Plank Wood WIP

[NeptuneImaging]

Wow, not a critique? I really need some of your advice...I am painting this from scratch...

[jamacsween]

Hi,


Not much to say really. Looks quite good, but what are you using it for?

JA

[NeptuneImaging]

I am using this in a house, on a 3D Model, trying to paint it and make it realistic as possible...

[jamacsween]

HaloAnimator,

Just starting in texturing myself, but what I make out (ref Leigh and her fantastic posts) is that take size of area in quesiton in final render and double that to give the texture resolution. Use that principle and all should be fine.

Good luck

JA

[Ian Jones]

Yeah it definitely looks quite small. Depends on how big the floor area will be on screen. Put simply, if it appears as a larger area in the final render window size than the 512*512 then it will need to be upsampled and therefore lose quality the larger it gets. Make your texture at least 1.5 times the maximum size it will actually appear on screen if you want the best results.

[NeptuneImaging]

I totally agree. I am working right now with a 2048x2048 rez, and then lowering it to a 512x512. However I am not sure if this is wise

[jamacsween]

Not sure if I get wha you mean, but you should use the 2048^2 version in your rendering if appropriate, not the 512 version.


JA

[NeptuneImaging]

it is for a game model... and I am using alpha maps

[jamacsween]

Apologies then,


For a game model then assume that 512^2 is more than enough (but not much experience with those types of models).

JA

[NeptuneImaging]

I learned this trick from Unreal tournament designers...doubling or tripling the resolution of my textures...and then lowered it to 512x512....

Can anyone back me up on this?

[jamacsween]

Halo,

Not disagreeing with you. I've heard that tip too. Work in high res (twice what you finally want) then half the size. When halving I find doing a 2 pixel by 2 pixel pixelate operation before halfing the size keeps alot of the images definition.

cheers

JA

[EricChadwick]

For game environments, you should use a much smaller texture, like 64x64, and tile it heavily across the floor. For characters, 512 is OK. Just not for environments. You'll run out of texture memory very quickly.

The trick is to get rid of artifacts that make it an obvious repetition. It's difficult... you want the texture to be as small as possible, but that means it needs to be repeated a lot, which in turn means you can't have much variation otherwise the tiling becomes too obvious.

Some tricks to get around this are multi-texture, where you use a detail texture (plank edges) that is tiled heavily, and a macro texture (dirt/wear patterns/rough shading) that is not tiled at all (or very little). The two are combined by the game using some sort of blend (linear, multiply, add, whatever) which then creates a more complex-looking texture out of two very small pixel-size source maps.

A couple tutorials for tiling. The first one is the best one, IMO.
http://www.twisted-strand.com/ut_tutorials/text_tut/index.html
http://www.3dgate.com/techniques/2001/010625/0625hajba.html
http://www.planetquake.com/polycount/cottages/cokane/textures_tutorial.html
http://www.3drender.com/light/EqTutorial/tiling.htm
http://www.gfxartist.com/features/tutorials/740

Hope this helps you.

[NeptuneImaging]

Oh it helps. Actually the wood grain is simply created from a pattern and then cloned. If you mean, making my UV map 64x64 and cloning the material, I can try that. It is not for a particular engine or anything, I just want so much detail out of it. I could make a 512x512 if I actually put the pieces of my house model in one UV Map...but I have never tried that...

I think I should...:thumbsup:

[NeptuneImaging]

Okay, I just had the resolution lowered to a 64x64 sheet...and I lost major detail...I may now have to go back and put all of these textures into a single sheet...it may cost me but I will try it...:thumbsup:

[EricChadwick]

Crop a small section (64x64) out of the 512x512. Wouldn't make sense to resize that kind of texture. Besides, you can probably do a better-looking wood than that. Do some research?
http://images.google.com/images?q=hardwood+floor&ie=UTF-8&hl=en

[NeptuneImaging]

Oh, yeah. I did research on the kind of wood I want and what I found was extremely amazing. And since I am not putting this in an engine of any kind, I figure I can learn how to do game stuff. My dojo is no more than 4100 triangles, excluding doors and other animatable items which I may have to model as separate entities and I am working in Lightwave, using layers.

I am actually taking a tip I saw on another model where this guy made a house and textured the whole thing using 1x512x512 (what the hell does this mean anyway?) and it looked amazing. I am also using baked textures and bump-mapping (game modeling with Xbox in mind, using real time lighting and shadows) which it why the rez for that floor was so high. And it was an experiment at first. But I will take your advice and use a 512 color, specular, and bump texture map on the whole thing.

