How to go about texturing these two assets stuck in a jam on understanding certain things

lockey1995

So I've been on here a bit recently especially talking to Eric who I can thank and has been a huge help however I'm still stuck on the texturing process and which way to approach these two particular assets i really am lacking in experience and skill in the texturing department and really want to improve but I'm stumped on these two to get the most from it. So there's a grandstand with benches and a mobile building. I'm not sure whether to go unique for the texturing on them but my friend said you'd be struggling to get detail from it in game due to it all being one big texture If i went this route I'd go in substance with colour id's. 

I've been hearing recently of the tileable texture term thrown around and I can generally understand but still having trouble figuring out how to do it fully is it just several textures put together for the strips in Photoshop or is there something I'm missing? I:e a brick, wood etc. Or should i uv parts for the strips and do it that way?

These pieces will be used in Rfactor 2 as scenery items the game also doesn't currently support pbr only uses a diffuse, spec and norm 


The first piece the grandstand this uses a metal and a slight variation for the bench sections. 






the second piece is the mobile building with several textures



Here are the irl counterparts so you can see better.

Eric Chadwick

Use tiling textures. This is a standard industry method. If you want to add unique details, add multi-texturing afterwards.



Light green = what you texture.
Dark green dashed line = reused from the light green bits.
Blue arrows = these vertical bars can all use the same texture.
Blue dashed line = Make one vertical bar, UV it either uniquely or reuse the texture from the nearby vertical "light green" bar, then copy the mesh to make all four thin vertical bars.

Reuse is the key. Saves time and effort, reduces memory in-game, and speeds up the loading of your game. Win, win, win!

Eric Chadwick

This is really worth looking into.
http://www.kevinjohnstone.com/Help/Modular Environment Design.rar

Also linked here, http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Modular_environments , which I shared before. I know it's a lot to go through but there's a TON of good info there.

lockey1995

Eric Chadwick said:

Use tiling textures. This is a standard industry method. If you want to add unique details, add multi-texturing afterwards.



Light green = what you texture.
Dark green dashed line = reused from the light green bits.
Blue arrows = these vertical bars can all use the same texture.
Blue dashed line = Make one vertical bar, UV it either uniquely or reuse the texture from the nearby vertical "light green" bar, then copy the mesh to make all four thin vertical bars.

Reuse is the key. Saves time and effort, reduces memory in-game, and speeds up the loading of your game. Win, win, win!

Cheers, will do been stuck for 4 days now aha on this so I can just use one 2048x2048 metal texture the thing I was confused with was bringing the bench texture and metal into one sheet so you don't have to use a standard metal and a bench texture separately. I'm going to have a read through that entire wiki today i think.

Here is what i did come up with last night but wasn't happy with it unless I was doing something wrong with the uvs.

Eric Chadwick

You're going the right direction! 

Examine your photo ref, break it down into the unique elements. Look for repetition, you'll only need to make one of those. 

After you've modeled and UVd a unique element, you can duplicate it to recreate the repetition from the photo.

Only need 1 bench top texture. Add a bench side, and a bench end. Add a metal bar texture. Add a metal support texture. Etc. Only the unique bits.

lockey1995

Eric Chadwick said:

You're going the right direction! 

Examine your photo ref, break it down into the unique elements. Look for repetition, you'll only need to make one of those. 

After you've modeled and UVd a unique element, you can duplicate it to recreate the repetition from the photo.

Only need 1 bench top texture. Add a bench side, and a bench end. Add a metal bar texture. Add a metal support texture. Etc. Only the unique bits.

Yeah i was trying to fill up the texture aha with the bench pieces at the bottom I'll look into it cheers , now how would i go about laying out the mobile one as there's several elements I might just have to stick it on a bigger sheet

Eric Chadwick

Here's a good exercise for you to do. Cut the photos into elements. Remove the perspective, straighten them out. Then pack them together into a single image. This should give you some idea of how to visualize the process of planning a trim sheet.

To that end, I highly recommend Shoebox Texture Ripper: 
https://renderhjs.net/shoebox/textureRipper.htm

lockey1995

I will do that and see where it ends up, I'm guessing for modular building as future ref inside your 3d program you make your pieces then map them straight  away then model away with them later on I can't believe I'm having such a hard time understanding it aha

Eric Chadwick

lockey1995 said:

... you make your pieces, then map them straight away, then model away with them later on ...

Yes, that's the basic idea! Lots of variations, which you'll come to learn, by doing.

lockey1995

Eric Chadwick said:

lockey1995 said:

... you make your pieces, then map them straight away, then model away with them later on ...

Yes, that's the basic idea! Lots of variations, which you'll come to learn, by doing.

What i ended up with in the end. 

Eric Chadwick

Saw this again today, and thought of you.

Josh Lynch's Overland Bus.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/ElZ2

The whole vehicle is textured with one trim sheet. 



For example, here are the two elements he used to make all four wheels.

lockey1995

Very nice indeed :O it's just the laying of the texture I'm getting confused with now not the actual mapping it self I'm guessing there's a fair bit of planning involved beforehand in terms of geo shapes etc

Eric Chadwick

You can't plan it all perfectly.  Often there is leftover unused space at the end, which you can use to add other props, or to make some pieces more unique.

lockey1995

Eric Chadwick said:

You can't plan it all perfectly.  Often there is leftover unused space at the end, which you can use to add other props, or to make some pieces more unique.

On the actual trimsheet there the only thing I'm asking is do you reckon that's geo baked into a texture or just images dragged in resized and so forth, I've looked at tons of resources now and learnt some stuff but no one really goes over that part on the actual creating it and putting it together.

