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[UE4] Modular Building Set Breakdown

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  • Peude
    Hi, I already by this in Unreal Engine 4 Market place. Please help me how to change single side image to double side. Because i show in your youtube. Its is double side mesh.
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    @Peude - Hi there, yes if you would like to email me I can speak with you about any questions or concerns you have on the asset pack. Here is my email address jacob@purepolygons.com

    @Oblivion2500 - So when I was talking about that, I simply meant that I applied a Brick material to the object and then displayed the brick texture in my UV Editor so that I could hide the seam inside of the bricks grout. Perhaps you already know how to display your textures on your UV editor in maya, but in case not, here is a link for you.
    Display Texture in UV Editor (MAYA)
    Then as I mentioned I hid the seam inside of the bricks grout in this area.
    hqdefault.jpg

    Because no one will notice a cut in the seam in that part of the texture.
  • manilamerc
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    manilamerc polycounter lvl 6
    I wish I was as smart as you! Thanks for this I may use these technique
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    Thanks @Manilamerc!

    So I figured I had a lot of questions about how I created my high poly concrete trim texture and a lot of the process that went into it. So I decided to give away the concrete trim texture and the high poly to all of you guys so you can take a look at it, mess around with it, and hopefully learn from it! It can be downloaded from my gumroads page here.

    https://gumroad.com/purepolygons

    jacob-norris-concrete-building.jpg?1422001436
  • Oblivion2500
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    Oblivion2500 polycounter lvl 10
    Thanks for the free tutorial! It helped me a lot! :poly136:
  • Cody
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    Cody polycounter lvl 18
    jacob - you making it free just made me want to pay for it. So i did. Thanks man, this is great stuff!
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    @Oblivion - No problem! That's great to hear :)

    @Shinigami - I'm not sure what you mean? That my low poly building does not have modeled geo for the bricks and other areas? In video games, the lower poly something is, the more platforms it can run on and the higher framerate that you'll achieve.
    And for films, the sky is the limit. It is all pre-rendered with no rendering happening real time. So they can have as much on screen as they want since frame rate isn't an issue.

    @cody - Thank you so much!! That was a very generous donation and it's donations like that, that allow me to keep posting stuff like this up for free. Thank you
  • Chimp
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    Chimp interpolator
    Got to say, you do some bloody stunning work. What are the terms for the textures you have for sale on Gumroad, can one use them commercially?

    edit: Purchased anyway and found the license inside - posting for anyone who is wondering before purchase:
    Here’s what the SimpleLicense allows for each item on Creative Market:

    - Personal or commercial use
    - All items may only be used in a single commercial project.
    For yourself or on behalf of a client on its own, or as part of a new work
    When used as part of a new work, there’s no limit to the number of copies of the
    new work that can be distributed so long as the copies are not offered for sale
    - Cannot be sublicensed, resold, shared, transferred, or otherwise redistributed on its own (even for free)
    - Cannot be used in a product offered for sale where the item contributes to the core value of the product being sold.
    Example - The asset and or material/texture file cannot be sold as part of a "texture or asset pack" elsewhere.
    Even if its appearance has been slightly altered. The product may only be sold in a stand alone product.
    Such as a video game, movie, or VR simulation

    Thank you for taking the time to read this and enjoy your product!

    Thanks again Jacob, now to spend my saturday afternoon excitedly inspecting your assets :D!
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    @Shinigami - Yes, for all of my textures I high poly modeled them and baked them down. I decided to use tiling textures though for my building set to save on Texture Memory and for time efficiency in creating assets. It's a lot faster and easier to create a few tiling textures that you can apply to everything, instead of creating every single asset uniquely.

    Yes, nature, and mud and such is generally also created in highpoly zbrush, then baked down. It's really up to you to decide what you want to create uniquely and what you want to create as a tiling texture. There is no right or wrong answer, it is really up to you and up to how optimized you want your scene in the end.

    @Chimp - Thanks a lot for the support! I hope you are happy with what you find ;) haha, but don't look too closely or you'll see how bad I really am :P
    Thanks for sharing the license with everyone as well!
  • Oblivion2500
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    Oblivion2500 polycounter lvl 10
    What is your workflow on making height maps? I checked out your modular texture breakdown and the height map is very high quality. How did you make it? In xNormal?

