Unwrapping a modular environment
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Hi, I've been working on unwrapping and texturing a modular tileset for the first time and I was wondering if you could explain to me a few things. Maybe I am overthinking a process that should be much easier.
So. The tileset I am preparing is for UE4 indoor environments and each tile is contained in a 2x2x4 space, split in 2 2x2x2 parts (lower and upper). The tiles will be placed by the player (think Dungeon Keeper / Evil Genius), so they have to be very modular - no fancy unique pieces.
An example below.
An example below.
Now, my first goal was to reduce each part to a single mesh with a single material in order to render all the parts of the same type on screen with just 1 draw call. This means that for parts like a wall I can't use a tileable texture that fills the entire UV space, as I also need to incorporate different parts like trims. So should I just line up the tilable part on one angle and use the remaining L-shaped UV region for the other trims?
I tried to fit a horizontal strip with bevels tiles left to right just for the trim material (in this particular case, concrete) and to line up the UVs of the trim with the borders, so that the geometry's hard edges would look bevelled. This approach led to stretching that was quite visible. So I thought that maybe I can add more edges, cut up the trim in multiple parts and then overlap these parts on the same trim region to get less stretching, but then I get a visible pattern instead.
(on a side note, I guess one could further refine on this by adding vertical bevels too as extra strips left and right of the tiling part)
So how do you guys tackle this? Do you just accept that there will be some stretching and so you make texture parts that are designed to be stretched? Or do you paint a part that is generic enough to avoid noticeable patterns when you overlay UVs?
Or do you do something else entirely different?
I tried to fit a horizontal strip with bevels tiles left to right just for the trim material (in this particular case, concrete) and to line up the UVs of the trim with the borders, so that the geometry's hard edges would look bevelled. This approach led to stretching that was quite visible. So I thought that maybe I can add more edges, cut up the trim in multiple parts and then overlap these parts on the same trim region to get less stretching, but then I get a visible pattern instead.
(on a side note, I guess one could further refine on this by adding vertical bevels too as extra strips left and right of the tiling part)
So how do you guys tackle this? Do you just accept that there will be some stretching and so you make texture parts that are designed to be stretched? Or do you paint a part that is generic enough to avoid noticeable patterns when you overlay UVs?
Or do you do something else entirely different?
Replies
Hope it helps a bit. As you said, having more generic textures with little directional/pattern information is also a way to tackle this issue, of course.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments
You're probably better off using separate tiling materials on parts that suit it