Hey hey!

Righto, Since I got huge problems with UVW's and textures on my models, I took a look at Bethesda's models. And well, I figured out fast how they got their texture, and that they really don't use a lot of time with UVW's ^^

For thoose who don't know. Bethesda simpy got pictures of anything resembling what they want. For instance, the Silver Claymore texture looks like it is poart of a building/statue? Then added a little UVW and viola: finish.

My question comes here: what would be the best way to actually texture? Is the way bethesda does really that great? I mean, it really does make re-texturing impossible without re-UVW-ing it all. So, what is the best way to texture a custom model?

EDIT: So I took a look at the Daedric texture ... um ... So, basically that is a background where they've added outlines thanks to the UVW and detailed? Not too much fuzz with Oblivion Texture I see! Looks kinda smart actually .. for a one-themed thing like Daedric weapons.


A) Bethesda's way: Pictures of anything which looks like what you want, cutting it good enough, then adding an OK/Cheap UVW ontop of it. Looks good, but no way to retexture?

B) Make a decent UVW, then find pictures of whatever you want it to look like and make it fit the UVW: almost the same as Bethesda does in Oblivion, but it should make retexturing easier. Since the texture is added to the UVW, not the other wat around.

C) Make a good UVW, using minimal photo references, and painting in details. Pretty much like they do in MMO's? I guess this will looks kinda badish or bad decent atleast.

Oh well, I kinda want to know where I should go from ^^

I know I should post this somewhere else .. but um.... I doubt anyone else know what I am talking about?

Cheers,

matth80

Since a game needs multiple textures in (video) memory at the same time to display multiple objects, it's common to re-use textures as much as possible, so that multiple displayed objects can share the same copy of the map data. That often means that individual meshes have less than optimal map layouts when looked at in isolation. Is that what you're seeing?

The trade-offs are always between "realism" (does that apply for fantasy settings?) and rendering performance. Re-textures almost always slow the frame rate, but faster GPU's get that back for you so the balance point of the trade-off keeps moving.

There is no single right way to make a texture or a single good UV layout. It depends on the object and what look you are going for. What may look like a crappy layout originally may have been optimal for what Bethesda was doing, and its really not up to them to make their meshes ideal for retexturing.

In terms of textures, I think photo textures are almost almost necessary in modern games. Unless you're a really, really good artist (which, face it, most of us are not) you won't be able to make a texture that looks like a specific material and blends into the game world. However, just taking a photo and slapping it on a mesh looks crappy as well. The trick is to mix photo textures with hand painting and photoshop filters to make it look both realistic and appropriate for the model. How much each part is depends on the model itself.

P.S. Many modern MMOs also use photo textures

Not sure what you mean. How does the silver claymore texture look like a part of a building or statue? The texture also fits the UV, so it's pretty clear that the UV was there first. They made the UV map, then made the texture to fit that UV map. Hard to resize a random image to a UV map without loosing quality or making it look weird, especially for unique objects. A UV map is only how you put a 2D image on a 3D object. Finding the best way to do that can be easy or hard depending on your mesh. Best is if you can make a UV map that has no visible seams, no stretching, same resolution everywhere (although that may depend on the mesh and what you want to achieve) and that makes best use of the available texture space. If you got that right go and make a texture for it. I'd say that is what Bethesda did. Of course not every UV map they made is perfect, but it's a huge commercial game with thousands of meshes and you can't tweak everything until it's 100% perfect if you have limited time.

Well, if you take a look at the texture for it, and break the UVW apart, well .. I mean, look at DAGoldbrand texture.
My point is they place many parts of the same sword on the same piece of texture, which for me doesn't really look like a perfect UVW.
I mean, say you want to reteuxture the whole thing, and add some new texture to it - not brand new, but a little, then you will have to re-UVW the whole thing.


Right, so getting my hands on a lot of photo's is a must I assume then? Better get my camera out then and take photo of rust! weee...

I am still stuck on god UVW's >.< but that is because not a single tutorial on the net have thought me how to make a decent UVW for something more than a box .....

Thanks for all the replies!


Cheers,

Matth80

What you are talking about here is the difference between texturing to a map or mapping to a texture.

Texturing to a map - doing a uv unwrap before adding a texture, creating a nice neat and easy to comprehend map that can be used as a background layer in Photoshop. This is the method used by most modders and preferred by many texture artists and especially useful for retextures. One advantage of this method is that meshes can be easily reused to create new armour or clothing.

