Next-Gen UVs

Skeepy

When it comes to "next-gen" uv methods - should we strive to try to have square uv islands by any means necessary? After looking at "Giant Marksman" by Occultart and Bona (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xzGvV1) I couldn't help but notice the attention to optimization in UVs. 

Below (work by OccultArt and Bona)



Does it make sense to push the UV's to this extent when creating characters for our portfolios? Is this being seen as expected practice by the industry? 

I'm not in the industry currently, but looking to get in. Just want to know if I should be pushing to have this level of detail in my UVs. 

Alex_J

This seems more like OCD or blindly following a rule without understanding to me, but maybe I am missing some context too. I'm interested in what pro's have to say about this as well.

pior

I would say that the complete lack of padding would actually hurt this asset in an actual game production environment.

Regarding grid/straightened islands: they can be great, however the layout for the head is probably causing some odd stretching of density at the edges. And while there is something neat about the fingers/hands being laid the way they are, the change of density from fingertips to wrist area would prevent any texture overlay tiling in PS. So in that sense I wouldn't call it "production-safe". For for the arms and legs which are more tube-like there is definitely some value though.

At the end of the day this is extremely dependent on the way the geo is built in the first place anyways. In general I think the UV style seen in Overwatch and Fortnite (pelt islands where needed and straight islands where needed) is much more robust though, and faster to create as well.

Obscura

The uvs of the caps of that thing.

PolyHertz

Packing every pixel like is generally only done these days when you're working on a project with a reusable UV layout that's being shared between a variety of models. It was more common back in the days when every pixel mattered due to tight memory constraints (like on the Playstation 1, Nintendo 64, etc.).

thomasp

At least nowadays with the availability of actually useable 3D paint tools you could actually texture this stuff. Back in the day using only Photoshop that would have been quite an adventure in texture streaking try & error.

I agree that being able to overlay images in a 2D editor is more valuable than filling every pixel of the texture, that extreme texel density changes are best avoided and that texture padding is something that needs to be accounted for, some engines are worse than others in this regard.

Btw. I've seen these layouts in older titles, mainly ones from Japan. Might just be an oldschool thing that the artist responsible for these UVs still uses.

Neox

Alex Javor said:

This seems more like OCD or blindly following a rule without understanding to me, but maybe I am missing some context too. I'm interested in what pro's have to say about this as well.

i think he overdid it here and as pior said the lack of space bewteen islands is a problem for mipmapping. the amount of stretching here probably also causes a bunch of issues.

generally speaking tho, straightened UV islands still have their value and should be used whenever LODs come into play. as kicking out loops, manually or automatically just is very limited when your UVs go in funky curves.

poopipe

As above really.  

No padding is a bad idea, over stretching is a bad idea

Straight edges on shell are a good idea except where it results in over stretching

I would send those assets back to be re-uvd

oglu

Have someone tried http://www.quelsolaar.com/ministry_of_flat/ 

thomasp

oglu said:

Have someone tried http://www.quelsolaar.com/ministry_of_flat/ 

That is one flashy site. I do remember their very left-field modeller from many years back - had to google the name: loq airou - here's the interface:

If their UV unwrapper works in similarly esoteric ways  - and their web site does suggest it IMO - then you can be sure nobody is going to want to use that in production. Btw has anyone ever met a (skilled, experienced) artist who would be happy to work on a proper production asset using only generated UVs?

To me it's like being dropped in a random spot of an unknown city without a map.

Ghogiel

The only time I've seen UVs like that and thought "awesome", is on those guilty gear models where they use squareish block palettes of flat colors with black borders, then overlap seams on the straight borders to make vector drawn ink effects where they want

poopipe

thomasp said:

oglu said:

Have someone tried http://www.quelsolaar.com/ministry_of_flat/ 

That is one flashy site. I do remember their very left-field modeller from many years back - had to google the name: loq airou - here's the interface:

If their UV unwrapper works in similarly esoteric ways  - and their web site does suggest it IMO - then you can be sure nobody is going to want to use that in production. Btw has anyone ever met a (skilled, experienced) artist who would be happy to work on a proper production asset using only generated UVs?

To me it's like being dropped in a random spot of an unknown city without a map.

There's two parts to it really.  It's perfectly possible to get a decent initial unwrap using a dumb auto unwrapper but I'm buggered if I'm letting it decide how I lay them out 

zachagreg

Ghogiel said:

The only time I've seen UVs like that and thought "awesome", is on those guilty gear models where they use squareish block palettes of flat colors with black borders, then overlap seams on the straight borders to make vector drawn ink effects where they want

Can you link that? That sounds super cool. As for that lay it flat thing everything about it looks as if it were designed for the express purpose to be flashy and unusable. Also the auto unwrapper doesn't look any better than Houdini or other similar auto unwrap.

Yea dirty unwrap all you want for slamming in quick assets on your own projects. However I would never want that autopack near a pipeline. Doesn't matter how open it is. Like pooppipe said you can get a decent unwrap from auto unwrap and it can also be a great way to do a lot of heavy lifting as long as you pack your stuff right but Ill skip the tiny snake islands rotated between my main islands in who knows which direction.

cryrid

zachagreg said:

Ghogiel said:

The only time I've seen UVs like that and thought "awesome", is on those guilty gear models where they use squareish block palettes of flat colors with black borders, then overlap seams on the straight borders to make vector drawn ink effects where they want

Can you link that? That sounds super cool. 

https://youtu.be/yhGjCzxJV3E?t=1457

marks

Those UVs trigger me so hard. I'm quite sure they'd cause problems at some point, somehow.