How to handle texturing of large objects for games?

ned_poreyra

Let's say I have a unique large rock asset, 3 x 4 x 6 meters, but the texel density is 1024px/meter. Should I use UDIMs? Should I make one huge texture (10k x 10k or something)?

defragger

1024px/meter on an environment rock is pretty nuts imho. Is it a hero asset?

You could use UDIMs, but I would suggest to go with a single 4k map and bump the visual res with moss decals and painting small foliage on top.

ned_poreyra

defragger said:

1024px/meter on an environment rock is pretty nuts imho. Is it a hero asset?

That's was just a random number off the top of my head, I'm not experienced in this. I'm just talking about an object that when unwrapped, it wouldn't fit even on an 8K texture. Huge rocks, buildings, structures like that. I know there are trim textures and tiling, but what if that's not an option? What if the asset is huge and has to have unique texturing?

defragger

Ahh you are not talking about a specific mesh. My bad!

There is a technique known as Megatextures, for example in Rage, but I don't think anyone uses this technique anymore.

Nowadays, a combination of different techniques is usually used. For example this structure is 70 x 50 x 18 meters and uses custom vertex normals on the edges for a smooth baked'ish look and a colored material variant of the base tileable material. The material separation is then blended with a color decal from a trim sheet. But you could also use detail textures to bump the up-close resolution for example. There are many different ways.

poopipe

Last time I did big rocks we used a unique low Res mask (basically a curvature map with levels adjustment) to blend between two tileable textures. One nice one and one noisy one to mask seams.