Unique Texturing, detailing and Game engines
polycounter lvl 10
Okay, so coming from offline renderers. I need some detailed explanations about unique texturing especially without tiling and what technique are currently being used to achieve this. I am aware of using tiling textures with mask and randomising and blending several textures but as someone who paints textures unique to each surface, I find it problematic as in the real world every surface's texture is unique so I tend to paint mine by hand with very high resolution.
So I have been doing some research:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clakekAHQx0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_WaqCBp9zo
http://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/
From the UE4 kite demo vid, I am wondering what texture resolution is being used for the low poly assets created from photogometry because the rocks, and trees shown seem to have unique texturing not tiled textures and they look very detailed close up. I do understand for terrains, tiling textures are neccessary due to the large mesh involved but you can hide this with stones, grass, rubbles scattered around.
From the starwars battlefront vid, the original textures diffuse and normals are blurred to keep the bigger details and a detail texture (tiled) is used to make the original blurred one look detailed. Was this the technique used for the Kite demo as well? So I am thinking paint in high res, use high res texture, resize to say 2k, blur it and then use a detailed tiling texture to make it look detailed? But what about a table where you want to add chipping at the edges and subtle wear and tears? They are smaller details and they need to have sharp edges/high better resolution?
Finally, the page from theastronauts, seems to facinate me the most. This is how I work, unique textures to capture every detail possible. Unfortunately, there isn't much info on how they reduce the textures or make them game friendly.
This is what I am trying to achieve and this is unique texturing, U can see the tree doesn't have tiling( I may be wrong). So what technique is used for games for uniue texturing. Notice how the holes in the walls are of different sizes. Are they decals, full low res textures mapped to the photoscanned low poly wall with a detailed map over it?
Any insight would be appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clakekAHQx0https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_WaqCBp9zohttp://www.theastronauts.com/2014/03/visual-revolution-vanishing-ethan-carter/
From the UE4 kite demo vid, I am wondering what texture resolution is being used for the low poly assets created from photogometry because the rocks, and trees shown seem to have unique texturing not tiled textures and they look very detailed close up. I do understand for terrains, tiling textures are neccessary due to the large mesh involved but you can hide this with stones, grass, rubbles scattered around.
From the starwars battlefront vid, the original textures diffuse and normals are blurred to keep the bigger details and a detail texture (tiled) is used to make the original blurred one look detailed. Was this the technique used for the Kite demo as well? So I am thinking paint in high res, use high res texture, resize to say 2k, blur it and then use a detailed tiling texture to make it look detailed? But what about a table where you want to add chipping at the edges and subtle wear and tears? They are smaller details and they need to have sharp edges/high better resolution?
Finally, the page from theastronauts, seems to facinate me the most. This is how I work, unique textures to capture every detail possible. Unfortunately, there isn't much info on how they reduce the textures or make them game friendly.
This is what I am trying to achieve and this is unique texturing, U can see the tree doesn't have tiling( I may be wrong). So what technique is used for games for uniue texturing. Notice how the holes in the walls are of different sizes. Are they decals, full low res textures mapped to the photoscanned low poly wall with a detailed map over it?
Any insight would be appreciated.
Replies
Ex: http://amplify.pt/unity/amplify-texture-2/
https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/two-thousand-gigapixels-of-textures-anyone
I think buildings probably are a clever combination of tiling and unique parts,
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Materials/HowTo/DetailTexturing/
@kio Thanks for the link. Had no idea there was something like this. Will check them out.
@gnoop Tiling and unique parts.That's possible. Everything seems very cohesive. It could be one whole mesh with unique texture parts? They might be using decals for the unique detailing and vertex paint to blend between the materials to create variety.
This was done by koola from ue4 forums. Notice how high res the cracks and paint wears are. Probably decals? Or vertex paint? but if vertex paint, probably the wall is subdivided heavily to get those details in. I am not sure how good that is for framerate if your scene is heavy.
I will just have to keep researching and get comfortable with tiling textures and using mask and vertex paint with height lerp if the need arises. I love adding details to my work so I just have to get on with it and use multiple uvs if needded. Is there a way to tile a texture but turn off the repeat in both x and y axis so as you scale the texture, no pattern is made but just one square you can move with the panner node?
I also read somewhere you can't blend decal normals with the normals of the mesh it's placed on?
EDIT: Found the clamp texture removes tiling but I am getting stretching on the edges of my texture:
Still there are countless other possibilities . including megatextures, vertex colors etc. Although I would call those techniques a bit out of fashion currently, including pure "detail" textures. They are just different texture layers now, not necessarily "detail" one. You can find some example materials in U4 with 3 extra layers of macro details, each having different texel size. So it's all up to you. The only problem is that I don't know any really convenient tool to make such kind of texturing. Substance Designer maybe but I can't call it convenient really for environment works.
I think like you said there are several ways this can be done. But definitely tiling is key to save on amount of textures needed.
What about using say 9 materials for a floor with only one 4k texture attached to albedo, roughness, normal of each material. Would that be too much for ever asset?
Does anyone know how I can solve the clamp texture issue in second image?
Just had to do that. Thanks a lot, gnoop. It's all about the vaules and where they should be to get best results. Back to making awesome art!!!! Mwhaa.. Okay that's enough.