Environment Texturing
Hi there. Im very new to modeling and this forum too. Have been lurking for a while though.Im currently trying to design a 'damaged' engine/electrical blah room for no purpose at the moment, and have no idea to go about texturing it. Ive read various texturing tutorials but still seem stuck on UVW wrapping on 'whole' objects. Hope this made sense. There is probably tons of mesh mistakes aswell but im learning, feedback would great though.
Basically im asking what would be the correct step for this model?
Really appreciate any help!
Images;
Replies
Hey man, thanks for the reply. Those examples/links would be great. I mainly read about tiling textures but still need to figure how to apply. Currently i don't know how to add 'material/texture' to different 'objects' in a soild whole model.
The best approach for the machinery assets is somewhat project specific. It depends on your overall texture budget, and things like whether or not you'll be doing high-to-low normal map bakes. If the machinery components are high priority assets, I would create dedicated textures by means of high-to-low bakes for normal/ambient-occlusion information, and then tileable 'detail' textures for when the camera is close to the assets. This assumes that the scene is going into a game engine.
If what I've said seems confusing, check out the tutorial links that Chase posts; they're bound to shed some light. Also, check out the Polycount wiki (http://wiki.polycount.com/). There's a whole section on texturing there.
The bottom-line is that there are many, many techniques for texturing that vary per project requirements. If you are doing this purely for learning purposes, and the assets won't be going into an engine, the simplest approach would probably be to tile the walls/floor/ceiling, and then give each machinery asset its own dedicated texture sheet.
You could create tiling textures that easily apply to most of your scene. They're quick and simple to make. The best thing about this method is that you can get a model to look different based on where you put the UVs in the texture. Some things work better using tiling textures like walls and floors where others wouldn't like a gun or something more individualized. There's always a balance. With that comes exporting the materials into the game engine....
If you're using more then one texture you're going to want to use what's called a multi sub object. You don't necessarily have to, but it allows you to view all of your textures and naming conventions at once. It's an organization thing.
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Video 3
Walk through
You have two ways of applying a multi sub object.
1) Before you export you want to attach each individual piece that makes up your model so that it's now one whole mesh. For instance, attach the branches and trunk of a tree together. Next go to the Material Editor, use the material picker and click your model and this will automatically create a multi sub object for you.
2) You could go about it the complete opposite by creating a multi sub object material first, then assign individual material ID's to specific sections of your model by clicking their faces using the polygon selection....like in video 2.... thus the textures would be placed on the model based on their corresponding material ID's. This procedure is a bit confusing to me when it comes to more complicated meshes. Walls, floors, trim, that sort of thing it's easy to think about what the texture will be; however, more complicated pieces just requires more planning so it's probably just me that finds it mildly frustrating.
I hope I'm making sense, but if not I can post pictures of what I mean. I'm more visual myself so I might just do that for the sake of things
Here are videos that goes over the entire texture process. All of the different map types are discussed.....Diffuse, Normal, Spec, Gloss, Ambient Occlusion.
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Video 2
Video 3
Make a list of the materials you need.
are the walls concrete, what kind of trims do you need. Can the metal pipes resuse the same metal texture. You can see if all the smaller elements can use one texture. that texture would have different sections that represent the different objects.
Very useful will have a read up!
What kind of asset is this btw? (camera distancE) Seems like something you would create for a TPS of some kind. Going with a texture atlas could be a choice then.