5 Common Texture Methods for Game Assets | Blender Tutorial
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- čas přidán 2. 07. 2024
- From palletes to atlases to trim sheets, one size doesn't fit them all in the world of game assets.
Atlases, Palettes, or Trims? OH MY! ... or should that be Oh Why?
In this Blender tutorial video I give a brief overview of the five most common texturing methods used for adding materials to game assets, and what type of asset each method is generally good for.
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how do you make these trim sheets
There's tons of ways to do it, the most basic is just to paste each of the textures onto a single texture in a paint program. Personally I created a plane in blender and divided it how I wanted the textures laid out and UV unwrapped it from top view to bounds, then textured it in substance painter. I'll probably be doing a series on modular walls soon and will be going through it in that.
FYI my latest video (part 1 of the modular wall series) shows how i make trim sheets using Blender and Substance Painter
Josh Gambrell of Blender Bros has a good video on it
by trimming
This is a very informative video that explains different methods for different needs, very well made !
This is one of the best texturing tutorials I've seen! Great stuff!
Very cool overview! Thank you!
This was huge help, very well explained, no complicated words, just straight up gold!
Thank-you. Helped a lot to clear things out.
Just finding your channel! I loved your video, great voice and tremendous straightforward explaining- will watch many more.
Great video! Very informative and helpful.
Thanks so much for the explanation! I'm surprised this video doesn't have more views! Everything was explained very clearly, and I appreciate you showing the practical application for each type of texturing method.
Thank you for the compliment, I try to be as clear and concise as possible, I remember when I was learning blender is was regularly getting frustrated with tutorials that were too fast or skipped over details, I especially get frustrated with videos that say they're tutorials but in reality are just time lapse videos of someone modelling. Bare in mind though, the subject of textures and what and where to use them is very subjective, different artists have different approaches, what's in the video is how I approach textures, I try to have s neutral view in my videos but other artists might not agree with my method.
Nice work! Well explained! A lot of people get this stuff wrong, you nailed it.
Glad you think so! Thanks!
This tutorial solves quite well all the doubts about how to deal with the texturing of our assets, when we want to improve the visualization of our models..., since basically "we all know how to texturize...", but some, like me, do not we do it in an optimal way when it comes to correctly using our textures based on the different models that we are creating... This tutorial has shown me the way in which type of texture I should use based on the model that I am creating.. , and I think this is going to be quite useful to me, starting today, thank you very much for sharing it, un Saludo
Another very useful tutorial. Thanks for this!
Glad you enjoyed it!
Incredible intro into making game assets! Thank you for sharing! 😊
Thanks, i actually need to remake this video at some point as the terminology for a couple of them is actually wrong. For example the Atlas texture in the video is just a standard unwrapped texture, and the second trim sheet is what is really called an atlas texture.
Really important tutorial, thanks alot
Thank you so much! This is really helpful.
Thank you so much)))) Very great explanation!) Now everything is clear for me:)
Great overview
Another excellent video! I've been dabbling with asset creation and modding since discovering VR a few years ago. I've learned a lot, but many of my technical choices are still rather arbitrary. I want to be able to make intelligent decisions to balance quality and performance. This sort of simple explanation of "why" is exactly what I've been looking for.
Great to hear!
very helpful tutorial. thanks 🙏
Wish I'd found this years ago instead of learning all of this by experimentation, nice video
Great explanation, thanks!
You're welcome!
useful tutorial... thanks.
Hey, thanks :)
Have a great day and keep up with the good work
Thanks, you too!
btw great resource . thanks for making it helps alot.
Glad to hear that!
Quite informative, thanks!
Glad it was helpful!
ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ really thank you!!!
Thank you sir.
Great video my thanks from Tunisia
Thanks, glad you liked it.
This is a great tutorial. One thing you didn't touch on in the video when using a single texture map is texel density. So sometimes if you have an asset where part of the model is not really viewed by the camera/player in great detail you can just reduce the texel density for those UVs and increase it for the areas that need a higher amount of pixels. On occasion this might mean you can get away with using less textures.
Thanks. I contemplated discussing things like Texel density but decided it was outside the scope of this video. Things like TD are more about how you layout the UV's on textures and this video is more an overview of the texture types, if i was to talk about TD i would probably do it in a UV unwrapping video as it would be more relevant to that subject.
Best explanation ever regarding trim sheets vs assets!
