Modular Texturing

MRico

I need some help. I started this skatepark level a while ago and stopped working on it till now.



Well, I feel that I've learned a lot and want to go about it better than the way I was doing and would like to do it with modular pieces...something I didn't know about back then.

Well...my question is...how do I texture the modular pieces? I mean....lets say I have a ramp, a trash can and a bench...

Do all 3 of these different meshes need their own texture sheet? Or do I make giant global one?

I'm a bit confused because I've been watching the tutorials on UDK from the UDK website and he creates a simple level and all the static meshes he has seem to have their own textures...I just don't know if it's better to have a bunch of little ones or one giant one.

I also have a question about the modeling part....I have this skatebox...



It's modeled as one piece...should I break it up into different pieces? Like the color chart? So I can use them throughout the level Or should I keep it as one mesh?

Any help would be appreciate....I think I'm scared and thinking too hard to go from max to UDK.

renderhjs

1 texture = 1 material = less RAM = easier to texture = consistent style and workflow = win

creating several texture files is just a pain booth workflow wise and performance wise. If you have max2008+ you can unwrap several pieces all together at once, if you have not or use something else you merge the objects together and then unwrap them all together. After that you detach each Mesh object again.
Not sure whats so hard about it - just do it

Mark Dygert

AutopsySoldier wrote: »

Well...my question is...how do I texture the modular pieces? I mean....lets say I have a ramp, a trash can and a bench...

Do all 3 of these different meshes need their own texture sheet? Or do I make giant global one?

Are they always going to be seen together or will they be broken up and there is a chance that only a trash can might be placed in a level without the others? In that case one model is going to be loading a texture and only using 1/3rd of it.

MRico

renderhjs - Yeah, I don't really think it's "hard" to do....I would just like to know the most efficient way of doing things....I realized that the way I was doing things wasn't, I was giving every ramp/box it's own 1024 texture

Vig - Ok, yeah that makes sense. So to avoid something like that, I should give it one texture, right?

What renderhjs is saying about keeping it all one texture makes sense to me...but what you're saying also makes sense...I'm still confused, lol

vcool

I can't really imagine the entire skatepark textured by one 1024 texture.

Gallows

If you need me to I can take some pictures of the park I goto. We're having a skate jam next weekend so I'll be there with my camera anyway.

ZacD

I'd try to make as much of the parks ramps and rails modular as possible, but then add decals and shift some uv's over. Or you could try to do something like this in places for fun http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=68089.

MRico

vcool - Yeah, what meant is that every ramp had it's own 1024 texture...in the end I would've had like 6,000,000 1024 textures

Gallows - Yeah bro, if you could share some of your pics it would definitely help me out!

ZacD - Thanks man, I'll look into that some more. I think that's what I'll end up doing, making as many ramps and rails as modular as possible.

Did any of you guys ever play around with Tony Hawks Create a skatepark mode? How they have all sorts of ramps, benches, stairs....and all you do is set them where you want them....build blocks for higher ground...

Am I wrong in thinking that's how game levels are created? (I know you have to initially create all the ramps and stuff...) Having different pieces and just lined them up. For example....make a quarter-pipe and give it's on 512 texture then just duplicate it, rotate it 180 add a plane between them and create a half-pipe....instead of actually modeling a half-pipe and having one 1024 texture for the whole thing?

ZacD

There's nothing wrong with doing stuff modular. just make sure you don't make everything at 90/45 degree angles. And take advantage of being able to do more than just typical level editors, have you played skate 2?

MRico

Negative on Skate 2...had to sell my PS3 and my games to make a car payment, lol.

Alright, well I'm ganna start working on it then...come back when I run into more problems, which I'm sure I'm going to...ehh.

toren3d

Examining your scene, I would say you probably want to show this full room as one portfolio piece, yes?

Try a horizontally-tiling texture or two for the wall, and then one fully tileable texture for the floor. Next, unwrap each individual piece (only one of each if there are multiples) and see how many you can fit on one sheet, and continue that process.

Your going to want to pay close attention to texture density (same amount of checkerboard-squares for each component). Continue from there, you may end up with 3-4 sheets in addition to the wall and floor. In the eat3d 'next gen texturing tutorial' he uses 4-5 materials, each with a very high res texture, and its a small scene. So for yours, being such a large scene, your okay using that many or more IMO.

