What's the best way of presenting texture sheets

DustyShinigami

Hi

This is something I've been a bit unsure about for a while now, but what is the best way of presenting texture sheets? I've seen various examples where artists have combined their texture sheets/bakes like this:

I think I've been presenting them as an individual sheet and exported them out as an image through Photoshop. Is this fine...? Or is there a better/preferred way of doing it? Or would shrinking them and putting them side-by-side as boxes/rectangles on a single Photoshop layer be better...?

Thanks

Kanni3d

For a procedural like that, it could be fine with segmented masks, since it's a tileable and enough context can "fill in the blanks" (eg. the normal map is 20% shown, the rest of it can be imagined to an extent as it's a procedural). You could also fully omit the metalness since theres no information in it, and viewers could understand why there's no metallic map displayed (its dirt, duh).

For unique unwraps like props, perhaps you could go with full texture sheets side by side, maybe with a little watermark overlaying the entire thing. Maybe show your wireframes with a light overlay to give the texture sheets a dual purpose. But even then, this sorta presentation detail is supplementary.

DustyShinigami

Thanks for the suggestion. I mainly make characters, so I'm guessing having the texture sheets side-by-side would be best...? Much like for props. I might consider overlaying the UVs. Perhaps even having a simple GIF that toggles it on/off...?

Kanni3d

A turntable, or even renders of your character with various texture flats applied would be creative, and give best context. Basically it's hard to distinguish where is what on the model from uv to 3d translation.

DustyShinigami

When you say renders of the character with various texture flats, do you mean, like, a render of the character just with its Normal map, one with its Roughness, Diffuse etc...? Thanks.

gnoop

If it for something to persuade  me as a customer to buy a material .   it should IMO demonstrate   a render of 2-3 repeating tiles  , no displacement  or ray traced shadows  but still showing  height  channel  included .  Non in your example btw

If it something  to deceive an  art lead into believing how great your material is    nothing  beats a "shader ball"  with displaced details and shadows.   My guess it's why it's so popular.

Eric Chadwick

I personally love the way Toolbag does it.

https://earthquake.artstation.com/projects/Jr5dZ

DustyShinigami

Yeah, that is pretty slick.