Different methods for texturing a giant cave wall?

jordank95

Just looking for some techincal tips for texturing a giant cave wall. Theres two methods I can think of:

1. create giant cave wall modular pieces in zbrush, texture them and add a detail normal/tiling texture overall. Use dirt decals to break it up a bit more.
2. substance designer a few textures to vertex paint between them. Thinking maybe 3-4 textures. 

Anyone have any other methods or anything to add to my methods to make them better?

Eric Chadwick

Yeah Multitexture is your friend. Which game engine are you going out to? That's where the material needs to be.

jordank95

Eric Chadwick said:

Yeah Multitexture is your friend. Which game engine are you going out to? That's where the material needs to be.

UE4 is what I'm working in. You think making multiple textures in SD is better than making zbrush modular pieces that I can just smash together?

Obscura

He doesn't think that. Its definitely better and its the standard approach. Less textures and therefore memory consumption overall, and higher resolution result from up close.

jordank95

Obscura said:

He doesn't think that. Its definitely better and its the standard approach. Less textures and therefore memory consumption overall, and higher resolution result from up close.

Hey thanks for the reply. I think maybe I'm a bit confused? The two methods I have in mind, one is just making a giant mesh cave wall, applying a tiling texture to it and then just using vertex painting to vary it up a bit with some other textures. This would be using strictly textures and height maps with tessellation, just like this: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/0NNm5

The other method is sculpting a few "cave wall" mesh pieces in zbrush and just constructing the cave that way. I wouldn't have the same freedom to vertex paint a different cave texture on top of these, since the main cave shapes would be sculpted into the geometry. 

Sorry, Im just a little confused as to the best method here. I apologize if Im not understanding!

Mark Dygert

Also don't forget about decals and mesh decals, they can really help quite a bit.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Rendering/Materials/HowTo/MeshDecals

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Resources/ContentExamples/Decals/1_1

Eric Chadwick

You're doing this for a portfolio piece? Try both methods. It's worth the extra a time, because you'll learn valuable things about both methods.

sprunghunt

jordank95 said:

The other method is sculpting a few "cave wall" mesh pieces in zbrush and just constructing the cave that way. I wouldn't have the same freedom to vertex paint a different cave texture on top of these, since the main cave shapes would be sculpted into the geometry. 

Sorry, Im just a little confused as to the best method here. I apologize if Im not understanding!

You can still setup your assets so that you can vertex paint on extra textures even if you're baking from a sculpt. This is how I would do moss and dirt on rocks.