MRico

toren3d - Yeah this is mostly going to be for my portfolio....would love to actually make it playable with a skater in the end...but that's way down the road from here.

Thanks a lot for the help. Do you have any suggestions on how big the texture sheets should be?

Dippndots

well looking at yout pics my guess would be 4096x4096, but you might be able to do 2048x2048 if you have a lot of modular stuff. you might be able to do a retangular map of 2048x4096 but im not sure.

ZacD

Multiple 2048x2048 maps with some 1024x1024 and a few 512

JohnnySix

renderhjs wrote: »

If you have max2008+ you can unwrap several pieces all together at once, if you have not or use something else you merge the objects together and then unwrap them all together. After that you detach each Mesh object again.

Wow, can you do it without combining them into one polymesh and losing the pivots?

renderhjs

JohnnySix wrote: »

Wow, can you do it without combining them into one polymesh and losing the pivots?

Yes in Max2008, 2009 or 2010 you can do that.
Though from my experience it is still somewhat limited, it would be awesome if it would be perfect but it is not. Some things do not always work and on the scripting side of things it makes things even more complicated. Because internally it has several nodes of mesh selections within the UV unwrap modifier.

The last couple of days I have been working hard to port many functionalities of TexTools towards that functionality: being able to unwrap it as a multi object selection and work across all objects in 1 UV editor.
There is a post about it here with a YouTube demo video:
http://boards.polycount.net/showpost.php?p=1042485&postcount=644

But still should I be able to port most of the functions from my expierence the

• whole core concept still within max is build around working with square texture sizes (even though you can do different it often rather harms you doing it different at first - because so many core functions still can only think in squares.
• same goes for unwrapping multiple objects versus 1 object. Its just that some stuff requires more base functions as maxscript still offers right now in the UV modifier but other functions are not always working so well with multiple object selections - so its all kind of stuck right now somewhere.

I wish they would clean up some stuff and rewrite some things from the core - they have a nice architecture with the modifiers and such so it shouldn't be impossible for example to introduce a new UVunwrap2 modifier that comes with a new UV core and new UV editor.

MRico

Well, I haven't really done as much as I've would've liked on this. But I started blocking out the level in UDK and figuring out the modular pieces.

I wanted to see if you guys thought this kind of model had the right texture size. I originally planned for it to be 512, but then I thought it was to big for it just being a pallet.



Now I have a question on pieces like this....

Is it ok to go crazy with mirroring in the UV's? I though it would be best to only unwrap a few planks then duplicate and rotate them so the AO doesn't show up inaccurate on faces.

Oh, yeah...one more thing....is anyone familiar with ShaderMap?

http://www.renderingsystems.com/index.php

I think it's like CrazyBump...just cheaper. I wanted to get Crazybump...but don't have the funds right now. I used the Nvidia Filter for the normals for this.

Xoliul

Nvidia filter is perfectly fine. I never use crazybump and really don't feel the need.
Also yes, rotating and mirroring stuff around is a smart way of reusing textures without that standing out too much.

Peris

If you paint 45 degrees right left up and down normals near the uv edges by hand, you can make the edges look bevelled really easy too . I do that a lot with these kind of meshes where everything is laid out straight on the uv. I think you did a nice job on it! Very efficient uv and nice you managed to keep the AO look good with it. A lot of artists would have just unwrapped it uniquely because of fear the AO wouldnt work otherwise.

MRico

Xoliul - Ok cool, I'll stick with the Nvidia filter for now then.

Peris - Thanks for the tip man! I'll go ahead and try it out right now. Also thanks for the kind words!

MRico

I got another noob question...

In 3ds max how do I setup my Unwrap UVW Mod to be at...for example 512x256?

Is it Options -> Preferences -> Display Preferences...? I changed it from 256x256 to 512x256 and the box got in those proportions but the checker pattern on the background got stretched as well.

Also, what was a perfect square unwrapped at 256* is now a rectangle...but the checker pattern on the actual model is still a square...is this normal?

renderhjs

maybe use the search next time:
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=65234
(just a few days old actually)