Methods for texturing large background objects to be used in game levels.
polycounter lvl 6
Hello, I am currently working on a project that has large rock structures that are in the level but out of the players reach.
These rocks are massive. And I am not sure on the best method of texturing them.
http://img543.imageshack.us/i/hugerocks.jpg/
http://img571.imageshack.us/i/hugerocks2.jpg/
Ignore the foliage I may or may not even use foliage for these. If I do they will be basic meshes and not painted into the texture.
I am thinking a tileable texture would be too obvious. However a unique texture will be too small resolution due to the size?
I am planning on using these in UDK.
Any advice would be great. I am trying plan as much as I can before hand.
I'll post a few images of what I have soon.
Thanks!
These rocks are massive. And I am not sure on the best method of texturing them.
http://img543.imageshack.us/i/hugerocks.jpg/
http://img571.imageshack.us/i/hugerocks2.jpg/
Ignore the foliage I may or may not even use foliage for these. If I do they will be basic meshes and not painted into the texture.
I am thinking a tileable texture would be too obvious. However a unique texture will be too small resolution due to the size?
I am planning on using these in UDK.
Any advice would be great. I am trying plan as much as I can before hand.
I'll post a few images of what I have soon.
Thanks!
Replies
X - ZBrush/Mudbox
1- Use layers to create the different layers (pun intended) that are reciprocal from one another.
2- In the first layer (call this Base) apply essentially the 'polish' or 'cut' color of rock. This means try to think what color a rock will be inside once it's cut or dug open (it's usually a pale color of the exterior one and more greyish hues). Apply it at an almost solid base.
3- The second layer should be one that uses a custom Brush/Alpha, one that emulates a non-standard patterns and doesn't look tillable (for best effects, change it to Color/Spray mode) and go lightly ontop of it, but unlike layer 1, don't cover the whole mesh 100%, simply, give it a general color that has a pattern of sorts. Note this is not the FINAL color that you want everything to have, it's more of a pattern/structure deformation feeling area.
4- Third layer should be darker hues, as if the rock was washed with water moments ago and/or has been muddied. This should help you define out the nooks and crannies of your mesh, once again, go over it not too hard but neither to soft, and build up darker colors in specific hotspots which look like they need darker colors.
5- Fourth layer should be the lighter colors, more ashy and dusty like, apply these to the areas that you feel the rock will have been more exposed to weather elements then others, to give it a worn look. Once again, don't be too gentle in applying the color, but don't overdo it at the same time.
6- Fifth layer will be the Marriage layer. Essentially, bring in a base color that you want to rock to have, choose a nice simple Brush/Alpha and Spray/Color it over your mesh. This layer should marry and unify the different layers from before, give your rocks smooth transitions. You might say that your will be 'destroying your work since you're trying to homogenize the colors under a specific color, but believe me, that slight variations will work wonders.
7- At this point you might want to create another layer, find a nice rocky alpha and attack a nice 'general' pattern to your mesh to break up things even further.
8- In UDK, you can create a Normal Map network (Detail Maps) which enable you to add a tilable texture to your normal, Normal Map, to give it a more rocky feel.
For example if you were to put a 2048x2048 on a pair of dice, it will look good no matter how close you possibly get to it all the way up to full 1080p. But unless you were right up on that pair of dice you are only going to see a tiny mip map of it anyway.
So if the dice is on a table in an FPS like you can easily imagine it will only be maximum like 64x64 pixels, and that's all it's gonna show in the view. If it tried to use the full 2048 texture it would artifact wildly and look like some crazy effect and not a pair of dice.
So, figure out about how much screen space it takes up, and texture around or near that size. You will probably find that you can shrink the texture after the fact as well depending on your far atmospheric effects and stuff.
ACE. In your workflow, how would you go about getting the nice boxy crack details in the model? Would you sculpt it or just paint it in the texture?
To mortalhuman.
I plan to have the rock pillars about as far away as in this screen shot's pillar.
http://img840.imageshack.us/i/udk2.jpg/
However I have found and modified the perfect texture from a photo that describes the very boxy crack details that are on the pillars in my first post. Its a 2048x2048 texture.
However It repeats pretty bad on my zbrush sculpt. So I'm thinking of modifying the texture into a 2nd variation than spotlighting it over parts of the model in zbrush.
Or would this be better achieved in UDK by blending two textures? But I guess that will eat up resources. I plan to have many pillars on screen at once
What do you advise?
