Uv layout for VFX and cinematics

Ostem

Hey guys!

Stupid question here but I can't find a good answer online.
I am building a retro laser gun with the idea of making it with the standard of cinematic and films. 
I want to do a proper UV layout but im a bit lost.
Do any of you can help me whith this? 

Should I use one big map or 4 small ones for example... ?
knowing that I have a total of 7 different meshes here





Thank you !!

musashidan

In a Vfx/offine pipeline it isnt unusual for a hero asset to use 100+ 8K Udim tiles. This would certainly be overkill for your asset but you are pretty much free to do what you want. In a recent project the character I created had over 40 X 4k unwraps. 

For your gun you could get decent closeup quality with probably 2 X 4k. Just unwrap all the components and do some tests. It's easy to do some look dev and rearrange uv shells to suit. There is a lot more freedom than unwrapping for real-time.

Ostem

Thanks Musashidan! it really helps

musashidan

No problem. Forgot to mention that for offline assets you don't always have to unwrap. There are many different material and procedural methods you can use with either basic uvw mapping or vertex-based effects. For instance in Max there is the tension modifier, several Neil Blevins scripts, Vraytriplanar map, Vraydirt, etc. All these effects can be blended in a multi-shader setup to layer things like paint scratches, dirt, grime, etc.

Ostem

great thanks! I'm not super familiar with all this, I was really game focused  for a long time and did'nt explore all the possible way of texturing suh as Ptex