How do you uv map with multiple textures in a sheet?

MainManiac · Dec 2011

I need to combine about 4 different environment textures into a single image and then tile it onto a wide variety of props, how is this done? I don't seem to understand how to scale it exact;y or how to even make it tile

Thanks!

CrackRockSteady · Dec 2011

My first question would be, why do you need to combine them into a single texture sheet? It will be a lot simpler if you can keep each tiling texture separate.

That being said, if you have no choice and must combine them, the only way (that I am aware of) to tile a texture if you combine them into a single texture is to start cutting up your model into squares so that you can break apart the UVs and lay them all in the proper quadrant of your texture.

m4dcow · Dec 2011

You can't really pack tiling textures and expect to get the benefits of tiling without some work, ie: you have to slice up your model where a tiling seam would be, and stack all of those pieces. I remember seeing a maxscript for this somewhere that would do this automatically.

I also saw someone do something with a udk shader, that would do exactly what you're talking about ie: read 4 different textures from 1 map and tile them, but it had messed up artifacts at each spot where it tiled.

cholden · Dec 2011

just slice your mesh with another edge where to tile. Pretty common place when dealing with vertex lighting, alpha blending.

Sometimes it's good to start with a gridded plane mesh, and shape it to whatever you're making.

Ace-Angel · Dec 2011

I don't think you can do that unless you set your texture sampling to Nearest as opposed to Linear, but the problem with that is your texture ends up looking very blocky, and you can only really use 512px textures at most, since 1K textures will resample, even in Nearest back to smudgy Linear.

Ofcourse, this pends on the engine you're using. If it's a render, then it doesn't matter what you do, you can have a million textures, and you will barely get an issue since you're rendering and don't have to think about performance.

On the other hand, UDK and CE3 so far can't do this, even on shader level.

Please note in all cases I'm talking about tiling uniformly. It would help if you showed a picture of what type of multi tile you need. Usually people tile either poly wise or single direction wise.

Ben Apuna · Dec 2011

This might be what you want if you you Max.

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/texture-atlas-generator

divi · Dec 2011

you can do it in udk without splitting up your mesh, but you (obviously?) need a new material for every tiling texture and that's probably not worth the cost compared to adding more edges to your model.

SHEPEIRO · Dec 2011

make long textures (EG 256x1024 for 4 x 256 tiling tex) and split mesh in one direction...

its pissing in the wind unless we know a few more details though

Mark Dygert · Dec 2011

It really depends on your tiles, can you tile some pieces in one direction only, like long thin pieces of trim or stairs, or wall sections that tile horiz but not vertically? Then you can just stack your them in strips.

If you have top and bottom pieces that tile horiz and a middle section that tiles both directions you only need to cut the mesh horiz in order to stack the center tiling part.

Ben Mathis put this together it helps explain it a bit.

Like shep pointed out without knowing more info its almost pointless to suggest things.

MainManiac · Dec 2011

Thank you for the help so much guys

If you need more info I just want to be able to make castle props but have them all access a texture sheet that contains brick and wood, but its the scaling thats off if I use the box unwrap preset and then uvwmap. It wraps around good but if I try to make the bricks smaller I go out of the brick area on the sheet :S

Thirding seems like it may fix that problem of going out of bounds, not sure about the scale though.

Ill give it a shot!

MainManiac · Dec 2011

Hmm, Im still getting confused about this. How can I have a game model support 2 tiling textures in different locations on the model? How would I export that?

System · Dec 2011

Multi material object or layout the uvs to the specific area that you want tiled, and some shader trickery to mask out parts on the sheet.

Your best bet and how most people do is a multi material object though

Bens url looks super interesting though

MainManiac · Dec 2011

Hmm it seems my friend would like me to use vertex shading in order to do multiple textures, but I figured that this would have just been an awkward workaround.

How do you uv map with multiple textures in a sheet?

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