Also I noticed in that UDK screenshot I just posted that the far off background rocks look very good. I don't notice and repeating textures. How big do you think those textures are to get that effect?
Thanks again for the help guys.
Chris.
Regardless of how big the asset's texture is, it will only show a version that fits on-screen. So as long as it looks good from "as close as you can get to it" you can get away with a lot that even if you did go large it would still only use a small texture anyway :P
So your saying the textures on the distant rocks in the UDK screenshot are smaller texture rez. But not tiled alot so as the one tile of texture uses up all the UV space to get the coverage?
But from far away it appears crisp.
I find this topic of texture size confusing at the moment.
High res textures are for close viewing - it doesn't matter how big you make textures, the bigger they are, the faster they are "shrunk" by switching to the mipmaps.
Would it be acceptable to give these 2 giant rock formations each a texture space of 4096? Or should I break them up into several smaller formations that I can sort've tile? Or something else I haven't thought of?
I only ask this question because these are able to be walked right up to unlike OP's dilemma, and I'm not sure how I should give it the appropriate pixel density to match the bridge/gateway.
I'd say if you want it to look really unique from a distance, but detailed up close theres several ways to handle it
-use a unique texture (say about 1k) and a tiling overlaid detail texture that shows up when you get close
OR
-put a detailed tiling texture only in the areas where the player can get close, and make everything else thats far away unique but low res, and use a blend to make it seamless
Yup that's another really good way of doing it. I use this technique a lot actually
I have been examining large rock structures from the Witcher 2. They have some big formations that look good from far and close....hard to tell if they are doing unique sculpted meshes or using tiling textures on basic geometry..
I am newish to UDk could you possible show a basic example of the methods you guys are talking about? I'll buy rounds!
http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UDK_Advanced_Vertex_Painting.html
http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UDK_Mesh_Paint_Tutorial.html
Another one: http://www.chrisalbeluhn.com/UDK_Asset_Position_Offsets_Texturet_Tutorial.html
Also, same idea, but you can do the same for the diffuse texture:[ame]
to see how to make rockwalls out of tiling pieces have a look at the rock walls in the night and day map that comes with udk. From there it's all about just making the right pieces to get the look you want.
And then do 2 tileable textures of rock 512 nmap+diff+spec and use them as closer depth.
This way when you are far away, you will see the uniqueness of the rock and when you are close you will see the tileable textures. The range inbetween being able to see the tileable textures or not needs to be wide so you wont see anything popping out. You also CANT differ on colors too much in between these 2 materials.
You can use that video from Ace-Angel and apply the same technique.
Also, the further away you are from a mesh, the 'better' the bigger texture will look. It's usually that mushy middle, when you're about to get up and personal with wall that you start seeing the blurry parts of the large in the cracks as such.
In nordahl154 example, personally I would vertex paint if you are allowed to. It breaks up the tile real nice, you can really control what part gets painted what and...well...it just kicks so much arse.
sure, you can model and texture everything unique, or you can make a couple of smaller unique pieces and re-use them to get the right look, or you can use tiling blended textures.
each will have it's downside; so it's worth loading up a few games and seeing what method they chose, which would look better for your piece, and perhaps why they chose their method to try and get a better understanding.
Polycount is the best community for CG technical information (and not only
Thank you mates.
Is that not a waste of geometry? I could see that being a time saver due to less unique models but a lot of faces will be hidden or intersecting each other.
Also I inspected the material for that rock. Wow. It looks extremely complicated.
How would a newbish material guy break that down to fully grasp.? Or should I just copy it and substitute my own maps. lol jk!
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Cheers
I was having this exact same issue and randomly stumbled onto an active thread discussing it.
Kudos.
Wasting backfaces isn't really a problem. Most modern engines do not draw the backfaces of a shaded object anyway. Running out of memory is more of an issue.
They are also doing some blending of a smaller map into their larger normal map. I wouldn't get caught up in the complexity of their material. Just make your own.
Notice that the rock also has 3 LOD levels to reduce polygons and allow for changes in the shader instruction count the further away you are. All stuff that others have talked about in this thread.
Honestly, you're making it more complicated then it should be, just check one of the other maps in UDK and try to get a general idea, ones that look like they belonged to UT3. That should give you a fair idea of how simply things can be.
Also, as sprung mentioned, LOD's come into play alot of the times, but since you're starting out, just forget about them till you have a more robust understanding of things and when and how they should function.
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/TerrainAdvancedTextures.html
The first half of the page is what will help you, and yes, it can be that simple.
I assume those material set-ups can also be used on large imported static meshes?