UV unwrapping modular organic corridor

Savigo

I am working on a model I would describe as a modular segment of organic corridor. There are 2 alternative segments, one with additional entrance on the side and one without it. Both are large, accessible area is around 160m2. Additionally, those are not linear segments, but rather radial - each one corresponds to 1/24 (15 deg) of the entire "ring".

Here is an example of a model with additional entrance and its UV layout:

As you can see, there is a lot of stretching because I straightened up some islands for better tiling. 4 upper islands correspond to not accessible area so it doesn't matter for them.

For comparison, this is how it looks like with textures in Substance Painter:

For better context: those segments were made for GGJ project, which my team didn't finish, but we decided to continue working on it. While it looks pretty sloppy for now (and it would be fine for GGJ) I would rather give it some polish now that we don't have time restrictions.

One of my biggest concerns is texture resolution. Even at 8k it looks far from perfect if the camera is close to the wall, and at 4k I can clearly see pixelation from 1m or so. Well, no wonder - as I said the UV space has to cover at least 160m2 and its not 100% filled up.

I came up with 2 solutions but each one of them could cause other problems or requires remodelling the entire piece:

- Scaling up all important islands  by 2 an moving some parts outside of 0 - 1 space. Technically it would be fine (since I'm using UV projection for "scales"), but I'm also using clone mask to cover UV seams:

(Keep in mind, my preview resolution in substance is 2k so it looks even worse )

So in order to do that I would have to get rid of masks to keep the texture uniform.

- Splitting entire model into 2 or 4 pieces. That would obviously cause more visible seams and probably more repetition of tiled pattern. That would also mean starting UV unwrapping and texturing form the beginng and I've already spent too much time on that model.

Anyway I'm curious what are your suggestions regarding that model. What would you do to make it look better, but also keep it as optimized as possible?

Kanni3d

Utilize tileable textures, instead of a unique unwrap within the 0-1 space. Less seams, smaller/feasible texture sizes, and perfect texel density if set up correctly. 

Eric Chadwick

Yes, do use tiling textures. When you do, you can also try blending between them using vertex color as a mask. This will give you nice transitions between your green-cells texture and your red/white texture. Texture blending can also help break up the tiling repetition.
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/MultiTexture#Modulation_Blending