Me hate hand UV...
polycounter lvl 17
Can anyone post a good looking (professional) UV for hand? All the puzzling around it is driving me nuts. Also, in a game development environment, is overlapping mirror UV a must? or it really depends on how much detail is needed in game? If it is needed, how can I do the overlapping properly and perhaps, easily?
Replies
Overlapping and mirroring is meant to save texture space, so the UV chunks can all be bigger within the 0-1 box, rather than all side-by-side using unique pixels. Because the chunks can be larger, the pixels become smaller on the mesh, so you get a higher texture resolution.
Overlapping is really just choosing which parts of the surface can be repeated. I find it helps to examine what other game artists are doing. I get the cheat codes for a game (invincibility or flying/noclip) then examine the models closely, finding where they tiled, where they repeated, where they broke symmetry, etc.
Mirroring depends on the game tech. All games have trouble mirroring normal maps, you usually see a seam of some kind. Some games are worse than others at solving mirror seams. But if not normalmapping, then mirror to your heart's content.
A couple thoughts.