Texturing: Dead Pixels

HAWK12HT · Dec 2011

Hi there, I have recently moved into texturing for games and wondering what is the margin of black pixels (Dead pixels) when texturing. As I find mixed up opinion regarding covering up the entire texture space with color info vs unwrapping objec UV in large chunks to cover 0 to 1 UV space more.

So I would like to know your opinion on this matter.

Mark Dygert · Dec 2011

Quadsphere with a tennis ball unwrap FTW.

passerby · Dec 2011

ya marks idea is the best, and most efficient UV's for a sphere, find it easier to texture like that too

HAWK12HT · Dec 2011

ah nice one Mark.

Mark Dygert · Dec 2011

Also if a regular triangulated sphere works best for creating a texture, you can use Render To Texture to bake the diffuse of a tri-sphere to the quad sphere. I've done that a few times and it works great.

HAWK12HT · Dec 2011

My bad I appreciate your feedback, but I think i ddint explain it properly what i wanted to talk about. Its the concept of using all pixels when textuing for games, like 1024x1024 texture sheet (above posted) VS texture for one object (above).

Frankie · Dec 2011

If it helps you visualize the dead space needed around the edges you can save as a DDS then load back into photoshop with show mip chain enabled. The game uses these mips to try and keep a 1 to 1 texture to screen pixel ratio so you can see how big the texture will be on screen when it starts to break down (this effect is a lot worse on angles although ansio filtering helps)

Dont use black in between the textures as it will still bleed into the mipped textures, instead try and bleed or pad the texture out so it is surrounded by the same colour pixel. (xnormal plugin dilation)

A good idea for texturing like this is keep the image long and thin (or short and fat) so you can tile them in one direction.

Mark Dygert · Dec 2011

Yep you need to be careful and allow enough room for proper edge padding, like frankie pointed out padding plays a huge roll in mip maps. You can help mitigate edge bleeding by grouping things that are similar in color in the same area of the texture sheet. So if it does bleed it will bleed something similar. You can also color the dead space to best match the most dominate color in your material, so it has less of a chance to show bleeding.

cptSwing · Dec 2011

xNormal also has a photoshop plugin that can add padding to your textures, i just forgot it's name..

Ace-Angel · Dec 2011

^Dilation filter.

seth. · Dec 2011

dialate would be the creature that cpt swing is refering too, I use it a fair bit at work. Beyond that if the object compliments it thene there is no problem with going rectangular on the maps....512x1024 for instance, which could save on your texture space.

edit* aww balls beaten byace-angel...well thems the breaks

cptSwing · Dec 2011

that's the one

work into it your PS export action if you have one, and easy peasy off you go.

HAWK12HT · Dec 2011

oh wow, did knew padding thing is hooked up even when it comes to texturing in Photoshop. I thought its just for lightmaps in UDK

and u have to give it only in ur 3D app while unwrapping.

Thank you so much all for feedback and useful links

.
cheers

cptSwing · Dec 2011

google mip-maps, for example. basically, in order to avoid visual artifacts, your texture gets swapped with a lower-res version at a certain distance. sind these usually get generated automatically, artifacts can creep in at the edges of your shells.

Texturing: Dead Pixels

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