[Game environment] Should I stay consistent with the texel density or use the most of the UV space?

ned_poreyra

I've got a 1m x 50cm barrell. It's a unique asset (not on a trim). The textel density in the scene is 4m = 2048px. If I stay consistent with the texel density, I'm not fully using UV space. Should it be this way? I'm thinking that maybe multiple objects should share the same texture in that case, but that could cause many problems in the future (for example if I decide that some object should actually be bigger).

icegodofhungary

You should work out whether or not an object needs to be bigger beforehand. If you do that and still need to make something bigger, you just deal with density change. Your density will give you some wiggle room on scaling the object up or down. If you're having to scale the object so much that the density change is noticeable, the object needs to be bigger or smaller.

You could also just create a smaller texture too. Your barrel is 1m tall. That means you could probably get away with a 1024 sheet but keep the same density. It would fill up more of that sheet. Unwrapped the circumference seems to be almost 3m. You could make that fit in a 1024 too. The density difference wouldn't be that bad. You're not going to perfectly hit 512px/m every time. There will be a little variation.

With some clever UV work, you could probably get it down to a 512 sheet if you really wanted to via mirroring, copy/pasting, etc.

poopipe

Use a rectangular texture - instantly halves memory usage for almost no effort

And yes, it's almost certainly squish into 512 square  if you put some work in

The length of the unwrapped sides would be approx 1.5m - I'm assuming it's laid out at 1024 square in the attached image (if not you're at double density) 

ned_poreyra

poopipe said:

Use a rectangular texture - instantly halves memory usage for almost no effort

And yes, it's almost certainly squish into 512 square  if you put some work in

Don't different texture sizes and proportions ultimately create more problems than they solve? Can I mix 2K with 1K textures or rectangular with square ones in Unity/UE shaders?

Kanni3d

Not at all... you can have varying texture sizes from 32 to 4096 without a problem. As long as the UVs are scaled/texture is tiled correctly, you'll have no TD issues.