Has any one used PTex for their art pipeline? (INo UV creation required)
Ptex has been open sourced. Does any one have any experience using this in their production pipeline?
http://ptex.us/overview.html
EDIT: How do I fix typos in titles?
http://ptex.us/overview.html
EDIT: How do I fix typos in titles?
Replies
I dont think that automatic UVs creation will ever be a reality for realtime use tho, because of one simple thing : manual UVs will always be more optimized, and this alone will always make them superior since less splits and more pixel density is always better. However for prerendered stuff I think this is totally fine.
It actually worries me when game tech guys have dream-talk about magical one-click auto UV generation solutions. It simply isnt practical for many reason that any experieced game artist knows - hence it shows a certain disconnection with reality and game art constraints.
It could be fine in some very specific cases (I think LOVE does it, right ?) but for the kind of content that 99% of games are made it just wouldnt work, in my opinion.
I don't think your thinking about PTex quite right. automatic UV's dont come into the equation. the data is stored as thousands of images, each image represents a quad or 2 triangles. there isn't any empty image space. and texel density is defined locally on a face by face basis.
I guess it remains to be seen when AD provide us with .ptex support in max and maya.
(not to disagree with your broader point)
I wasn't disagreeing with that. I was simply wondering where automatic UVs got drawn into the mix.
Then did automatic UVs on the high at lowest level, reimported as new object, subdivided to match the level of that previous high, baked a 4k texture out of it in mud (transfering paint layers and sculpt details)
then exported high with the texture and baked into xnormal a 1k on my low.
Worked awesome.
Wish Xnormal was reading Ptex files so I would avoid to completly do the baking of the high process... One can dream.
[ame]
Like fletch said, each face has its own map and each map/face can be up res'ed and the system handles the blending between maps. So you can have a character or a single prop with an entire games texture budget. That's just nutty for what we do on the ancient hardware we have to design for. We also have so much more going on, collision, deformation, particles, AI bla bla bla...
You also have to look at what its being used for, Pixar and Disney animated films. A lot of solid colors with sprinkles of detail here and there. So they can large areas with large textels and save on detail/texture budget. In games you often have ultra noisy textures that require a lot of detail.
3DCoat and Mudbox2012 support PTex so we can start using it now as artists and if and when some technical wizard figures out how to make it work in realtime its not a huge jump like normal maps where.
I think we'll see more people creating materials on the high poly without worrying about the UV's and baking it all down, diffuse, spec, normal, ao, instead of just bake normal and AO and paint the diffuse in 2D.
http://www.mankua.com/Stripes/Stripes.php
It looks like its a bake down of ptex to a auto uv, but it should make using ptex in max a bit easier until a another more direct solution comes up
That is if other pressing needs don't pop up an focus their energy some place else. I don't think they would of put more time and money into upgrading the UV tools if they thought the industry was going to adopt ptex as the dominant format anytime soon, but then you can call the UV editor overhaul more of a reskin with some new tools tossed in...