Thank you, i appreciate all comments on my videos, good or bad, but when a legend like you pays me a compliment it's .. well there's no words right now ... especially right now because i recently had a motorcycle crash and injured my wrist so i can't do any modelling at the moment and i've been feeling bit down, but this has really cheered me up, thank you.
Thank you
Great video! What pixel x pixel atlas size do you recommend as sort of a "default" for your method 2 (Single Atlas Textures) for small/medium sized assets? Like, what is too big and what is too small? Like for that gun you showed for example.
Thanks You
Thank's for the explanation! I have to texture a very big Rock and it needs high resolution. I think I have to use vertex paint, or is there another way for objects this big? I don't want to use 10 different UVs and materials, but the material should also fit the geometry of the mesh.
Also Isn't the second trim sheet in this video unnecessary? I mean you could set the resolution for example to 1024×8192 to get more space for tileable textures.
trim sheets can apply dirt or variation using vertex colours in material
True but bare in mind this is for game engines and most game engines don't do per vertex texturing, so i don't go into that, you can also get variation with a detail map and use separate detail maps per model, but again not all engines use them so i didn't go into that either because i wanted to keep it simple and basic. :)
Hey, great tutorial but i think u can show us how to open them in engine too. I really appreciate that content cuz every method uses different work in engine right? Have a nice day, good work :)
@Belidos3d
Thanks for this video. It clarified something for me, I was just having a vaguely idea of but did not have the technicals terms for that to look it up!
I got some questions. What method would you recommend, if you wanna make a game with equipment deterioration? Like armor showing signs to be damaged.
Trimtextures would be the first call, I guess.
But what if you wanna have several layers for different damage types and hit detection, so it is not just the whole object but the place that was actually being hit, like the right shoulder, or the right side of a vehicle chassis?
I thought about decals, since that works. But the limitation of rendering those textures without having a hit on performance, makes it not viable for having something like persistent damage been seen for over a longer time.
I would like to see how you would approach that.
You deserve more views btw!
*subscribed*
With regards to damaging entity's, it's a tricky one, because it depends on what engine you are using to create the game and what method you are using to cause the damage. Personally i would always go the decal route, but that's mainly because i have no idea how to do it another way.
You forgot mask workflow with combined textures. Common technique among modern games.
Hi, yeah i'm aware of that, that was intentional, this is an older video, and masks were outside the scope of the video, it focues mainly on the basic texturing, masking etc. is a more advanced subject.
A single texture does not correspond to a single draw call. I keep seeing artists discussing API draw calls like this which isn't true. You can have a single draw call for a piece of geometry, and the fragment shader being used in that pipeline is free to sample from a number of different textures during the render pass.
Cheers mate intresting
Thanks
Thanks very much for de-mystifying what others try to unnecessarily complicate. In creating multiple atlases, how do you break that down, like in your LOCKER example? I have a mesh (house) in the same scenario - I tried joining the entire house as one object, then created a new UV map for it and proceeded to bake ALL the textures into one 4K atlas. It was a blurry mess. I want to break the house down, but I have some parts of the mesh that use the same textures and other parts of the mesh that use unique textures. Can you breakdown your workflow for the locker/multi atlas example? Are you on discord at all?
About Trim Texture type - isn't that an Atlas? I thought that Rim Sheets are all about being able to tile in 1 axis.
I have been making some trimsheets that can tile in both directions, but it requires adding margin between trims with a dilated margin between separate materials to avoid bleed from mipmaps.
It takes a bit of work, but I figured out how to do that with Material Maker.
In theory I could do the same to have multiple tilable (in both axis) materials o a single atlas, but the issue of course is - you need to have a geometry edge aligned with the edge of the tile or trim to have it repeat seamlesly. So it's a tradeoff between using less texture memory but a bit more geometry and work UV-unwrapping.
Yes, i mixed them up, that was early on and i'd learnt through a community that had their own naming conventions and i didn't know that wasn't normal. I did plan on revamping that tutorial properly sometime in the future, but have had to take a long break from things due to health and work reasons, hopefully i will be able to get back to things soon.
Great video.
Is it worth to use normal maps from high poly meshes for trim sheets assets? I know that it requires second uv channel to bake edges, but is it popular or trim sheets are mainly used for architectural assets where instead they use more geometry to round edges?
To be honest, I'm not sure, I know you can have multiple UV sets, and use them in some engines for mask, light maps and detail maps etc. but I wasn't aware you could use a second UV set for normals, so I would assume it would depend on what you're using it in and whether the engine you're using to render can actually do that.
