Texturing Pipelines, Files, and Industry Expectations

When it comes to texturing, there are several ways one can go about creating an asset. It is extremely important to carefully consider what the best method is when planning out a texture. For example, any 3D model will have a seam of some sort within one of the textures. This is unavoidable due to the nature of 2D textures wrapped around a 3D model. But one thing to consider is where you can hide seams within the texture and on the model itself. This largely comes into play during the UV process of course, and forward planning and thinking is critical during this stage. An example of hiding seams might be if you have a tree in a scene. Perhaps the camera won’t rotate the entire way around the tree, therefore it makes sense to hide the seam where the player and camera won’t see it. Another method is through use of tillable textures, which can be placed next to each other without having any noticeable seam. (Image Below: Serr 2009).

It is also important to consider what textures might be able to be shared among multiple models. An example of this is within our current faction assignment where the class has been divided into two groups to work together to make a Warcraft-like RTS hypothetical game (We are making the models). In the faction that I am working on, the race has various crystals and tree leaves. It therefore makes sense that we can create a single texture that can be shared among all the UVs from the various models. This is particularly important when you are dealing with texture resolution limits, which happens in industry, similar to tri count limits on models. However, pixel density is an important thing to remember, especially if sharing a texture. You don’t want the same wall texture to be realllyyyyyyy small on one model then stretched to oblivion on another. (Image Below: Cloy Toons. 2016).

Version control is also paramount during every step of the way, especially when dealing with software products such as Maya where either the program might do something weird and ruin your work, or you unsuspectingly tarnish your own work by a few innocent mouse clicks. Iterative saves. Remember this!

File types are also important to consider as different types can format an image differently, greatly affecting the overall file size as well as quality of the image. Photoshop’s PSD files can be huge, but along with these files comes the benefits of things such as layers and history of actions that have been done. File types such as PSD and PNG are also mostly industry standard. They are high quality and flexible/easily implemented into most software applications.

Despite being a greatly varied industry, there are of course a few stock standard expectations that come to mind with game development. As mentioned above, tri and texture resolution limits are frequent. This is due to memory usage. In a game that could potentially be spawning 1000s of models, there is a high risk for severe performance issues. It is also good practice as it forces designers to work to a certain expectation. For example, with limitations you can’t simply create a high-poly model. It would greatly break the relationship between all the other models (As well as have performance issues).

I suppose the most important thing is to remember that it is more important to work smart and think outside the box using what tools you have, to hide the obvious flaws that can come with the development process.

References:

Cloy Toons. (2016). An Introduction to UV Mapping. [Online Image] (Available). Retrieved on 2/12/2016 from https://cloytoons.wordpress.com/2016/01/05/an-introduction-to-uv-mapping/

Serr, A. (2009). How to make a seamless tiling texture. [Online Image] (Available). Retrieved on 2/12/2016 from http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/06/how-to-make-a-seamless-tiling-texture/

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