I’m continuing to learn more about UV mapping, (before this I used pre-boxed textures from add ons), and I was wondering what some of the considerations were for using more than one texture map per model. Like, say that I had a bridge and I was starting to get confused by all of the islands or all of them wouldn’t fit nicely on my zero-to-one space. I figure that the size of the map would be an issue and whether or not you’d be exporting things to a game engine would be a consideration, but I’m just curious about whether professionals would be of the mindset that “everything associated with one model must be one map” or what-not. There’s probably a lot to consider that I don’t really know much about so I figured I’d ask. Many thanks.
It really depends on what you are creating the model for. And even if you create a high poly, multi textured model - and you want to use for a game it can always be optimised if need be.
If the model is for a game - it would usually have a single atlas texture map (for the diffuse, normal, etc…). As having more than one map means creating another draw call. And the more draw calls the worse the performance.
If you are creating a model for a product design or a photo (such as the Ikea catalogue) then it really doesn’t matter how many materials you use as it’s just for a static image.
If you haven’t already, I would recommend also learning a game engine, Unity or Unreal (or just learn some of the basics). You will learn just from experience how models work best if going into a game. One of my first practice projects, I created a truck for a level in Unreal engine and then imported it. - It was way too high poly and used different high res materials, I could barely get it to load! So no need to say I learnt from that one.
Thank you for your reply, motion-of-pics. I’d eventually like to learn to create assets for the different media types, so your suggestion about learning a bit about a game engine, (once I have a greater understanding of Blender), makes a lot of sense.
If you want detail, you must use. Example, you texture your character and you want detailed texturing. If you create one UV for all character, then your details gone. But, if you use multiple UV: one UV for head, one UV for body, one UV for hair etc., then you can save details.
Another thing for games. If you use huge textures for games, then this will create bottleneck on the RAM-GRAM road. For this reason, you must use regular texture sizes. For today, regular texture size for AAA games is 4K, for Casual or not AAA games is 1K to 2K.
