uvw uv space

lloyd

Hello! I'm making game assets, normally when doing a uv's,
if i had the space I'd start scaling pieces bigger, filling gaps in the uv.

However with game stuff, should i try and keep the uv layout equal and leave some of the smaller gaps empty?


In my head I'm thinking no, don't scale bits of the uv as this will give that section of the object more pixels on its surface and make it stand out?

kdm3d

It really depends on the object. Usually things with more detail you are going to want to give a little more space, that or things that are right in a players face. IE a tower that a player walks up to would have a lot of texel density on the bottom, and less on the top. It all depends on its final application what gets the love!

lloyd

yeah. in this case its just gaps here and there on the vu. nothing massive. just wonderig if i should scale things like the grip on a gun bigger, etc

Its not in the players face its just a gap in the uvw

Shogun3d

lloyd wrote: »

yeah. in this case its just gaps here and there on the vu. nothing massive. just wonderig if i should scale things like the grip on a gun bigger, etc

Its not in the players face its just a gap in the uvw

You will want to maintain an even pixel density as much as possible, but in order to make good use of your uv's I would say it's very wise to evenly scale up items of importance. Things like the ironsights, scope, charging handle, stock or details that are closer to the players view are great places to start.

If the only room you have are for smaller items such as trigger, then try to scale up as many of the smaller uv's up with it as well. Just keep an eye out for your pixel density!

Thunder

like kaburan said, maintaining pixel density is key. Sometimes if you find youself with too much uv space but no way to fit it, add another object with a similar texture. to that same uv. I find myself doing that a lot for uvs that end up with only 65-75% space filled. many games also do that to maximize uv space.

jocose

All good advice so far, but also don't forget that on large complex objects like buildings you may want to leave some of that space open so you can make revisions later. Obviously before you ship the game, or wrap up your project, you will want to use those gaps, but I know of several studios where leaving a few gaps is encouraged so that edits and revisions can be made later.

The real key here is that you need to have a reason for what your doing. Before you start a project make sure that you plan things out and then if you get results that don't match your plan you know you have a problem. If you planned to have no gaps, and you know you wont come back to it, then, yeah, add another bit of geometry or prioritize some shells by scaling them up.

However, if you have a reason for leaving in gaps that's fine to, just fill them in before you show your UVs to anyone so they don't jump to the conclusion you don't know what your doing.

Also remember its not so much about how you fill gaps but more the fact that you actually fill them and use that texture space for SOMETHING, because unused space is something that's easy to spot and it can cause people to judge as either A) lazy or Ignorant

So in the end its kind of a communication tool about your competency as a 3D artist (at least when it comes to showing this stuff in your portfolio), but in a real world studio environment its more about creating a good finished product and that might involve all sorts of divergences from the rule.

Eric Chadwick

Another point, your UV shells are too close together. If the colors are similar enough, you won't get any problems. If they're different though, you'll get bleeding from one to the other, as the model recedes in the scene (like say, backing up from a pickup weapon). Some pics.

PredatorGSR

Thats true, but there is a caveat, those guidelines apply differently depending on the engine, filtering type and mipmap mode. From what I've been told about UT3 for example you can freely create UVs without shell distance problems, because you have anisotropic filtering. You should still have some spacing, just for that fact that texturing will be a bitch if your shells aren't spaced even a little, but you don't need the 32 pixel spacing for a 2k like you would in an engine that doesn't have that filtering, having a 4-8 pixel gap would be fine.

Eric, I would recommend doing some research to confirm that info, and updating the wiki to reflect that, because right now it is a bit misleading if the info I've been told is correct.

Eric Chadwick

Yeah I saw something like this in the UDK wiki. Thanks for the heads-up!

renderhjs

I think scaling UV areas comes more in place whenever you combine several objects into 1 texture. If you have just a gun you might want most likely to preserve a equal texel density among the faces.
However when having for example a character, a gun, sword and or other objects you might consider giving those objects more texture space that are more constant visible and more visible up close. This thought alone already gives you more play to fill gaps in your UV layout as opposed to having just 1 object.

Experience is another point that might come in to play, this could be for example technical informations, pixel behavior aesthetics or simple stuff like being able to read text on a certain area which requires a minimal size ect.

leechdemon

Re: UV Scaling: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=52415

This script is badass when handling multiple materials on one object. All UV's are scaled as per the size of the mesh. So you unwrap things one at a time on the model, Normalize UV's, and pack them up. IMO, this is about the first thing you do before you even begin worrying about anything else; any problem you have is usually negated/highlighted by scaling the UV's to the correct relative size.