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Need advices for hard surface model's UVs management

Hello everyone, i hope that all of you are doing good ! I allow myself to make this post, because i need some good advices. 

Actually, i was asking myself some questions, because i'm trying to get specialized into hard surface modelisation. I would like to become a weapon/vehicle artist for the next years. 

My project for this time, is to model the L3 Holographic Sight for Eotech (my next modeling project is to model a Kriss Vector, or a M4A1) in Autodesk Maya.EOTech XPS2-Sage Holographic Sight Matte Black XPS2-SAGE BH
L3 EOTech Model EXPS2 Holographic Weapon Sight - MOD Armory


Here is my High Poly Version, i made in Zbrush.

And here is my low poly version, that i made in Autodesk Maya.


Here, i attached a checker map texture to a lambert material, in order to have a look on the texture's behaviour with the UVs.

And here, you have is my UV map for this model. As you can see, i dispose the UVs in separated tiles, as i'm trying to learn to make UDIMs textures.

i have to precise that of course, it's a work in progress presentation.

My question is the following : " Should I pack all the UVs into one Tile ? Or Should I Keep my Udims for a good presentation ? If i choose, to pack the UVs into one tile, how can i get a good resolution for my model for the texturing step in Substance Painter with 2K textures ? More precisely, What's the best way to get a good UVs management for a hard surface model like this one ? Can you eventually share me, how you approach this step, if you're an hard surface artist ? "


 Dealing with UVs is one of my nightmares as a 3D beginner artist ^^" ... And because of my lack of experience, oftenly, i don't know how to handle this step. So i'm trying to do my best :) !

By waiting your advices and answers, i wish you the best ! 

Have an excellent day ^___^ !




Replies

  • Kanni3d
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    Kanni3d ngon master
    If your goal is for game art, one UV tile/material for everything will suffice, and a separate one for the actual optics/glass since it requires a completely new shader.

     You can get the most resolution with one uv tile by stressing overlapping faces, scaling up & down dominant uv shells that would be seen priority (largest, most visible get sized up, hidden/occluded get sized down).
  • rexo12
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    rexo12 interpolator
    What's your target platform? Is this 'game-ready', 'realtime-ready', or purely for offline rendering? How close will it get to the camera? Are there other components you plan to render with it (i.e, a gun)? Knowing this will help you decide how to pack your UV's.

    as an aside, have you learnt about texel density at all?
    https://80.lv/articles/textel-density-tutorial/

    If this were me, I would be automatically aiming for 'game-ready', which would mean a single UV tile, at either 1K or 2K resolution. If it was supposed to be a standalone prop I *might* go for 4K, but frankly a sight like that should be small enough that it would easily reach a decent texel density at even 1K. I'm typically satisfied with anywhere above 10.24px/cm as a density, but generally aim to reach a value of texturesize/100.

    I generally use texel density as a guide for packing. If there's no feasible way I can pack everything into a single tile and keep the density above 10.24px/cm then I will consider splitting it into multiple tiles. This would be after exhausting options with mirroring, stacking, culling, scaling, etc.

    However, you mention that you're trying to learn about UDIMs, in which case i'd say just keep doing what you're doing. I think you could definitely pack things tighter as there's a lot of empty space in a couple of your tiles, so maybe that's your challenge here.

    Don't get too fussed about optimisation when you're learning though, I often find it just paralyses you when you're trying to make everything as tight and as perfect as possible. Focus on your learning goals and the art first!
  • Tokushima
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    Good evening everyone ! I tried to apply what you both said ^^ ! 

    I'm pretty satisfied with the UV map, and the result that i can see with the UV checker.

    Thank you very much for your answers :)
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