I notice you are in boston...are you in game design? :thumbsup:

[EricChadwick]

...since I am not putting this in an engine of any kind, I figure I can learn how to do game stuff...Best way to learn IMO is to actually put it in a game engine. See what really works (or perhaps more importantly what doesn't work). Take an easy one like Unreal, with all their handy tools. Better that than all the guesswork you seem to be going through. I know, it may be tough learning all this stuff. But creating levels for an exisitng game is really a good way to start learning how game art really works.

One 512x512 means the artist is using a packed texture. Here's a good example...
http://www.realtimecg.com/template.php?n=list&id=11
Not doing game design at present.
Here's what I'm up to...
http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=125091
Here's what I've done in the past...
http://www.ericchadwick.com/portfolio/

[NeptuneImaging]

Oh, okay...cool. So, my dojo house, as simple as it is, can be made using a packed texture. Sweet. I will get right on it. And yes it is hard, since I am just a student. Just the modeling part is easy. Most of my renders I will be doing will be Before-Engine stuff. Modeled and Rendered in Lightwave. Max resolution will be 512 for everthing if focused on game stuff...

If I remember correctly, the game engine converts those textures into raw pixels, right?

P.S.: I do not like Unreal Tournament. LOL. And since I have become Interested in Normal Mapping, I am solely focused on that as well. Until then, I will stay on game modeling. And I am a student also

[NeptuneImaging]

Hey eric,

Is this an example of a packed texture? I have two packed textures for this Dojo model. I will post it now. What do you think?

[NeptuneImaging]

As I practice, I will soon get better with this...here is a packed UV Map

[EricChadwick]

Too much empty space. Should leave 5 pixels between each UV chunk, at the minimum (for mipping... look it up). Leave that small border between chunks, and try to use up all the reast of that empty black space. Potential employers will pick up on this.

Also, I see areas that might benefit from tiling. In that case, break those tilable surfaces out into their own separate 4-way-tiling small (64x64 or smaller) textures.

Some good tiling/packing tutorials here.
http://www.poopinmymouth.com/tutorial/tutorial.htm

Also take another look at that Winter Witches Abode, see how carefully the artist packed their textures.

[NeptuneImaging]

Crap.

This was my house too. I should probably scale up most of the tiny pieces. I also made a second map for the wood pieces that I could not fit in there...

I am also baking most of these textures. As for the tiling, I could break up that square with the triangles in it into 4 squares...not sure how that is going to work, but I am going to test it. The floor piece will be a 256x256 if tiled and broken into pieces. Cool. That big piece, got to leave it intact for the roof.

My only concern is if all of that detail I am looking for will be there in crisp form. Excluding doors that are highly detailed.

Thanks...
I am going to try that right now.

[EricChadwick]

Lots of good info in this thread, if you haven't seen it.

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=61068

[NeptuneImaging]

Okay, Eric, how is this for a packed texture map? I actually took your advice and put most of the perfect pieces to overlap each other such as the floor piece and the roof...

what do you think?

[EricChadwick]

Hard to tell without seeing the actual texture itself, and also seeing the model with that texture applied.

Packing looks OK, but not the best you can do, I still see a lot of empty space. At 512x512, you should have at least a 4 pixel border around each chunk, to prevent seams from mipping. But more than that is a waste. Don't be afraid to stretch the UVs a little to fill empty areas, the tradeoff is you get a squished texel aspect ratio, but more pixels to work with inside a chunk. But temper that with the knowledge that it's better to keep a uniform texel density all around the room (don't want floor pixels to be huge/low-density, while a rug uses tiny/high-density pixels).

Also you probably could use more overlap or tiling than this, depending on your model. The long walls with the wide doors in the middle... they could overlap within themselves to tile the wood texture across a wall.

[EricChadwick]

Oh, just remembered you're baking lighting into your texture. If your game supports it, it's better to bake the lighting into a separate UV channel that has no tiling, and is just the lighting color, no texture. Then use another UV channel for the color maps, and this one tiles and reuses heavily. That way the color map pixels are small on the model, while the lighting pixels are larger, because the lighting doesn't need to be as precise as, say, woodgrain.

[NeptuneImaging]

Yeah, I am actually baking Procedurals into the image, since the environment will be constantly changing (weathering, damage, etc.) And most of all my lighting will be vertex lighting (using lighting in engine), and dynamic shadows. The doorways are two different surfaces, a concrete (baked texture) and wood (hand painted)

I have also stretched the UV Map to its boundaries last night before this writing. I will post the UV grid again tonight.

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