    EDIT:
    Also, how did you make that color mask channel? Invert roughness map?
  • PaulJCampbell
    Very insightful ! thanks
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    What is your workflow on making height maps? I checked out your modular texture breakdown and the height map is very high quality. How did you make it? In xNormal?

    EDIT:
    Also, how did you make that color mask channel? Invert roughness map?

    Hey Oblivion,
    The heightmap was taken directly from highpoly mesh, that yes was baked in xNormals. I didn't really touch it or edit it at all. It's pretty much a direct copy of the highpoly in texture form :)

    As for the color mask, since I am doing everything in photoshop like my grunge/rust/etc. I simply use my layer masks that I am blending my rust/scratches/grunge/etc. in photoshop to easily create a selection from and then fill in black in my color mask. So it is all being created while I am making my diffuse without really any extra work.
  • Oblivion2500
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    Oblivion2500 polycounter lvl 10
    jacob07777 wrote: »
    Hey Oblivion,
    The heightmap was taken directly from highpoly mesh, that yes was baked in xNormals. I didn't really touch it or edit it at all. It's pretty much a direct copy of the highpoly in texture form :)

    As for the color mask, since I am doing everything in photoshop like my grunge/rust/etc. I simply use my layer masks that I am blending my rust/scratches/grunge/etc. in photoshop to easily create a selection from and then fill in black in my color mask. So it is all being created while I am making my diffuse without really any extra work.

    ALright, thanks for the tip!
  • ncav
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    ncav polycounter lvl 5
    This thread is fantastic. Thanks so much for the breakdowns man.
  • [HP]
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    [HP] polycounter lvl 17
    Sorry for the bump, but I found this to be extremly helpful to get back on track with Unreal engine! Thanks a lot man.
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    @HP - I'm really glad it helped, means a lot coming from you! Thanks man :)
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    @ncav - No problem man :) Happy to help!
  • IO1
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    IO1 polycounter lvl 4
    Hi jacob07777 your modular set is great work, could you tell me at which point in the process you created the normal maps for your textures. This is something I'm getting confused about when working on my own projects. To be more specific I'm wondering if you create the diffuse/albedo maps first and then make the normal maps from that or the other way around, or a combination of previous methods, or if you make normal maps another way distinct from the methods I have suggested. Any insight would much appreciated.
  • h8spaCec4EspUdE
    Thanks a lot for the tutorial.
    I have a question about texture atlas padding for mip-map.
    How should that be handled? I do not see any padding in your example.
    dNYyWabFAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    IO1 wrote: »
    Hi jacob07777 your modular set is great work, could you tell me at which point in the process you created the normal maps for your textures. This is something I'm getting confused about when working on my own projects. To be more specific I'm wondering if you create the diffuse/albedo maps first and then make the normal maps from that or the other way around, or a combination of previous methods, or if you make normal maps another way distinct from the methods I have suggested. Any insight would much appreciated.

    @I01 - Thanks a lot! Yeah of course. It's really different to be honest for each individual just depending on how you like to work. For me personally, I always start with the normal map. Usually all of the big shapes, the bevels, the trims, etc. Then I usually start texturing over my normal with the diffuse color and bringing in details, scratches etc. Using the information i create from my diffuse like the small details of scratches and rust I will create a normal from it in ndo or crazybump. I'm not usually making the small details in zbrush just because its a lot quicker to use a normal map tool like crazybump for that and the final result isnt even really a noticeable difference. Hopefully that helps!

    Thanks a lot for the tutorial.
    I have a question about texture atlas padding for mip-map.
    How should that be handled? I do not see any padding in your example.

    @h8spaCec4EspUdE - I noticed you tried to send an image and it isn't showing up for some reason? I haven't experienced any mip-map issues with these textures in Unreal, perhaps you could elaborate or I might understand better if we can get that picture to show up :)
  • h8spaCec4EspUdE
    [QUOTE=@h8spaCec4EspUdE - I noticed you tried to send an image and it isn't showing up for some reason? I haven't experienced any mip-map issues with these textures in Unreal, perhaps you could elaborate or I might understand better if we can get that picture to show up :)[/QUOTE]

