Hiding UV seams on tiling asset ???

Paunescu.Daniel

How should i go about creating a texture for object "A" (normals and diffuse) so that after i create object "B" out of it the textures will tile? My UV's are anything but a square , how should i fix the seams? I thought about hiding the seams with elements such as stones but i would like to avoid this method if possible. I could unwrap the whole object you might say but i would like to keep some more details in the textures.
Thanks!!!
PS: I don't want to MIRROR object "A" but copy it and weld it afterwords to the rest.

ZacD

If its not going to be uniquely unwrapped you can use geometry to cover the seams or you can be really smart with over lapping with the uv space, depending on the texture.

Paunescu.Daniel

ZacD wrote: »

or you can be really smart with over lapping with the uv space, depending on the texture.

what do you mean by this? the UV's of object A are overlapping when i copy it, but that doesn't mean the texture will tile, please elaborate ?

tda

Just straighten out the UV's imo, that'd be the easiest solution. Not difficult to do either on a shape this simple.

Paunescu.Daniel

tda wrote: »

Just straighten out the UV's imo, that'd be the easiest solution. Not difficult to do either on a shape this simple.

I expected someone will say this, and that's what i'm gonna do, but what if the object is more complex?

mdeforge

I believe ZacD is talking about using more than the 0 to 1 UV space. See my attached image. Normally you just use the 0 to 1 space, but if you want to use the same texture yet have better texel density, you can fill the other boxes (the other UV spaces, like -1,0) with shells and scale them larger. You have to be smart with it though while trying to tile. You can look up UV space tiling.

What is this object being used for in the scene? What engine? If it's just a background object, fuck it man, just keep things simple and unwrap it all. If it's just going to be rendered in Maya or something this would be super easy.

Mark Dygert

When you bake, bake with all the pieces welded together, be sure to move the UV's for the extra pieces outside of the 0-1 renderable area. Then break it apart and export just the A piece. Or don't and export the whole thing as one chunk. The major savings are in the material and how it reuses a smaller texture to cover a lot of things. If you export just the A piece, instancing the verts isn't going to save you much so why make things harder than they need to be.

Ghostscape

Paunescu.Daniel wrote: »

I expected someone will say this, and that's what i'm gonna do, but what if the object is more complex?

For something like this you should have straight seams anyways, and you should unwrap it so that you can easily paint it to tile. a square is going to make the most efficient use anyways.

For complex seams, I use this:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1800/completely_eliminate_texture_seams_.php?print=1

But most seams can be avoided in the modeling or unwrapping phase by laying out better UVs or hiding them appropriately.

Paunescu.Daniel

Thanks a lot for your responses, don't have a huge experience in unwrapping but i know how to fix regular seams on a character for example.What i really wanted to know is what are the options of creating tileable textures when making objects such as wall sections and stuff like that, my model isn't the best example for that but i wanted to try it out. Thanks again for your tips and ideas.
As for the model it is a water well, i will be using it in UDK, not for a game but just for an environment.