Definately looks like a fuse box. The scratches are uniformly placed around the surfaces. They would be unique if brushed against or hit from various angles. Oddly enough, the UVs are all unique. Share UV space with repeating details to give more pixels to your important details.
Each pixel is a vector point, it's all handled by some kind of funky algorithm that packs them neatly. Not very practical, really. Reduces memory overheads and is indeed more efficient, yes - but loses accuracy. I like how mip-maps can store mesh LODs.
Those are all good tips. But, Rescale Elements will not solve the stretching in this case, it will only scale whole elements so their pixels are the same size. Which is a good thing anyhow! This is mostly a case of just trying to UV large chunks, without using enough seams to solve the distortions.
Oh wow, that's so clean baking. I can't figure out why I can't bake stuff like that. Last time I made a lowpoly torso that would cover hires body and armor, the intersection between the two would look so horrible and pixelated.
Oh I see. So I should just downscale the Xnormal-baked maps to 2K in Photoshop and use them to texture? Will it export flawlessly then? I just tried the solution and it's a lot better, although there's still some pixelation in some places in comparison to the Photoshop downscaled texture.
OK, so you are rendering sprites. So, take a look at the last link I posted. How large in pixels are the rendered sprites going to be? You may need to paint on the rendered frames to make them look good. ShoeBox Game Tools might be helpful for you.
Hey, great job you did here! Can you tell me, do you match pixel density between separate models? How do you choose size of the texture for separate part. Can you show some of the textures and UV layouts? Thanks!
Well, I'm noticing that the pixelated image colours of all the comps they have done so far (Escape, Petrol/Blood) look the same. Some cool blue tones, then some warm browns/yellows. Next time maybe we could get some greens in there :P
Also, acceptable instruction count depends on how visible the material will be on screen. For example a costly terrain material can eat performance quite a bit since there are so many pixels to shade. I just have to point out, that you said "greater than 100" :P
Random rotation of grass, otherwise it just looks odd. Even worse... If you are going to use alpha tested surfaces don't for the love of god use a black background on the texture. Match it up to the pixel. Otherwise, you will have ugly looking shit like those trees there.