    Thanks for your reply.
    I do not remember of sending any image. Anyway, I think I may find the solution.
    When I watch online tutorial, some of them put the uv island a few pixels from the texture boarder, so there will be no bleeding for mip-map.
  • CRYSTAL_Ant
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    CRYSTAL_Ant polycounter lvl 6
    good job man , I would like to know more from Modular asset level environment like wall and others stuff measure can be change or it need to be all the time the same ? I'm learning it and it looks liek sometimes the end of my build is not well covered like it miss some small centimeter ... =/
    I think I just need to be fix with measure and I can start some cool Modular asset be untill that I can't do something weld !
    Thanks having interest ! :)
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    good job man , I would like to know more from Modular asset level environment like wall and others stuff measure can be change or it need to be all the time the same ? I'm learning it and it looks liek sometimes the end of my build is not well covered like it miss some small centimeter ... =/
    I think I just need to be fix with measure and I can start some cool Modular asset be untill that I can't do something weld !
    Thanks having interest ! :)

    Hi Crystal_Ant,

    Thanks for the compliment!
    Your walls don't all have to be the same size, they just all have to line up on a grid that you will specify inside of your 3d program. Just pick a number like 1 meter or 0.5 meters in maya and make sure that all of your walls line up on that grid :)
    Yeah, you can check inside of maya by duplicating the asset and snapping it to the left or right of the wall piece to see if everything lines up properly. I hope that helps!
  • harry1511
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    harry1511 polycounter lvl 5
    Great breakdown, I just have a few questions here, these may be noob's questions as I recently want to expand my knowledge to environment modeling:

    --For most modular assets I have seen, majority of them are outdoor buildings. Can indoor scenes be modular easily? Such as bedrooms, kitchen...etc?

    --As far as I know, modular assets are based on grid heavily. So what about props (stuff like rubble, beds, bunkers, tables, chairs...)? Should they be modeled with the grid system in mind as well, or we can model them freely (of course with correct scale) as unique assets, UV and texture them, then just duplicate them around in the game engine?

    --Also, am I correct that we should plan out the texture maps first before modeling the modular assets? Can we model the assets first and then think about UV and textures later? It seems counter-intuitive to me as I normally model first then I will UV and texture (at least that's what I do with characters)...

    Hope my questions are clear.
  • skyline5gtr
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    skyline5gtr polycounter lvl 11
    Any chance this will go free again, id love it from a tutorial standpoint to study
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    harry1511 wrote: »
    Great breakdown, I just have a few questions here, these may be noob's questions as I recently want to expand my knowledge to environment modeling:

    Hope my questions are clear.

    These are actually some really good questions :)

    Q: --For most modular assets I have seen, majority of them are outdoor buildings. Can indoor scenes be modular easily? Such as bedrooms, kitchen...etc?

    A: Indoor scenes can definitely be a bit more tricky because you have to include a wall "thickness" and then be sure that every wall you make has a front and back with the same "thickness." Because when you have doorways, hallways, etc. the walls will all need to snap and line up properly to fit with your doorways and openings.You don't technically neeed a front and back but then you have to hand place a front and back throughout your whole interior and that can get old quick.

    Q: --As far as I know, modular assets are based on grid heavily. So what about props (stuff like rubble, beds, bunkers, tables, chairs...)? Should they be modeled with the grid system in mind as well, or we can model them freely (of course with correct scale) as unique assets, UV and texture them, then just duplicate them around in the game engine?

    A: Yeah you don't need to worry as much about grids with the props. Only when making video games you sometimes have to be careful how you place the props, because slightly too far from a wall but not far enough and a player can get stuck behind the prop. Or if a char is in between the table and the wall can the player get through there? Does it look like they can but then they get stuck? Just things like this to think about, but for art scenes go crazy and place props however you want haha

    Q: --Also, am I correct that we should plan out the texture maps first before modeling the modular assets? Can we model the assets first and then think about UV and textures later? It seems counter-intuitive to me as I normally model first then I will UV and texture (at least that's what I do with characters)...

    A: It's not necessary to plan out the textures first, but I personally feel that if you are creating a tiling texture to use for all of your assets, if you plan the texture first then you can think while you are modeling if a model will work with the texture you made or what changes you need to make to it in order for it work work properly. So you don't technically HAVE to make the texture first, but it's a good idea to know how you want it to look just so you can model things accordingly. If you make all unique textures for each building piece, then you can model however you want, but it will take a looonngg time to texture each modular building piece with a unique map and texture. plus it will use more memory and more draw calls in the game engine, etc. Hope that helps!
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    Any chance this will go free again, id love it from a tutorial standpoint to study