Great video, thank you for preparing and sharing it.
What is the size limit (in terms of either resolution or file size) of a texture that these techniques start to lose its advantage?
Is there an advantage if I pack albedo, normal map and a channel packed (roughness+ao+metallic) texture into an atlas?
The first question is a very hard question to answer, and i don't really know if there's a definitive answer, it will depend entirely on what engine you use, and the models you're using the texture on and how they're used in the game you are making. The second question, yes the advantage is two less texture draw calls on the engine.
@@Belidos3D What if you consider low poly design models, with low texture resolution?
What engine is for total beginners to recommend?
@@Chareidospersonally i would jump in and start learning Unity or Unreal, it might take you a longer, but it's worth it. If you just want to get some easy to use practice at placing entities and building a scene then try out gameguru or godot.
Had this on while working on my own game project. Rather amazed you made no mention about UDIMs considering all game engines now support them.
UDIMs are a whole subject in and of themselves, not all engines use them yet, and even with engines that can support them they're still not commonly seen.
Hi Roy! I have an issue. What if I want to have a lot of materials on one atlas, tiling textures, but I have a low poly count and I am unable to map the texture onto the atlas properly. Is there some sort of a workaround where I would specify trimming of the texture somehow?
I'm not entirely sure what you mean, I can't picture the scenario.
I use the three of them on the same texture, why choose when you can have it all?
What is the size of the trim sheets and how do u make it ??
Your voice reminds me of Ridley Scott's... :) Thanks for the really informative tutorials.
Wow, thanks!
what type you recommwnd for mobile games in unity
How would you add small details, like edge wear or moss or rust, to larger assets like a building?
That's a difficult one to explain because there are so many variables involved, it depends on what you're taking it into, for example in UE you can create a detail UV and paint you're details directly in the engine.
I have a question, seeing as how you're encouraged to play around with your UV Islands with trim textures - what's the optimal way to space out your islands so there aren't UV overlaps in engines like Unity (i heard it might be 3 px)? UV Overlap is notorious for complicating lighting later down the line. Secondly, is it possible to set different channels to use overlap but not get UV Overlap with lighting in Unity?
Padding is really only needed for baking textures so that the islands don't bleed into each other during the baking, i recommend 3 to 6 pixels for that. When you are using trims etc it doesn't matter at all, for light mapping issue most engines will be fine because they can be easily set up to create a separate generated UV for the light map if i remember right in Unity it's literally just a tick box in the objects properties.
Technically the last one is not a trim but an atlas.
Trim suppose to tile in one direction.
1:39 i have the exact same things but for me the model is still gray
Overlapping uvs will show error in unity when we do light baking. How will you fix that.
You either add a second UV channel in blender for unity to use, or tell unity to generate it's own uv's for light mapping in it's settings
What to do after you did the palette? Should i export it or how to use that use this as texture for other models
I'm not entirely sure what you mean?
@@Belidos3D i mean for example i made that pixel palette, now how to use that palette in other projects in blender
@@geohalo3480 ah i get you. I don't have a video specifically showing that, but if you go to this video on the @Imphenzia channel he shows how to add a palette texture on there ..
czcams.com/video/BlxiCd0Upg4/video.html
what methods are commonly used in triple AAA games? Because it is difficult to much the quality they put into their models.
Most of these methods are used in AAA games, the reason AAA games look so good isn't just because the models are good or the textures are good, a big chunk of it is the rendering engine they use for the game and skillful use of post processing. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved in making games look good, some of the top games for graphics look great, but when you get close and really look you will see flaws, I can't count the amount of games I've played that have visible seams and textures that don't quite match up, but look great because of the way they're positioned in the game world. World if Warcraft is a good example, if you look really close at the textures you would be quite shocked.
@@Belidos3D Thanks a lot for your reply. I appreciate that you are sharing this info because it is difficult to know if you don't work in any of the game studios.
@@Belidos3D Thank you for sharing
What is the difference of trimsheets and UDIMS?
It's hard to compare them because they're such different things, UDIM's are not really a texturing method as such, but more a different way of storing multiple textures in one texture sheet using multiple UV layouts, which is why i din't mention them here. For example you could have a UDIM with say three UV areas side by side, and each UV area could be a separate trim sheet and overlapping won't effect the texture.