Mapping to a texture - Find a good quality picture of what you want and crop it to game compatible dimensions. Open the picture in Blender's UV-Editor and do a "area unwrap" or "face by face" unwrap of your mesh, mapping the faces of your mesh to the parts of the picture you want them to display. You can then go back to the picture and edit it in Photoshop, rearranging the parts of the picture you will use and eliminating the parts you will not use, freeing up space to add bits and pieces of other pictures. You would then return to Blender and shift the map to match the new locations. The advantage to this method will be photo realistic textures, and when done properly they can look spectacular. The disadvantage will be that the mesh will be single use - not good for retextures.

There is nothing cheap about mapping to a texture. I use a combination of both methods, whatever is appropriate, whatever looks best. The deciding factor is how it looks in game - if it looks good it is good, IMO.


RGMage2

Ah... I see...... hm.. guess I'll have it in mind, and perhaps try both out.

Thanks for clarifying it!

Cheers,

Matth80!

The reason they do that is it saves space on the map and thus they can create a higher resolution texture in a smaller space ( figure in most cases the 2 sides of a sword blade are going to be the same so why layout and use twice the texture space to lay each side separately on the UV map - sure it makes it difficult to retexture if you want to add details to one side and not the other but if that was what they planned when making the UVmap they would lay it out differently - which is why in order to do good retextures you really need to learn to UVmap (even if it is simply how to select portions of a model that is already mapped to relocate them on the map layout)

You don't need to reUVunwrap the entire model just select the portions that are not in the correct placement and move them to a different position/empty space on the map or if needed move all of the map around and adjust the texture accordingly (move\resize portions of the existing texture to match the new layout to reuse portions of an existing texture and then create the space needed for the adjusted portions and create the new texture for it

Oblivion has imo pretty terrible UV and textures for the most part, considering it is a such a massive title. They have gotten a LOT better with F3, the assets are just superior.

A good UV layout is extremely important.

Make everything scaled relative to the object itself. It maybe tempting to scale a part of something up to fill the UV space. but actually that completely bad form.

In any next-gen asset, for the most part, UV distortion is bad. everyone is saying you cant get away with it these days. and I agree. things are so high-rez and has such realism, when it comes to texturing, the UV needs to be distortion free.

for many things full unwraps are advisable. If you do mirroring, you get more out of your UV and thus texture sheet. you can do off center mirroring to good effect http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/LightMapUnwrapping.html. down the middle mirroring of objects is usually painful to an experienced eye.. you also have to juggle the UVs when baking. or when you do AO bake, you might have to do some sections twice. You will see that mirroring UVs to the extent oblivion has done on its weapons, will be less and less common.

you may need to a good amount of padding between UV shells. most games use something called texture filtering, anisotropic filtering is form of... this basically blurs pixels on textures, if the shells don't have adequate amount of padding, then a bleed can occur and cause artifacts. mipmaps as well.

Texturing- for most things in modern nextgen titles, a highpoly model is made. AO and normal maps are baked off of it. AO can be baked from the lowpoly itself as well. and tbh if that is all you had, I would still bake it. honestly. just do it. after I started baking my textures my stuff looked a hell of a lot better. everyone can bake AO. it can be done in xnormal with very good results. here is a model I made showing why AO looks good.
http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c85/lego-botz/Fallout3/AO2.jpg
the texture is identical, except the AO bake is multiplied over the top of the left ones texture

then the rest of the texturing is done. This section will almost always have some hand painted elements.
but this is not always the case. there are many variations. sometimes projection texturing is used first, then the artist will sculpt in those texture details onto the highpoly. depends on the artist and the subject, most artists have both at their disposal a multitude of techinques and methods.

so on and so forth.

edit: RedGuard Mage2, what you call Mapping to a texture is a bit redundant sounds tedious, you can just project the texture on the mesh, and the UV is pretty much irrelevant. there is no need to try to fiddle with a UV like that. I've done those area unwraps, taking selections and planer mapping it bit by bit.... like why was I doing that. it took so long instead of minutes.
Or even if you did do that just to get it mapped....you could then just open another UV channel and bake the texture onto any new UV layout you wished, in as much time as it takes to make your UV layout.