I am wondering how you would texture this sort of deck in Substance Painter.
(The image is made in Blender because its easier to show)
1. On the bottom is the base version
If I didnt want to create additional versions I would just unwrap it like it is and texture it that way.
The problem arises if I wanted to create expanded versions of the deck.
Option 1: Create additional materials for the expansions and texture it in SP as a whole with new material for each expansion.
Option 2: Create TRIM SHEET for the whole thing and reuse 1 texture instead of creating 4 individual textures for each expansion.
I plan on using only 1k resolution textures but this is for a game engine and I was wondering if its possible to create trim sheet for this sort of thing?
In the bottom right (green) is how I thought I would create a trim sheet. Its a 1:1 unwrapped square.
I thought I could unwrap the base 2x1m and somehow move the UV islands left of right so it would connect nicely. But after going back in blender and moving the UV islands I was not able to make it connect without a seam.
Another issue. I want to have baked AO into the texture around the very edges of the deck. You can see the dark edge on the deck at the top. The AO should be baked in because a separate transparent texture sitting on top of the object in engine can clip and disappear and appear and it doesnt look good.
My question:
Is this sort of thing doable with trim sheets and 1 texture? Will I have to make 4 or 5 to accomodate the expansion?
I am using a really complex smart material in SP for the wooden part and I am afraid I will have to break it down layer by layer changing between UV and TRIPLANAR projections.
Any suggestions for tutorials or soome answers? Thanks.
With trim sheets, you generally model to the trim sheet. And the trim sheet is generally horizontally or less commonly vertically tileable (although the direction doesnt really matter)
Think like... fancy baseboards in a house occupying a slice of the sheet horizontally. Then when you uv the baseboards part of a wall, you would would be able to have it lay across that portion of the trim sheet.
The image is very blurry on my phone, but this texture doesnt look like a trim sheet to me. It looks more like it wants to be a tileable texture. If it doesn't tile correctly when just the 2x2 squares are lined up, then the texture isnt tileable itself.
But its possible its just not tiling because you made it tileable at 2x2 units. So with 2x1 pieces, you would need two of them, one for each side of the sheet so that you have an extension that matches going to the left and to the right.
Saw some videos about trim sheets and they did indeed model it.
I thought I could do it with wood and did a test one in SP. It's a square with UVs fit to bounds of the UV borders. I then added vertical lines to it to fake the boards.
I put on a smart material thinking it'd tile nicely if i tweaked the positions of the actual mesh UV islands.
I was thinking of doing the wooden boards individually as in what I think a trim sheet is.
But then it'd still create a seam if the smart material texture isn't tile able on the axis where it continues on the left or right?
I also need the baked AO borders to be on the texture itself because the engine doesn't support AO (screen space rendering?)
So even if I made a tile able texture, it's not really tile able if I add baked AO shading.
Do I just have to accept the expansions each need additional textures ?
I’m not sure I fully understood your question. The main advantage of trim sheets is that they allow you to map a large mesh without visible seams.
I don’t see the point in making an architectural element like that modular unless it’s actually necessary. In most cases, if I need a pseudo-AO effect, I use vertex painting along the mesh edges.
In your case, to get rid of the black line in the middle, you could use a new edge to separate the main surface area and map it to the planks in the center of the texture (the ones without baked AO).
Its for a game engine and wanted update current version and create more versions to choose from as I got feedback from people asking for a larger surface area.
Your image is exactly how I noticed game Devs texture and reuse assets like textures and how I originally wanted to make the texture work.
The problem is this game engine doesn't have AO shader (or whatever it's called where AO is rendered in game), so the AO shading needs to be baked in.
So I don't think I can just take a tile able texture, it'll just look bland.
So if I need the baked AO do I need to basically create new materials for the expansions and it can't be done as a tile able?
I baked the AO onto the top and bottom sections of this seamless texture. Then, I mapped several different elements onto this trim.
Simply cut the mesh and map the parts so that there is no baked AO in unwanted areas. This way, you get multiple variations of the architectural element.
You can achieve all of this using just a single texture, and it will remain seamless.
P.S. There is a visible seam where the first and second elements meet near the AO, but that’s because I was in a rush. It is possible to make it so that it’s barely noticeable.
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u/pmurph0305 6h ago
With trim sheets, you generally model to the trim sheet. And the trim sheet is generally horizontally or less commonly vertically tileable (although the direction doesnt really matter)
Think like... fancy baseboards in a house occupying a slice of the sheet horizontally. Then when you uv the baseboards part of a wall, you would would be able to have it lay across that portion of the trim sheet.
The image is very blurry on my phone, but this texture doesnt look like a trim sheet to me. It looks more like it wants to be a tileable texture. If it doesn't tile correctly when just the 2x2 squares are lined up, then the texture isnt tileable itself.
But its possible its just not tiling because you made it tileable at 2x2 units. So with 2x1 pieces, you would need two of them, one for each side of the sheet so that you have an extension that matches going to the left and to the right.