What are the current texture maps to use in games?

AlexLegg

I'm in the process of getting my portfolio up together and was wondering what types of maps are currently being used in games, and whether to show them in my portfolio.

The following I assume are the basics and should be shown:

diffuse
normal
specular - coloured (not black and white)

But I have also heard a lot about:

gloss
parallex - (normal map with height map in the alpha?)

Should I also include these maps?

And are there any other types of maps that I should be aware of to stay cutting edge?

cw

There are often emissive maps or glow maps used, but these sorts of things are quite specific to the engine/tech you're using and the target product, so your brief will inform your decisions and any art tests or whatnot should mention anything specific they want to see. Of course if you see a great oppurtunity to make use of a parallax map it is worth trying to show that you understand the process and use of such things.

Good luck!

Eric Chadwick

I added a list of common texture types here.
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryTexturing

Yep, the asset and direction should dictate what types. The most common are Diffuse, Emissive, Normal, Opacity, and Specular Color.

AlexLegg

Thanks for the info. I forgot about emmisive maps. And that link is very useful Eric.

pedrOadan

Hey This is interesting as I am in a similar position. Any more info would be great.

gsokol

another map not mentioned here that is pretty common is ambient occlusion maps. Most of the time these are baked then put into the diffuse texture though.

CasperNilsson

Don't forget Self-Shadowed Bump Maps, http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2007/SIGGRAPH2007_EfficientSelfShadowedRadiosityNormalMapping.pdf

http://ssbump-generator.yolasite.com/

Miss it on the wikilist.

cw

gsokol wrote: »

another map not mentioned here that is pretty common is ambient occlusion maps. Most of the time these are baked then put into the diffuse texture though.

Good point, however technically AO map should only occlude the ambient light on a model and the diffusely lit bit should have the albedo/diffuse without the darkening. It's subtle and I'm nitpicking but just for clarity.

I have dumped AO into diffuse before, depending on the tech you are using it can be the only way to get that effect.

Another use of seperate AO can be for big assets where you may have a 2nd set of uvs uniquely unwrapped for AO and the diffuse/normal/spec made up of tiling or repeated texture elements. A bit like lightmaps etc. but manually created per asset, and only for AO.

Anyway I'm rambling now. Apologies for pedantry, I just wanted to chime in with that.

mayaterror

cw wrote: »

Another use of seperate AO can be for big assets where you may have a 2nd set of uvs uniquely unwrapped for AO and the diffuse/normal/spec made up of tiling or repeated texture elements. A bit like lightmaps etc. but manually created per asset, and only for AO.

Anyway I'm rambling now. Apologies for pedantry, I just wanted to chime in with that.

Could you ramble a little more on this topic? I was going to start a thread myself pretty soon asking about this technique, I have some environ assets where I want to use AO but the diffuse are done with multiple material IDs and tilable textures. It doesn't seem like the diffuse UV's will be at all compatible with AO baking. I'm sure part of the solution is using a second UV channel as you said, but my last try at multiple UVs didn't go so well - I could only get one or the other to show, couldn't get 'em to blend.

Eric Chadwick

mayaterror... same idea as a lightmap. Exact workflow depends on the game. What were you using to examine the assets when you couldn't get it to work?

Casper... will add it to the wiki, thanks!

CasperNilsson

Great!, nice work over at the wiki.

Eric Chadwick

np, nice to have a place to put my notes. And everyone elses!

mayaterror, I ran across this page while editing, might help you?
http://wiki.polycount.com/Light%20Map#Light_Map_Texture_Coordinates

mayaterror

Thanks Eric, good link - you are a fount of knowledge.

So I've had some successes in 3DS with light maps before, but as for taking those to my engine and using them multiplied over the diffuse of these multi-textured environ objects, how do I do that? I'm familiar with the process of AO bakes multiplied over unique unwrapped objects, but that's collapsed into the diffuse texture in PS. Does the programmer need to implement some feature to read the diffuse from one UV channel and the light map UVs from another channel, then multiply them in the engine? That sounds like what we're talking about...

cryrid

Sounds like something simple enough to do in UDK without a programmer.

Eric Chadwick

Yeah... UDK, Source, CryEngine, Unity, etc., can all do this fairly easily. If you want a concrete example to show your programmer, you could create a FX shader for 3ds Max using Shader FX or mental mill.

Then your programmer would be able to look at the guts of the FX file to see how its done. However I'd be really surprised if an engine programmer didn't know enough to figure out multitexture on their own.

cw

mayaterror wrote: »

read the diffuse from one UV channel and the light map UVs from another channel, then multiply them in the engine? That sounds like what we're talking about...

Yes.

Depends how your multitexture stuff works but whichever way that is handled, there will be a number of meshes with associated textures.

Each mesh would have its own diffuse(s) and normal(s), spec(s) etc. (tiled if that's how it's organised) and also a sampler of the lightmap/AO whatever you want to call it.

A bunch of meshes could share the 'AO' map and it all comes out in the wash.

There's a tradeoff between how many meshes per asset and how many samplers and instructions can yuo shoehorn into a shader, but it works fine, so persevere with your experiments and it should become clear.

Snader

Mayaterror:
Do you mean something like this
If you want to just multiply the AO and have no moss/dirt effect you would just get rid of the top LERP between clean and dirty.

(sorry if it's not the greatest example, I made this quite a while ago)