[Maya&UV] Do I need different UV maps/sets for single object with different materials

laaafite

This is my first environment project. I'm building a outside streets. So, I made a wall with a door and windows on it which looks like this.
No.4(the wall) needs to be tiling as bricks, but the door and windows are going to have different texture. My question is, do I need to make separate UV maps/sets for tiling wall and how?(a link to the tutorial video would be appreciated) Or should I just make the door and window separate pieces?

GlowingPotato

Well, you can do booth ways. But I recommend separating those into different pieces and apply its own material to it.

Alex_J

You can combine multiple textures into a one, but separating out textures from one into many is a lot harder. So usually if I don't know exactly what I need, it's best to keep everything separate for testing, then you can combine later.

It's been awhile since I did it and I ended up going towards character art, but I believe there is some environment art for games courses by pluralsight that cover stuff like this. I don't believe they discuss the logic and decision making in depth, so if that's all you really need it may not be worth it. Probably the best thing would be to get your hands on some game environments and just reverse engineer them. For that, I recommend checking out Epic Game Launcher and downloading Paragon or some other game mod kits.

You might also check out a new youtube channel put out by a polycount member here. Search Polygon Academy. He is covering environment art and it looks like he's taking suggestions and trying to explain the decision making and methodology of the craft, so if you want to see some questions like this answered in video format that may be worth checking out. 

Also : http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments

As for my take on "how many materials should I split this into?" that really depends on how much resolution you want each individual piece to receive (well, lots of other factors but I think your visual fidelity is probably numero uno). So start with how you know it has to look, and then start experimenting to find the most efficient method to achieve that. This is my method for character art, and it's certainly not efficient but it builds experience so that I can become more efficient as I continue making more models. The thing is, there is no one singular answer, so you just have to build experience so you can make the best judgement call from the beginning to cut down on experimentation time.

Your first idea might be, "maybe I can keep it looking crisp and realistic with all of it in one 2k map." So try that out, but maybe some details you want to keep get blurry. So then you think, "ok, I'll bump up to a 4k." Or maybe, "actually it's better if I split it into two materials," and so on.
 
This means you have to do a lot of shit multiple times, but that means you get fast at doing it.

poopipe

Short answer. ..

each material's UVs are independent from each other 

laaafite

BIGTIMEMASTER said:

You can combine multiple textures into a one, but separating out textures from one into many is a lot harder. So usually if I don't know exactly what I need, it's best to keep everything separate for testing, then you can combine later.

It's been awhile since I did it and I ended up going towards character art, but I believe there is some environment art for games courses by pluralsight that cover stuff like this. I don't believe they discuss the logic and decision making in depth, so if that's all you really need it may not be worth it. Probably the best thing would be to get your hands on some game environments and just reverse engineer them. For that, I recommend checking out Epic Game Launcher and downloading Paragon or some other game mod kits.

You might also check out a new youtube channel put out by a polycount member here. Search Polygon Academy. He is covering environment art and it looks like he's taking suggestions and trying to explain the decision making and methodology of the craft, so if you want to see some questions like this answered in video format that may be worth checking out. 

Also : http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments

As for my take on "how many materials should I split this into?" that really depends on how much resolution you want each individual piece to receive (well, lots of other factors but I think your visual fidelity is probably numero uno). So start with how you know it has to look, and then start experimenting to find the most efficient method to achieve that. This is my method for character art, and it's certainly not efficient but it builds experience so that I can become more efficient as I continue making more models. The thing is, there is no one singular answer, so you just have to build experience so you can make the best judgement call from the beginning to cut down on experimentation time.

Your first idea might be, "maybe I can keep it looking crisp and realistic with all of it in one 2k map." So try that out, but maybe some details you want to keep get blurry. So then you think, "ok, I'll bump up to a 4k." Or maybe, "actually it's better if I split it into two materials," and so on.
 
This means you have to do a lot of shit multiple times, but that means you get fast at doing it.

Thank you so much!!!