    Hi skyline :)
    All of the breakdown material is available right here in the thread for free! It's the same as what I included in the pack, the only difference is the pack includes the concrete trim texture and highpoly work for it and the metal trim. Many people are downloading the texture to be used in licensed work and games so I charge a small amount for it. But I made it very cheap still at least so that students and people can learn from it without paying the full license price of the work. I hope the material has helped you and the thread is interesting :)
  • harry1511
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    harry1511 polycounter lvl 5
    Thanks Jacob, it clears up a lot of things for me. :)
  • xChris
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    xChris polycounter lvl 10
    Hey Jacob, awesome stuff. Curious if you used xnormals for your displacement map? If so what are your settings? I'm reverse engineering & can't seem to get a nice displacement map like yours in xnormals, thanks! :):thumbup:
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    xChris wrote: »
    Hey Jacob, awesome stuff. Curious if you used xnormals for your displacement map? If so what are your settings? I'm reverse engineering & can't seem to get a nice displacement map like yours in xnormals, thanks! :):thumbup:

    Hey Chris,
    Thanks man! Yeah this was all xNormals for the maps. Make sure you use "Ray Distance Calculator" in the tools section before you start baking. This sets up your cage at a proper distance and gives you a better bake. Go ahead and start your bake. Then when you get to the Heightmap settings after that secondary window pops up during your bake, use the debugging checkbook at the bottom of the window. This will tell you if you're whites are too white and your blacks are too black. So you can get a good value range in your Heightmap :) Hope that helps!
  • xChris
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    xChris polycounter lvl 10
    jacob07777 wrote: »
    Hey Chris,
    Thanks man! Yeah this was all xNormals for the maps. Make sure you use "Ray Distance Calculator" in the tools section before you start baking. This sets up your cage at a proper distance and gives you a better bake. Go ahead and start your bake. Then when you get to the Heightmap settings after that secondary window pops up during your bake, use the debugging checkbook at the bottom of the window. This will tell you if you're whites are too white and your blacks are too black. So you can get a good value range in your Heightmap :) Hope that helps!

    Thanks for the response buddy :) , I'm getting much better results :thumbup:
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    xChris wrote: »
    Thanks for the response buddy :) , I'm getting much better results :thumbup:
    That's great man! Keep at it :)
  • Klo Works
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    Klo Works polycounter lvl 10
    if you got time to make video tutorial to give us step by step and technique it will be great. :) I will the first to buy it.
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    Klo Works wrote: »
    if you got time to make video tutorial to give us step by step and technique it will be great. :) I will the first to buy it.

    Thanks Klo Works,
    Perhaps I might do that one day. At the moment I'm slowly working on a texturing tutorial in my free time, so maybe I could do something like this eventually :)
  • Klo Works
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    Klo Works polycounter lvl 10
    jacob07777 wrote: »
    Thanks Klo Works,
    Perhaps I might do that one day. At the moment I'm slowly working on a texturing tutorial in my free time, so maybe I could do something like this eventually :)

    I really hope you do that when you got free time. :)

    I have some questions.
    I am now do modular building for our FYP its mix between (new york and hong kong).

    f7Z2GOK.png

    we want to create tillable texture and re-use it similar to your textures.

    the question :
    did you first decide the 3d modular before doing texture ?
    like now we are building the modular and we make sure all snap correctly.
    after that we will decide the texture and which part we can reuse it.
  • allexr
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    allexr polycounter lvl 3
    wooo... nice brakedown...
    thnx for sharing
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    allexr wrote: »
    wooo... nice brakedown...
    thnx for sharing

    No problem :) hope it helped!


    Klo Works wrote: »
    I really hope you do that when you got free time. :)

    I have some questions.
    I am now do modular building for our FYP its mix between (new york and hong kong).

    we want to create tillable texture and re-use it similar to your textures.

    the question :
    did you first decide the 3d modular before doing texture ?
    like now we are building the modular and we make sure all snap correctly.
    after that we will decide the texture and which part we can reuse it.

