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UVW Maps Small pieces and large reference textures

by Carlos Orlando Solorzano Flores · in Artist Corner · 05/09/2011 (12:20 pm) · 4 replies

Hello everybody, I have a problem maybe one of you can solve. I'm modeling and medieval styled house in 3Ds Max to use in a prototype of a small adventure game. When I Unwrap the UV's I get some small pieces that correspond to the house frame. I bought 3D Total Texture pack where I get some really good quality and high resolution textures for wood. Since the texture files are 1200 x 1200 and my UV piece is only 44x55 when I try to scale and paint the texture I get some really ugly textures since I scaled down the textures so much. Can I use multiple texture files for the same object, and would torque accept this? Should I break my house into multiple objects and assemble it inside the world editor each with its own texture map (Where my small pieces would be bigger)? I really hope some one can help me or point me in the right direction. Thanks in advanced.
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Torque 3D Owner Willbkool
#1
05/09/2011 (4:19 pm)
Yes, you can use multiple textures for one model. You can have a roof, wall, floor, whatever, be different textures. In fact, that is better to me than using one large texture. If you only have one large texture, you can have only one setting in the material.cs file. So your specular or whatever setting would be the same for the whole model. But if you have separate textures for each part, then you can adjust the specular for each texture so that the roof is different from the walls, etc..

I'm not familiar with Max, but in Ultimate Unwrap 3d, you can scale the uv's. So I'm sure that Max will let you do that so the textures will look better. Also, you probably already know this, when you scale down textures in photoshop, use 'bicubic sharper' so that the texture loses less detail.

I hope this might help you some, as I am not an expert in this.

Torque 3D Owner Carlos Orlando Solorzano Flores
#2
05/10/2011 (6:46 am)
Thank you very much, that cleared a lot of issues. Yes Max does let you scale the UV's. I will try it out as soon as I get a chance since I'm at my day job lol XD.

Torque Owner Ken Johnston
Indiestructable Systems
#3
05/10/2011 (7:50 am)
while it is perfectly acceptable and possible to use multiple textures on a single object like that it is not optimal. each texture you use needs to be loaded into memory to draw it in the game world, which means the engine will perform better and you will utilize less draw cells if you utilize one texture as opposed to multiple textures, if you use your house multiple times you will see a drastic degradation in performance. You are better off using for example one 1024x1024 texture rather than 2 512x512 textures.

Instead of trying to scale the texture down such that you loose all of the detail instead try and maximize the texture space you do have and scale the uv,s up and the textures down such that you utilize all the space you have and the model still looks good. it is a bit of an art to pull off, but with plenty of practice and trial and error you can get very good results. Realize most professionally produced games are not using multiple texture sheets on a single object but one sheet that may even be reused multiple times to make an optimal game.

Torque 3D Owner Carlos Orlando Solorzano Flores
#4
05/10/2011 (8:47 am)
Thanks Ken, I ended up doing what you said I merge similar pieces together and tried to optimized my UVs as much as I could and ended up with some nice results.