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View Full Version : Proper way to texture tiny/thin objects?

akvan
03-22-2008, 12:39 AM
How do you guys go about texturing very small objects like nails, hanging wire cables, small pipes, tiny bits of rock, litter... ect, things that are very small or thin? So far, what I've been doing is create a small square patch of texture and just dragging the whole UV into it, sometimes not even unwrapping it. This produces the right result, which is coloring the small object with enough variations so that its not a complete solid color, but I get the feeling that's not the best way to do it (or is it?). So how do you guys go about texturing these types of objects?
Synthesizer
03-22-2008, 01:34 AM
I generally do the same, although if your engine depends on verticies for performance, welding UV's smartly is a good idea. Also, if your objects will work for it, having a bevel in the normal map works nicely. For example, if you have a bunch of thin, rectangular objects, overlay them and add a stripe of opposing normal map colours to the edges. This works great even at super low resolutions.
G0st
03-22-2008, 05:08 AM
Ive actually seen some people use sheets of either 256 or 512 with variations of small object materials on it. You could fit alot of variations models on sheet this size, you can work on it section by section as you need the pieces. As these are small pieces too they will lost likely be used in several maps, so putting a 512 texture into memory wouldnt be too harsh. I havent taken this approach before, but if i cross it again, which i think is soon, im going to give it a whirl. Anyone have any cons this this method?
gsokol
03-25-2008, 02:26 AM
GOst, that is the method I would use. It is a good idea because for all those individual tiny objects you have will end up being like instances and instead of having to read several smaller maps you can have one medium sized one it always reads over and over again.
novaprospekt
03-25-2008, 03:04 AM
Ive actually seen some people use sheets of either 256 or 512 with variations of small object materials on it. You could fit alot of variations models on sheet this size, you can work on it section by section as you need the pieces. As these are small pieces too they will lost likely be used in several maps, so putting a 512 texture into memory wouldnt be too harsh. I havent taken this approach before, but if i cross it again, which i think is soon, im going to give it a whirl. Anyone have any cons this this method?
This is just hypothesis, but one downside might exsist in that, the entire texture must be rendered every frame, even the pixels not being used by a mesh.
But, depending on the number of detailed items, this method would still be more efficient then loading several idividual textures for each object.
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