Question: How many trim sheets are commonly used for an environment in games?

Westbarbary

Hey Everyone

Hope your all doing well. I have a quick question, How many trim sheets are commonly used for an environment in games? I'm new to this process and currently in the planning phase of a new project and just wondering how much 'Budget' an environment artist would have when designing a building and outside space 

Any help would be appreciated

Many thanks
Ross

Eric Chadwick

Totally depends on the game type and the target hardware. Phone? PC? Console? VR device?

In my experience, the art lead works with the lead graphics programmer to iron out a rough budget.

Say, 30 512x512 textures per level. That includes texture sets, so if one material requires Color + RMA + Normal, that's three textures right there. Meaning you could have 10 texture sets, to fit within the 30 budget. 

But you can also mix and match. If you need a higher-resolution texture for something, then one 1024x1024 texture = four 512x512 textures out of your budget.

It's always a rough budget though. Totally depends on how well the game handles streaming textures into and out of memory as the player advances through the world. How well the art team manages to reuse assets smartly. How carefully the art in the level is tuned to streamline performance bottlenecks. Etc. 

Westbarbary

Hey Eric

Thanks for the message, that's really helpful!  I've got one follow up question, when planning out what textures need to be included on trim sheets and what need to be on separate sets to be completely tillable I.E floor tiles should i export the floor tile textures at 512 with the aim of saving budget as the pattern can be scaled to any degree within the texture? 

Hopefully that made sense, to give context i'm aiming for something similar to an assassins creed level (without the open world aspect- Its just a buildings and outside space)

Thanks again
Ross

Eric Chadwick

The resolution of the tile depends on a couple things. What is the texel density you want to achieve overall in the level. How small can you make a tiled texture before the repeats are too obvious.