texturing paired stuff

sympatik

Hello people. If I have to texture/uv paired objects (such shoes and the like), how to proceed? Mean: a unique uv map for both (eg. one of 1024^2), or two separated maps for each (also a 1024, 'cause I see that 512 are very cheap for details)? I ask this also 'cause, when mirroring one of the pair and uvmirroring the uvs in the unique uvmap, thereupon there would be some issues in placing perfectly specularly decals/details which was not scupted in Scultris (or Zbrush, for whom who can afford it).

Alex_J

Make one shoe, unwrap and texture it, duplicate it as needed. That way you don't have to fuss over correcting two objects if/when you make changes.

sympatik

Hi Alex, thanks.

It is ok a 1024 texture (8bit at least) for each shoe? Do engines can carry an amount of 1024 (or even 20248 for some wares) upon a character?

And, if I mirror the object after I uv/textured it, some details (such as writings) will be not mirrored too, or even misplaced?

Alex_J

The texture resolution is dependent on the projects needs. If you aren't sure exactly what they are, it's better to work big because downsampling is not a problem but upsampling is. So if you work at 2048 you will have more flexibility in the case that you decide you need unique layout for each shoe.

Once you get your model into the larger project, you can experiment with reducing the texture size to see what the minimum you really need is. It's kind of like you are going camping in a new area. You don't know exactly what you might need, so it's better to bring everything. Because we are working digitally, this doesn't really mean any extra work, so it almost always makes sense to bring more than think you might need.

For unique markings you can use a separate piece of geometry that is wrapped onto the shoe. Another thing you could look at --I have never done it so i cant say exactly how -- but i think you can have multiple UV channels with different layouts in each. Then your shader can choose to display these in different ways (additive, multiply, etc.) I am sure you can read about that in the wiki.

But the simplest thing is just to make extra geometry that wraps onto the mesh.

sympatik

Thanks.