    That's a great start so far :)
    I did not model before I created my textures, but because I had reference images I knew how wide my trims would be and what types of details I needed in my textures. So since you already have such nice models, just be sure that while you are creating your tiling textures that you keep in mind the look of your models and how you can unwrap the UV's to work well with the textures you are making. I hope that helps! Great start so far and best of luck!
  • danimal1001
    This has been very helpful. A few quick question if its ok.  are these models flat like a plain or created with cubes? Ive been watching other tutorials and lots of them are using cubes as modular assets but it seems yours are made out of plains. second are you creating light maps for these?
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    This has been very helpful. A few quick question if its ok.  are these models flat like a plain or created with cubes? Ive been watching other tutorials and lots of them are using cubes as modular assets but it seems yours are made out of plains. second are you creating light maps for these?
    Hey Danimal,
    I'm glad this helped :)
    Sure questions are always good, no problem. These are all mostly created with planes and not cubes. That is because of optimization and polycount. For my scene the upper parts of the building do not have interiors and so having polygons hiding behind the windows in all of these upper walls would be a ton of extra geo that is slowing down render speeds but is never seen by the player or in your artwork. So I just delete all of the back faces in this case.

    As for the lightmaps, I used to make all of my own lightmaps and in some cases I still have to for unique or odd assets, but in general the Unreal Engine does a great job of automatically creating lightmaps for me :) The less work for the artist the better and the more time you can focus on quality instead of little boring things like lightmaps haha
  • danimal1001
    Thanks for the reply. almost wasted alot of time doing lightmaps for planes i already created.
  • SittingDucky
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    SittingDucky polycounter lvl 10
    fantastic work! and thread too.
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    fantastic work! and thread too.
    Thanks SittingDucky!

    And haha glad to save you some time Danimal
  • getNerdGoCode
    Man! Wow! I have no words to describe this. I thank you for the tutorials that you left! However I had to go ahead and buy the full pack in order to study it, so that I can learn. This stuff are amazing!
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    Man! Wow! I have no words to describe this. I thank you for the tutorials that you left! However I had to go ahead and buy the full pack in order to study it, so that I can learn. This stuff are amazing!
    Wow AlienGuardQ that means a lot man thanks :)
    I never imagined more than a year later people would still be getting such good use out of this Breakdown. That's awesome to hear :)
    Enjoy!
  • cmc444
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    cmc444 polycounter lvl 11
    Every time I have someone ask me a question about modularity or tiling texture mapping for trims I refer them here or come back to this. Excellent write up Jacob! Super helpful :D
  • xChris
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    xChris polycounter lvl 10
    cmc444 said:
    Every time I have someone ask me a question about modularity or tiling texture mapping for trims I refer them here or come back to this. Excellent write up Jacob! Super helpful :D
    I actually came back to take a look at this  yesterday lol
  • Billy4184
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    Billy4184 polycounter lvl 4
    Thank you very much for the breakdown! This stuff is invaluable to my learning.

    I was wondering what sort of technique you'd use for preventing repetitive grunge/damage in a scene where there are a lot of the same tile side by side, are there tricks for randomizing it at runtime in the shader or something, or would you just create a few different meshes?

    Cheers
  • LuisCherubini
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    LuisCherubini interpolator
    Awesome stuff! Keep it up!
  • jacob07777
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    jacob07777 polycounter lvl 15
    Billy4184 said:
    Thank you very much for the breakdown! This stuff is invaluable to my learning.

    I was wondering what sort of technique you'd use for preventing repetitive grunge/damage in a scene where there are a lot of the same tile side by side, are there tricks for randomizing it at runtime in the shader or something, or would you just create a few different meshes?

    Cheers
    Hi Billy,

    That's actually a really good question :)
         It's usually best when using a technique like this to not include too much damage or grunge in your tiling maps. Since as you mentioned you will start to notice the grunge throughout the modular assets being re-used. So the best option is to either create a version 2 of the tiling texture and simply vertex paint grunge onto your assets inside of the Unreal Engine. You can be much more specific about your grunge placement this way and reduce the noticeable tiling.
         The other option would be to create decals for grunge and just overlay them on top of your modular assets. Both techniques work and perhaps a combination of the two will give you the most unique results. I hope that helps!

    cmc444 said:
    Every time I have someone ask me a question about modularity or tiling texture mapping for trims I refer them here or come back to this. Excellent write up Jacob! Super helpful :D
    Thanks Clinton! I really had no idea when I made this that people would find it so useful :) haha

    xChris said:
    I actually came back to take a look at this  yesterday lol
    I'm glad you're still enjoying it Chris haha
  • Daniel_Swing
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    Daniel_Swing ngon master
    This thread just leveled me up. Took a while for me to understand but now I realize that this answers a lot (if not all) of my questions I've been having lately! Thanks a lot!
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