Quick Question on Tiling Textures and Enviro
Cheers for reading the thread; after a recent lecture I was a little confused about environment modelling and the texture aspects.
I've always been taught textured must be within the 0-1 square and UVs can be overlapped to save space on models requiring the same textures... or i.e. mirroring a models texture etc to achieve a higher quality and res finish. This is suitable for AO maps, Normal maps etc.. which in general provides a nice clean result:
Example UV Map 1:
However, have now been advised against what i've previously been taught; and advised to use this method for tiling textures... and use alpha planes here and there to add grafiti etc to break it up...however surely this is bad practice? And disallows my AO and normal bakes....
Example UV Map 2:
Cheers
I've always been taught textured must be within the 0-1 square and UVs can be overlapped to save space on models requiring the same textures... or i.e. mirroring a models texture etc to achieve a higher quality and res finish. This is suitable for AO maps, Normal maps etc.. which in general provides a nice clean result:
Example UV Map 1:
However, have now been advised against what i've previously been taught; and advised to use this method for tiling textures... and use alpha planes here and there to add grafiti etc to break it up...however surely this is bad practice? And disallows my AO and normal bakes....
Example UV Map 2:
Cheers
Replies
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showpost.php?p=1412802&postcount=32
This looks like every surface is uniquely mapped. Which means the pixel resolution is going to be very low. You should tile the floor, roof, walls, etc. You can do it this way:
http://www.game-artist.net/forums/tutorials/182-step-step-techniques-tiling-textures-3ds-max.html
http://poopinmymouth.com/process/tips/thirding.jpg
For lightmaps (and AO), usually there's a 2nd UV set that has no overlapping and no mirroring. So each polygon has a unique spot in the 0-1 UV box. Some artists get fancy with this UV, and overlap things that will get the same lighting, or scale down things that need less lighting (like the bottom of a barrel).
Your 2nd example makes no sense for game UVs, unless you're simply showing how it can tile. But you would never map a box like this. Here's a better UV layout for a box, reusing various parts.
http://orbart.free.fr/Gallery/Images/crate.jpg
http://wiki.polycount.com/ModularMountAndBlade
I understand the second example doesn't really make sense, I was literally just pointing out how I've been told that UVs can be OUTSIDE the 1-0 space.
Cheers for all the examples, but I'm guessing you can as i was told use OUTSIDE of the 0-1 space for repeating walls etc? Sorry to sound simple but it just confuses me
If anyone else could have a few more examples - that would be great
If you, just for example, make same building, and decide to use 1 texture for roof, 2 for walls, etc., you with the use of advance vertex painting, you could nicely blend those two wall textures and get very unique results even though you have just two tileable textures. But this way, it will look far more detailed even when you get close. And textures doesn't even have to be 2048 at all.
And you can still use second UV map for AO baking, normal map etc if needed.
Like for example, here you have just 2 tilabale textures, and see how you can blend them:
I hope that helps.
The geometry is also broken up into modular elements since we were planning to create multiple fortresses in different configurations.
There are some downsides to this method as well. You end up creating a lot of extra verts and UV seams where changes in material happen. Breaking things up with the trims is necessary to hide the tiling, but it's easy to go overboard. The right balance probably depends on the specific engine/project involved.
In this case we didnt have a 2nd UV set for AO, so we actually used dark vertex color applied to some verts in the base mesh when we could. It's not very apparent in the screen shot, however.