Tiled or bespoke textures?

Ethaliel

Hi there. I am new here and would like to ask some questions. I am still a rookie at 3D work and I would be very happy about your help.
Do anyone know a good tutorial about when to use tiled textures and when bespoke ones? And maybe some examples how the Uv would look like? Because I work on an environment art and want to tile the textures for the bigger places like the gras. So  I tiled the uv in parts of 4 polygons and put them on top of each other to share one part of the texture and safe place. My teacher told me it is wrong, but without explanation.
I would be thankfull for every clue.

Eric Chadwick

I tiled the uv in parts of 4 polygons and put them on top of each other to share one part of the texture and safe place. 

Can you please post an image of what you're describing?

Ethaliel

Thank you for your answer.
That is what I did, too. At the top I tiled every single one and the red in four. But it looks really disordered and my teacher told me it is wrong, but without an explanation. I am just confused now.

Eric Chadwick

Don't UV each polygon separately. This is bad for two reasons: 1) it creates visible seams where the textures do not match perfectly. 2) it increases the vertex count in the game.

It is better to UV a surface in larger contiguous pieces.

In your example, the top of the island will be grass, so it should be mapped as one contiguous UV. The bottom is dirt, so it should be another contiguous UV.
The tree trunk would be a cylinder-shaped UV, one contiguous UV for each section of trunk until it splits into two branches.

I think it would help you to do the tutorials which go with your version of 3ds Max. For example:
http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/16/ENU/3ds-Max-Tutorials/index.html?url=files/GUID-72EDF161-E5BC-4B43-86B9-08FE4A58AEB6.htm,topicNumber=d30e21788

After you do that tutorial, try this one from Ben Tate, which shows more details.
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/series/an-introduction-to-uvmapping-in-3d-studio-max--cg-30940

Also see our Wiki which has a lot of information for game artists.

Ethaliel

Thank you very much for your help You are really a great. Never thought to get such a nice support so fast.
I will remember that and try out the tutorials.

cptSwing

Eric is right, as always - just a caveat, depending on what exactly your platform might be, I don't think the vertex splits on UV borders are too much of a problem nowadays, even on mobile. A recent GearVR (Samsung Galaxy S6) Unity project I worked on turned out fine after I used an Atlas Generator script for Max to split UV's in order to insure tiling on a 2k texture with 16 tiling areas (splitting nearly every quad into a separate UV shell). 'Ho boy was I shitting my pants beforehand though

That said, this is a special use case. Larger UV shells are much nicer to work with in nearly every regard.

Further explanation on where vertices get split in-engine: http://www.ericchadwick.com/examples/provost/byf2.html

(hosted on Mr. Chadwicks site even!)

Ethaliel

That is really friendly from both of you Thank you very much again.
I have to learn  a lot I think
If I have luck I will get the chance to study 3D art and learn much more about everything that is important.

Eric Chadwick

Hey cptSwing, that's really cool about the Atlas Generator. Did you find the load times increased with the extra vertex count? We've been optimizing the fuck out of our game to make the initial download smaller, and make load times faster. But I haven't done any stress tests on the vertex load, maybe that doesn't really matter.

Ethaliel

Hey. Just thought I show you how it looks like at the moment.
Some experiments with the opacity in sketshfab.

Eric Chadwick

Now you might be ready for multi-texturing.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture

Ethaliel

Thank you looks very interesting.
I will try this soon.