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Detail textures and UV seams? Any methods?

polycounter lvl 10
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Carbon14 polycounter lvl 10
So I am attempting to build some next gen rocks, and using a single texture for an asset of this size seems like I would end up with a choice between a huge texture or a blurry one. The obvious thing seems to be to use tiling detail textures combined with a moderately large single normal map, and probably a large roughness map.

However, obviously if you tile a texture across the oddly shaped asset you are going to end up with seams. I am guessing there is really no way around this, the only solution I can think of is creating a detail textures that tile in all directions and then uvw mapping the object so all of it's seams conform to a grid.

Are there any ways that are less..insane?

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  • thomasp
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    thomasp hero character
    two possible solutions come to mind:

    - unwrap as needed to paint the object then use a second UV channel / UV set for the detail map that can conform to a grid/match up orientation and UV density at the UV borders to hide seams as good as possible

    - mask the detail map display strength with either a bitmap or vertex colors. preferable in my opinion, you don't want a detail map to bleed into areas it has no business in IMO. also always good to soften it up gradually for some areas. like, full on skin bump in the ear cavity might not be the best idea ever. :)
  • Eric Chadwick
    When making rocks, I try to arrange the UV seams into the natural seams and depressions of the rock, so they're hidden as much as possible. Some can't be hidden, no big deal.

    Detail maps are see up close only, never from far away. So most of those UV seams are not visible anyhow.

    Besides, a detail map is usually not full of unique details, but is fairly uniform in detail, so UV seams aren't really all that obvious.

    Also if I have a 2nd UV set, that increases the vertex count of the model. Maybe necessary if lightmapping, but if not that's a waste. Especially if there are a lot of rock variations, logs, walls, etc. all using the same technique. Of course, depends on your situation.
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