Understanding Texel Density

low odor · Feb 2007

How do you go about maintaing texel density, what's your method?

I'm just kind of curious how many people actually measure out there uv pieces as opposed to eyeballing it. I think it is more concerned with enviroments than characters.

how I do it is to make myself a Visual Guide to set in the background as I unwrap and stay as close as possible to the desired texel density.

RyRyB · Feb 2007

We have a grid texture sample here at work that, when applied to a 128x128x128 cube in Max, portrays the correct texel density. All the artists then apply the texture to their assets and compare their asset to the cube.

It seems to work pretty well.

Rhinokey · Feb 2007

i don't believe in firm measurments, when i was at liquid dev htey had Rules likeso many pixels per inch on the object,, and that may sound like a good idea,, but then you get people texturing a car(one intended to be used upright on its wheels) with as much texture space used for the bottom of the car as for the top, the soles of a characters shoes taking as much space as the characters head. i personly prefer a common sense aproach, make it look good, keep all clearly visible areas arund hte same resolution,, any checkerboard texture will let you see that, and after a while you can just eyeball it.

RyRyB · Feb 2007

The grid texture sample is more what you'd call "guidelines" than actual rules.

Joshua Stubbles · Feb 2007

Well, you don't want to be to far out of whack though. Uneven pixel density increases fill rate, therefore lowering your fps.
Try to make things as even as possible, but use common sense. If you're not going to see the bottom of a car, or the bottom of a character's feet, don't give it as much texture space.
Also consider the texture size itself. A lot of people used to use a 1024 map for a char's body, and a 512 for the head. In most cases, this left the head looking too high res when compared to the body. It looks whacky, to be honest. It's all a balancing game. You do what you have to do to make it look good and run good in the end.

adam · Feb 2007

I apply this to my models when I unwrap and make sure the numbers/grid sizes are even-Steven across the board. Unless of course I want something to be more dense than the other.

Eric Chadwick · Feb 2007

Another test that might be worthwhile is to run the scene in-engine with everything textured to a DDS file that has contrast-colored mips with text dimensions in each mip. Then you can see how far surfaces are mipping down, as you move through the level, very informative as to how many texels are really being rendered for each surface.

Git it!

low odor · Feb 2007

thanks for all the replies , has been informative

verybad · Feb 2007

[ QUOTE ]
Another test that might be worthwhile is to run the scene in-engine with everything textured to a DDS file that has contrast-colored mips with text dimensions in each mip. Then you can see how far surfaces are mipping down, as you move through the level, very informative as to how many texels are really being rendered for each surface.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ooh I like that. *snags method*

skankerzero · Feb 2007

I eyeball it.

Also, DeepUV has a tool that makes all your unwraps the exact same textel density. I use that then I go from there, resizing as I see fit.

Understanding Texel Density

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