1 large uvw maps or multiple small maps

alexworx

Hi all,

I have basic question, I say basic because I think its  basic for an artist in the game industry., which I am not.

When making uvw maps for Unreal is it better to have one large map, say 2048x2048, that has multiple meshes in it or have the mesh broken out into multiple pieces and the maps are a smaller size like 512x512. So for example 3 meshes broken out at 512x512 or one mesh at 2048x2048.

Hope that makes sense,
Thanks
Alex

poopipe

It depends. 

If you're making a relatively small environment it probably makes no difference.  If you're making a large world with lots of stuff in it then you're usually best to use smaller maps as that will tend to fit with streaming a bit better - for consoles I'd recommend avoiding maps bigger than 1024square due to there being bugger all memory to play with

A good rule of thumb is to put sets of related objects (that are likely to be used together onto a single texture page (Eg. A bunch of girders) 

There are a multitude of caveats attached to this - every project is different and needs assessing individually, ideally by someone who knows how to profile a game properly.. 

alexworx

Thanks for the info, very helpful. I will say I am not making a game, I am typically exporting animations out of the sequencer. Trying to get into realtime renders. Just figuring out the best work flow from 3ds max or blender into UE

poopipe

I wouldn't worry too much then and do what makes sense from an authoring perspective.

apollo580

The more I create game characters the more often I break them up. Computer resources are much more powerful then before so having 1 - 5 texture sets for a model doesn't seem too crazy for me to get the quality that lots of new games show. If you are going for a more resource restrictive game then obviously compress your textures into less and less sets as needed.

cupsster

If that meshes will be reused a lot and will be used together or in close proximity to each other I would go for single texture set. Switching render states is what slows GPU down so you can avoid that by having resource already available and loaded in memory. But as noted above this is entirely dependent on your user case. When in doubt, make it and profile it. Combining textures might raise content authoring complexity tho.