UV Unwrapping

Dartanbeck · January 2017

...and I almost never fit all of my islands onto one map unless it's a very simple object.

I'll uncheck Show All, and do my shading domains separately - some of them go onto a single map, but when I have several larger areas, they'll each get their own map, so I grid them on their own, and fit in some smaller parts in that grid if I can/need to.

We're supposed to always try and fill the map space - within reason - in order to maintain efficiency, which comes back to what I said earlier: pixels are pixels, no matter the color. for example, a 4048 x 4048 image will still be a 4048 x 4048 image, even if we only use 512 x 512 worth of the space. In this example, a 512 x 512 map is considerably smaller in file size that the 4048 x 4048 one. So not filling the map area as much as we can is doing an injustice to our computers and the render engines - and especially to the customer, if we're selling them

Vyusur · January 2017

Thank you, Dartanbeck! I placed my texture islands separately according to their shading domains at the very beginning. Then I tried to bake them also separately – each one texture must be 4096x4096, because it is the largest resolution supported by backer tool. At the end some of my textures were absolutely empty and black :((

3DAGE · January 2017

Always glad to help :)

I totally agree Dartanbeck , use the space to the maximum, and use shading domains on different areas of complex models,.

it's also a good idea to look at your model shape and see where to create either seams or different shading domains,.

and in simple terms,. what default UV Layout may work on that area,. rather than jumping straight into unwrapping.

Most objects can be broken down to simple shapes that can use Box, Cylindrical, Spherical, Planar mapping types.

NOTE: Cylindrical is kind of bust. :(

There are also Layout options for each UV mapping preset type,. (Operations tab)

a good example of using multiple domains with different UV's,.. is any Daz3D /Poser figure,. normally the Head, Limbs, Torso have separate shading domains where those mesh areas have been unwrapped individually.

using different domains with different texture maps allows you to increase the texture detail in those areas,.

If the entire figure was mapped onto a single 4096x4096 texture map using a single shading domain, there would be little detail visible in the face area, since most of the texture map would be needed for the body skin,.

Having different texture maps for the head, limbs, torso etc,. gives you greater texture space, which should give more detail,. depending on the quality of the texture maps used.

TangoAlpha · January 2017

Dartanbeck said:

...and I almost never fit all of my islands onto one map unless it's a very simple object.

I'll uncheck Show All, and do my shading domains separately - some of them go onto a single map, but when I have several larger areas, they'll each get their own map, so I grid them on their own, and fit in some smaller parts in that grid if I can/need to.

We're supposed to always try and fill the map space - within reason - in order to maintain efficiency, which comes back to what I said earlier: pixels are pixels, no matter the color. for example, a 4048 x 4048 image will still be a 4048 x 4048 image, even if we only use 512 x 512 worth of the space. In this example, a 512 x 512 map is considerably smaller in file size that the 4048 x 4048 one. So not filling the map area as much as we can is doing an injustice to our computers and the render engines - and especially to the customer, if we're selling them

This is why we often put more than one shading domain onto a texture sheet. Or more than one model even -- if you only use the top half for one model, and you make another model that only needs half a sheet, it makes senst to use the bottom half for the second model, and then merge the two texture sheets.

And as Diomede mentioned, different domains can use different sized texture sheets (a 4096 x 4096 texture is 64 times bigger than a 512 x 512 one, and 64x more memory!)

Dartanbeck · January 2017

Absolutely!

In my Just a Bit of Fun video, you wouldn't believe how many texture maps I've resampled to half their original size, just to keep my (then) machine from blowing up! I was coming from editing game assets, which were looking really good at a maximum of 512. Realizing that this is a completely more realistic environment, I doubled that and then doubled it again as my ceiling for texture map size that I would use - so 2048 was my max. Rosie's sporting maps reduced from 4096 down to 2000. Dart's are the HR M4 reduced down as well.

For the most part, it looked really good doing this. I could see a difference if I ran side-by-side renders, but the differences I observed weren't enough to justify not resampling. It's been years since I've done that. I may just get back into it though. So many things I use are only details to add to the scene and don't need that intense of texture maps.

Just played Mass Effect 2 (got it for free) and am amazed at how awesome it was! Wow... I'm playing that again! Again... using smaller resolutions and Normal maps. Game engines sure are something. This one uses Unity.

Dartanbeck · January 2017

Vyusur said:

Thank you, Dartanbeck! I placed my texture islands separately according to their shading domains at the very beginning. Then I tried to bake them also separately – each one texture must be 4096x4096, because it is the largest resolution supported by backer tool. At the end some of my textures were absolutely empty and black :((

I have Baker, but only experimented with it once. I'll be of no help there.

However, just keep in mind that, some of Carrara's shader presets rely heavily on Highlight and Shininess, even reflection for their color, and will have a color value of zero or none or even black. While this looks great in a Carrara render, it would likely bake out as a black (or empty) texture map.