to a modifier, it'll stay that way for a while I'm sure

musashidan

Have a look at this great thread. Lots of info on the subject.

http://polycount.com/discussion/144838/ue4-modular-building-set-breakdown/p1

RossHildick3D

Thanks for that, really helpful.

RossHildick3D

musashidan said:

Have a look at this great thread. Lots of info on the subject.

http://polycount.com/discussion/144838/ue4-modular-building-set-breakdown/p1

This actually now leads me to another question you could probably answer if you dont mind?:

I notice that some textures are quare and in powers of two as usual, but some are strange sizes (at least strange to me).

Take this texture for example by J-fletcher:



What is going on here? The layout of that texture is nuts so someone who's always kept thinks in square textures up until now. Can someone explain this?

Thanks

musashidan

It's just a 2:1 ratio texture(2Kx1K or equivalent) Very common, and can be particularly useful in the tiling/offsetting workflow you originally asked about, especially horizontally tilling modular assets.

RossHildick3D

thank you