I’m trying to export a room with a single baked light / textures to use in a game Engine.
Even at 2k resolution, I think the resolution is low because the floor and ceiling take up so much space on the map. Does that make sense?
Should I be breaking up the ceiling / floor into seperate geo to get better map fit, or should I be saving multiple 2k textures for better quality? I’m getting the floor in this image is less than 1k, as it takes up less than a half of the image.
Thanks for tips.
I don’t know much about game assets these days but what are all those black areas on you texture? seems like occluded parts are taking more than half of your uv map.
If your game engine doesn’t have its own GI solution, then it’s actually a good practice because it reduces the number of texture binds and draw calls, increasing performance.
That said, that’s a pretty horrible unwrap. Select all the polys that rendered black, scale them down to zero, then pack the rest into the newfound space. You don’t really need all that much resolution in your lightmap as long as you make sure to put seams at corners and allow for generous margins. Remember it’s going to be mip-mapped! That 4-pixel margin is going to become a 2 or 1 pixel margin in the mipmaps! And you don’t want that.
See this for more info: http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Edge_padding
You just may want to bake a control map and retexture it in the game engine using a control map to alternate between other materials that you already have in the engine
Hey guys thanks so much for the replies!
dan2 - I think you’re right. Because my room geometry has outer walls (unlit), maybe it’s unwrapping those? (see pic)
Piotr - do you mean it’s a good practice to bake in general, or there’s a benefit to baking a whole asset to one texture rather than multiple textures (ie. I imagine if the who floor was a full 2048k on it’s own texture it would look amazing.)
I’ve tried selecting polys like you’re talking about but having trouble. Do I select them on the UV map or in the actual model? I believe the black polys are the outer walls of the geometry of the room (Archimesh walls).I try to select in the UV map but it seems I can only select vertex maybe? Clarification here would be great! Also mip-mapping is a new thing I haven’t hear of (I’m new!) I’ll look that up now, thanks 
joseph - thanks for the good tip! I’m making assets for my friend and he’s not great with game engines, so I’m aiming for a simple workflow (hopefully not at the expense of quality). Do you think it would be trickier for him to re-texture and bake lights in Unity? I was playing around with it and it seemed more complicated (ie. when you move something in the engine the lights start to re-bake etc).
Hey Guys!
I just realized a bit problem, but I’m unsure how to fix it.
Those big square unrendered areas are long thin polygons I think (like the top of the baseboard in the room) see pics. Should I try and make cuts in those polygons on the model (then unwrap again?).
I have no idea how to improve this texture packing / UV map!
Yeah, just add seams along the corners, select all, unwrap, pack and bob’s your uncle. It doesn’t matter if you do it in the 3d or uv view, it’s still the same mesh either way. You will naturally have to rebake your map.
Please watch a tutorial or two on UV unwrapping for details, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scPSP_U858k
The latter. It’s a performance benefit though, and you know what they say about premature optimization. I don’t think it will be much of an issue in either case at your level.
@Piotr_Adamowicz thanks so much for your help.
Blieve it or not, I’ve watched that video and a few others multiple times, but watching and knowing how / when to apply are different challenges 
Going to watch again anyway and try cutting the seams as you say.
Your clarification means a lot – thanks for taking the time.
