Tiling Building Textures - Variation
I'm looking to create some buildings for use in a custom game engine (not sure of the capabilities yet so will use Unity as a test bed for now).
Some of the buildings will be large and in a city environment so they need to be optimal. In order to do this I'm looking at two techniques, tiling geometry and tiling textures. I want to match real world references very closely but need good resolution of textures so cannot simply unwrap the faces and use individual textures for each as it will require too many texture maps.
Tiling the geometry where possible seems like a good ideas as I can then overlap the UVs to reuse textures. I'm using Max so presumably cloning objects will copy the UV co-ordinates also? Whilst this seems like a good approach I can't really add variation to each section such as damage and dirt etc.
I'm also considering using tiling textures as much as possible so I can have high res textures but with small square maps. In this case I don't think you break the UV wrap in that same way but I'm not 100% sure. I've seen an example where someone used a tiling texture with a dirty version of the same texture and then blended them. I'd like to know how this is done? A suggestion I found seemed to require a 2nd and even 3rd UV channel but I don't want to up the vertex count too much.
Basically I'm after any good links and tips for how to model buildings for a city in a game engine with realistic and detailed textures which are nice and varied. Any ideas to point me on the right path will be very welcomed!
Some of the buildings will be large and in a city environment so they need to be optimal. In order to do this I'm looking at two techniques, tiling geometry and tiling textures. I want to match real world references very closely but need good resolution of textures so cannot simply unwrap the faces and use individual textures for each as it will require too many texture maps.
Tiling the geometry where possible seems like a good ideas as I can then overlap the UVs to reuse textures. I'm using Max so presumably cloning objects will copy the UV co-ordinates also? Whilst this seems like a good approach I can't really add variation to each section such as damage and dirt etc.
I'm also considering using tiling textures as much as possible so I can have high res textures but with small square maps. In this case I don't think you break the UV wrap in that same way but I'm not 100% sure. I've seen an example where someone used a tiling texture with a dirty version of the same texture and then blended them. I'd like to know how this is done? A suggestion I found seemed to require a 2nd and even 3rd UV channel but I don't want to up the vertex count too much.
Basically I'm after any good links and tips for how to model buildings for a city in a game engine with realistic and detailed textures which are nice and varied. Any ideas to point me on the right path will be very welcomed!
Replies
in that you will find quite a few links and topics concerning what you want.
of special interest might be the one from stefan morrell on modularity.
to paint blending between different texture variations vertex is probably the most common one, but it isn't necessarily cheaper than a second UV set.
Yes it will.
I would suggest building it with a texture for a single floor, then clone the floor and add the floors. I guess this is what you meant by tiling geometry
For variation/breakup on the texture try doing what chrisradsby suggested and use alpha decals.
Fyi if you end up tiling the geometry, Unity doesn't do instancing right off the bat, so you will add draw calls for every seperate mesh you bring in. Your better of tiling and attaching in max instead of making one modular section and tiling it in Unity.