Texture space for large vehicles

zoombapup

Hey all.

I'm having a bit of a puzzling time. I'm trying to figure out how to get enough texture space for a large ship (its an airship, but might as well be a spaceship for this discussion).

I made a really rough blockout ship and threw a texture on it at 2kx2k and threw it in a scene in Unity and the actual texture looks really quite low res on that scale of object. It needs to be a lot better.

I got to wondering how do ships in something like Eve online work in terms of texture space?

The problem is that the ships have to have turrets and people on em. Ideally without huge differences in texture res (if I can help it).

So, I'm looking for a solution. Anyone done any really large vehicles (in a world full of textured normal scale things that is). Use detail textures? Use tiling and vertex colour?

sprunghunt

I would just split it up into a few smaller textures. Like you would if you were making a building or something of similar size. You could definitely use a few tiling textures here and there.

Mark Dygert

Tile textures?

System

http://www.polygoo.com/port/wcheli.html

Pretty much some of the best use of texture space Ive ever seen for large vehicles.

System

http://www.polygoo.com/port/wcaa.html

Ace-Angel

Symmetry, Tiles, and symmetry breaking polygons which reuse textures in generic parts will save you space.

disanski

I was going to start similar thread as I am also very interested in how this works. I have been working on characters so far and everything has pretty much unique texture space. Next week I am starting a big space ship and I also would like to know what is the best way to handle this.
I will need to make 2 versions - first one that will be seen from far in the air and because of this it can have unique UV space but the second will be on the ground and it is very big- 100-150 meters long.

I know I wil try to use some modular parts, symmetry but still some parts just cant be tiled? And i have no idea how do you tile normal map? here is an example:
http://evesnooze.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/eve_echelon_2010.jpg
how about lets say the glass on the front and all the armature that is on top of it? How would you tile this? Probably answer is very simple but I would love some input. I will see if I can bring in the concept that I am going to be working on so I can ilustrate my probblem a little better.

sprunghunt

disanski wrote: »

I know I wil try to use some modular parts, symmetry but still some parts just cant be tiled? And i have no idea how do you tile normal map? here is an example:
http://evesnooze.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/eve_echelon_2010.jpg
how about lets say the glass on the front and all the armature that is on top of it? How would you tile this? Probably answer is very simple but I would love some input. I will see if I can bring in the concept that I am going to be working on so I can ilustrate my probblem a little better.

There are some large spaceship levels in Halo, Bulletstorm, and mass effect. I suggest playing through them and having a look at how they're done. They're basically the same as any other level - with repeated modular pieces and tiling textures.

For far away you could just texture that spaceship like any other model.

zoombapup

Hmm, mine has to have it so that players can actually run around the ship. I guess seeing if I can find anything similar would be a start.

Ace-Angel

disanski: Spaceships in EVE have unique textures, because simply put, they don't require for the player to be on his belly ontop of the ship. So the can get away alot in that area, plus, the ship you posted up is soo clearly tiled.



sprunghun: That is so very true, although is always confused me to as to why the Normandy from ME was the only ship that never did that externally. Everything was so low-rez, especially with all the beauty shots of it, that it vexed me.

zoombapup: Chris Per posted up a gold mine on how they did the process (you can see the wireframes and UV layout of the textures) take some time in studying that.

disanski

Thanks sprunghunt and Ace- I was giving example with this ship and I understand that Eve is different kind of game but I was just thinking for the areas like the glass how does it get done if the player can walk by it and it is not possible to be modular piece. here is the particular concept I am working off - done by Prez Lech


I am going to figure out the bottom and sides with bunch of modular parts but I don't know how to do the top as it looks like it can not be modular and perhaps I can use tillable diffuse/specular texture but I have no idea how should I uv this so the normal maps can be baked properly. Perhaps I am missing something


I will get back to MA and take a closer look at some of the ships good idea.

zoombapup

ace-angel: not sure what I'm meant to be seeing here. I dont see any breakdown of how he used tiles if he did. Cant really tell from the texture alone. I guess thats kind of the point. But these are single vehicles. I'm thinking of something far larger. Like an aircraft carrier vs a fighter jet.

Snader

it would be very helpful if you could show us a couple of things:
-the design
-your current model geometry (wireframe please) & poly budget
-the size of it, roughly how large it would be on screen

disanski

I don't want to hijack this thread but it looks like me and zoombapup are in the same situation.
I have not started working on mine and I would like to kind of plan it out before I start working on it. Not sure for polycount either as of now. I know the second version of it will be 100 meters long and player will be able to walk just next to it. Thanks again guys and I apologize for messing up this thread

zoombapup

Ok, did some more searching and found a few useful threads I thought I'd post for others following the same route.

Snader: will post a blockout ship later, my budget is around 20k poly for the low per-ship, but a fair bit of that will be taken by turrets. I reckon 10k for the ship itself is a reasonable budget. Although I dont really want much high detail stuff in there because it seems to distract the eye at longer distances.

Will post a shot in unity later. There are meant to be quite a few of these guys on screen (its a fleet combat thing I'm using them for).

Ok, first thread I found:

http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread.php?t=77815

Which is pretty awesome. Then it references this thread on polycount:

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76873

So, more info to go on at least. Will do more reading/digging.

zoombapup

So, it seems that basically a bunch of tiled 512x512 textures (with greeble stuff on) is the way to go for the main "mass" of the ship. Then some individual elements get broken out into their own 512x512's and any decalling is added as extra geometry on the top (using some funky shader to fix the zfighting issues).

So my only question is about how to layout the UV's so that you get the right amount of tiling etc. Also, do they use something like turbosmooth? Seems a bit pointless to turbosmooth this, because it would just get difficult to handle the UV layouts. Much better to chamfer the edges manually etc?

Still, an interesting construction problem here. Food for thought.

zoombapup

Right, I think I've settled on a plan of action. I'm going to do some quick studies of texture tiling (never done that before) and see if I can make some pretty basic block shapes interesting using that. Will post when I'm done.