Haunted Cathedral W.I.P.
Hey everyone, I'm new here, so I'm looking forward to get some helpful feedback.
Ok, so the concept is a Haunted Templar Cathedral that fits into an overall story I'm working on. There's a cursed tree that's taken over the entire cathedral, sort of like those crazy trees in Cambodia. Anyway, the modeling's blocked out, and I'm working on the textures. I wanted to lay down the diffuse maps first, just so everything lines up before I start the normal and spec maps. I don't know how you guys do it in the industry, but I wanted to be really happy with the diffuse maps first before I get distracted with the normal maps. The bloody Templar cloth will obviously be placed elsewhere in the scene.
so now that you've sorta seen what I have modeling-wise (and I would
like to optimize it further, but I'll get to that later), I'm gonna
focus on the circular nave area. Here's what I'm working with now: I
combined all my textures into two 2k sheets, then manipulated each
mesh's uv's to line up w/ the desired texture. so the end result would
be, all the meshes on the first floor share one texture sheet,
essentially. I would then generate normal maps based off of the
diffuse maps...
another method that I was considering would be to
take sections of the model, say for instance, one of the columns, and
assign it its own texture, sculpting it in zbrush and generate its
normal map from the hi-res. This method is obviously gonna look
better, and I'm assuming for more prominent meshes this would be
desirable, but since this would require WAY more textures, would this
be totally impractical for a next-gen game? I'm not familiar with game
engines, so I don't know the most efficient methods yet.
So I
guess the bottom line is: 2 2k textures shared by all the meshes? Or
several smaller textures for different chunks of the environment?
Sorry about the long post!
Best,
jonathan
p.s. I tried to upload the images but can't. Any suggestions?
Ok, so the concept is a Haunted Templar Cathedral that fits into an overall story I'm working on. There's a cursed tree that's taken over the entire cathedral, sort of like those crazy trees in Cambodia. Anyway, the modeling's blocked out, and I'm working on the textures. I wanted to lay down the diffuse maps first, just so everything lines up before I start the normal and spec maps. I don't know how you guys do it in the industry, but I wanted to be really happy with the diffuse maps first before I get distracted with the normal maps. The bloody Templar cloth will obviously be placed elsewhere in the scene.
so now that you've sorta seen what I have modeling-wise (and I would
like to optimize it further, but I'll get to that later), I'm gonna
focus on the circular nave area. Here's what I'm working with now: I
combined all my textures into two 2k sheets, then manipulated each
mesh's uv's to line up w/ the desired texture. so the end result would
be, all the meshes on the first floor share one texture sheet,
essentially. I would then generate normal maps based off of the
diffuse maps...
another method that I was considering would be to
take sections of the model, say for instance, one of the columns, and
assign it its own texture, sculpting it in zbrush and generate its
normal map from the hi-res. This method is obviously gonna look
better, and I'm assuming for more prominent meshes this would be
desirable, but since this would require WAY more textures, would this
be totally impractical for a next-gen game? I'm not familiar with game
engines, so I don't know the most efficient methods yet.
So I
guess the bottom line is: 2 2k textures shared by all the meshes? Or
several smaller textures for different chunks of the environment?
Sorry about the long post!
Best,
jonathan
p.s. I tried to upload the images but can't. Any suggestions?
Replies
for texture sizes first find a resolution thats suits say 256 per metre then stick to that and yes lots of tilling textures and smaller textures are generally better as they are more re-useable
As for breaking up the textures into sheets, it all depends on what you want to do with the meshes in a game. For instance if they are only going to be found in one part of the game all together, then make one big texture sheet. But if they are going to be used broken up, in seperate areas of the game, it would only make sense to not use the full texture sheet (with all the meshes textures) for just one asset. So in this case you would want to break up the textures. It's just a matter of what you think will be most efficient on the game engine, in the end.
I would also suggest you don't do entire normal map generation off diffuse maps. Your results will not be so hot. Make proper high poly models and bake the details in. It will be worth it, trust me.
Good luck!
[Edit] Looks like Shepeiro beat me to it with the images suggestion.