Eric Chadwick

Looks like Josh Lynch did both for his trim sheet.

He made a high poly model of the bus. From his description: "Maya, Photoshop, nDo, Marmoset."

So I'm guessing he used Maya for the highpoly and for the lowpoly. He also used nDO which is a tool for creating normal maps in Photoshop using 2D painted details.

I presume he used Photoshop to combine the highpoly and nDO maps, plus added grunge maps and ambient occlusion and maybe also curvature maps to create his texture set.

Then he used Marmoset to render the finished result for Artstation.

The photo-source exercise I mentioned earlier is only meant to help you learn the process. But photos are not used for this kind of asset, except for generic dirt and grunge and cracks. 

All the main shape details are custom made. Not photos.

lockey1995

Eric Chadwick said:

Looks like Josh Lynch did both for his trim sheet.

He made a high poly model of the bus. From his description: "Maya, Photoshop, nDo, Marmoset."

So I'm guessing he used Maya for the highpoly and for the lowpoly. He also used nDO which is a tool for creating normal maps in Photoshop using 2D painted details.

I presume he used Photoshop to combine the highpoly and nDO maps, plus added grunge maps and ambient occlusion and maybe also curvature maps to create his texture set.

Then he used Marmoset to render the finished result for Artstation.

The photo-source exercise I mentioned earlier is only meant to help you learn the process. But photos are not used for this kind of asset, except for generic dirt and grunge and cracks. 

All the main shape details are custom made. Not photos.

I have just done a subscription to 3Dmotive and there's quite a few videos on there for modular environments etc so I'm watching those, I Think my final assetts i might just make my own sheet like the bench I have the mobile piece to do some, some tents and a bigger pit building.

lockey1995

One thing I've figured out today is making some door geo for example going to substance painter texturing it and then exporting that back in to ps to use as a texture

Eric Chadwick

What kind of work are you doing in Photoshop? 

Substance is so full featured now, you can do all your texturing passes directly in there. Photoshop is mostly not needed these days, if you're using Substance.

Taylor Brown

lockey1995, ive really been enjoying how hungry you are to learn. looking forward to seeing some work posted

lockey1995

Eric Chadwick said:

What kind of work are you doing in Photoshop? 

Substance is so full featured now, you can do all your texturing passes directly in there. Photoshop is mostly not needed these days, if you're using Substance.

So basically I'm using it to use tiling textures in this instance for these tents ideally it makes sense to use one texture sheet for 3 assetts so yes It's a bit of a work around lol you could say so so far what I've done is go into substance with a piece of the geo on this example the tent roof saved it as a smart material. Then i put that smart material on a plane and exported it out in to Photoshop where i did this layout as a texture sheet because at the moment it's the only way i know at this moment I did try making a uv of two of the tent roofs and the metal poles to make it but it didn't work out so well

The meshes: 

The sheet i made tent canvas on the top and metal poles on the bottom:

lockey1995

Taylor Brown said:

lockey1995, ive really been enjoying how hungry you are to learn. looking forward to seeing some work posted

Yes, all i do when i home now is either substance, maya or photoshop, the sooner I can get out of my retail job the better I've seen a few job advertisements for indie type studios near me but I'm not good enough and still have allot to learn yet unfortunately

Taylor Brown

i feel you man. 3D art is easily the only thing (aside from my family) that brings me pure joy and the dream gets me through my horrendous non-cg day job. keep on grinding!

lockey1995

Taylor Brown said:

i feel you man. 3D art is easily the only thing (aside from my family) that brings me pure joy and the dream gets me through my horrendous non-cg day job. keep on grinding!

Was watching the GDC on uncharted 4's enviro art and it was just so inspiring to see the worlds being built and the feeling of satisfaction those people must get seeing their stuff in a aaa game 

lockey1995

Eric Chadwick said:

What kind of work are you doing in Photoshop? 

Substance is so full featured now, you can do all your texturing passes directly in there. Photoshop is mostly not needed these days, if you're using Substance.

What workflow would you recommend then just in substance for what i showed above?

Taylor Brown

Transform filters and masks, I'd imagine

Eric Chadwick

https://www.google.com/search?q=substance+designer+trim+sheet

Eric Chadwick

One of the links there is a really good read. Alex Senechal, talking about his trim sheet workflow. We've linked his Gumroad tutorial before, worth its weight in gold!
https://80.lv/articles/tiling-textures-in-game-environments/

lockey1995

So this was done in Substance so what i did is broke the model down into modular type pieces to export out to substance painter one for each tiling material so in this case the canvas, metal poles and the ratchet straps textured in substance and used that as a tiling texture sheet I like this method so far . I then have a separate uv set to bake my ao and normal if i need to. 

the sheet:


The mesh: 



The tiling uvs: 

Taylor Brown

Looks good man!

sacboi

You're getting some top draw advice without a doubt and at this work rate which is really nice to see, I envision you'll be waving bye bye too your retail gig in no time at all, so keep it up

lockey1995

sacboi said:

You're getting some top draw advice without a doubt and at this work rate which is really nice to see, I envision you'll be waving bye bye too your retail gig in no time at all, so keep it up

I hope so, still a long way to go yet though so also baking down the windows and smaller details now for the buildings left is 34 faces and the one on the right is just one face on a plane baked with x normal  

Eric Chadwick

Depends. How close does the player get, and how fast are they moving? If it's a racing game, texturing is probably better.