I will be updating this video sometimes soon, because I've realized that some of my terminology isn't quite the same as a lot of other 3D modelers, for example what i call an atlas texture is what others call the second trim sheet method here, that was my bad i should have checked my terminology.
@@Belidos3D i did some research and i finally understand it now..Thank you!
Can you share the model from minute 7:46?
Hi, you mean the locker? At the moment no, i have it on a backup drive somewhere in my pile of tech stuff in storage after moving. However, once i'm sorted and everything's back in place i will probably be putting a lot of my models from these videos (with some exceptions) up either on gumroad on a free or pay what you want basis, or i may open a patreon page and provide them there.
@@Belidos3D Yes, I mean the locker. I would like her .blend file
I think texture atlas is good when you not to scale the uvs to match certain types of texel denstiy.... the other method, the first one is for flat colors or model faceted , 3D modern lowpoly... as mobiles... but all those tecnique is not useful if the texture density is a mess. I prefer the second model , is more realistic and addapts to every types of games because you can adatp the uv-scale inside the 0 to 1 scale
You can just make your trim textures based on your game's units. That's what I've seen lots of people do. They assume the whole trim texture is a space of 2 by 2 meters or 2 by 2 game units and then look at how much density they want per unit and then adjust their texture size. There's lots of ways in which you can unwrap assets on a trim sheet with the same density as well and yeah you sometimes have to cut up your model so it can keep tiling in a direction the trim didn't allow for but all in all trims are the most efficient way to spend your time and the game's resources.
Where's tileable?
You lost me at 1:12 where you simply, "... drag our texture into there [shader editor] ...". You moved so fast I could not see where you got "our texture" from. It looked like you got it from some other monitor we could not see. I know about and use Node Wrangler. Very useful video that pulls all this together. Thanks.
i dragged it from the folder its in which was on another screen
@@Belidos3D I thought so. Thanks. I've been using GrabDoc to make seemingly detailed gusset plates for the bridges I make for MSFS 2020. I go hog-wild with subsurfs, grime, rust stains and such to produce a diffuse and a normal map that I put on one and only one plane. Great overview confirming a bunch of things I'd only guessed at. Liked and subbed. Thanks again.
@@physicsteacher4569 Yup, baking the normals is a great way to cut down on your geometry, i may do a video on how to do that in both blender and substance painter one day, but it's a little outside the scope of this video. It's a process that has a lot of set up involved, but once you're set up yields great results. I used it with the weapon i showed in this video, the geometry is extremely low poly, but when you add the texture you see all the extra detail.
you sound like the joker..lol..nice teaching
Not sure what you mean by sounding like joker, but i'll take that as a compliment, thanks :)
@@Belidos3D i mean the character joker in film batman..:)
Hello Belidos3D, how much do you charge for texturing? I'm making a game and would like to weigh my options here, I need someone who can do really nice textures for some melee weapons and firearms. If you leave me your email, I'll have the guy in charge email you.
hi
Wizard of Oz... did anyone get that?
I don't see why you say you can't have unique detail with Trim sheets. You just need to allocate a texture space for it. I don't see why you are limited to square textures in a 3 row / 6 grid fashion. You can just as easily have a trim sheet of multiple areas and materials and just adjust your UV to cover the area what you need. Including an area where you store detail.
With a trim sheet you are using the same texture over and over for different parts of the geometry, so the detail will be the same on every part, that's what i mean by "unique detail", each part would have to have the same details as the other parts that share the same texture space.
The more different texture variations you have on the sheet the bigger the texture you will need, otherwise the detail will have less resolution.
Once you start giving every UV island it's own individual texture space it is no longer a trim sheet, it's an atlas texture, Putting each UV in i's own space is defeating the point of a trim sheet,
The whole point of a trim sheet is to stack UV's to maintain maximum resolution with as small a texture as possible to reduce resource overhead on draw calls.
@@Belidos3D I think what Laszlo was getting at is that you could have a more unique detail section in your trim sheet together with your tiling bits. It wouldn't tile infinitely but it would act as your trim sheet method 2 where you just cut up the mesh to keep it tilling in the parts that aren't detailed and then you sometimes map your asset on the detail area to break it up a bit.
"multi atlas" just basic multiple materials...no atlases here
Yes, as i replied in another comment, i'll be updating this sometime because my terminology is slightly different to what others use, i call a single UV unwrapped texture an atlas texture, when in reality what i put as the second trim sheet method is what other call an atlas texture, so yeah there was atlas textures in there, but i named them wrong.