Asset store: different assets, different texel densities?

Hello,

I have been looking over assets in the store and some of them look really great. However, one thing I was wondering about is, how can someone harmonize the texel density of different assets? I highly doubt that two completely different asset creators would use the same texel density for their textures. So, how could I as the end user fix that? Is there a way within Unity to do this? Or would I have to open up each model and resize each UV shell to get the desired texel density?

Thanks!

The end user would repaint or rescale every texture by hand to match desired density.

UV does not exactly affect texel density. Texture coordinates are floating points within 0.0…1.0 range, and how many texels you get depends on texture resolution.

if you dont mind my asking, why do you need to match texel densities precisely?

I don’t believe professional games ever have consistent texel density anyway- with a higher resolution given to more detailed and important objects for visual quality, and lower resolution given to less detailed, less important, or distant objects for the sake of performance.

If a texture map is too high-res overall, in Unity you can automatically set the editor to down-sample the texture to a lower resolution. If the texture is to low-res, on the other hand, there is no automatic way to increase the resolution.

I am pretty new to the whole 3D scene and one of the things that I have heard repeatedly thus far is that generally speaking, you want the same TD across assets so that some don’t look high res and others look low res. I do understand that there are exceptions. For example far-off things that the player would never get close to.

There are some assets that I’ve seen that look great and could be useful. But I know that I’m going to run into a situation where asset A is on a 2k map and the shells have a TD of 16 and asset B is on a 2k map and the shells have a TD of 20. Now, I don’t know if the average player can spot the difference in quality. But, I would want everything to either be 16 or 20.

Though, I think neginfinity answered the question.

Thanks everyone.

Texel density can be thought of as like a metric of efficiency. If you maximize texel density, you are getting the most pixel bang for you buck from the textures you got in memory.

It’s not really important unless you are pushing things to the limit though, like a AAA game might be. In most cases, you can simply reduce the texture size in unity for things that are higher res than you need them to be. If you need higher resolution, you are basically SOL and have to remake the thing yourself.

Trying to standardize texel density across assets would be like how many beginner 3d modelers spend countless hours chasing around triangles because they heard somewhere “triangles is bad.” It’s a fools errand that will waste time. Only thing you got to worry about is “does it look good?”

As mentioned, if you do have some asset you purchased but the textures have obvious resolution mismatched compared to others, the only thing you can do is remake the thing yourself, or say fuck it and include it anyway. Chances are your audience will never tell the difference.

Somestimes you might be able to try some cheap hack to make something appear to have more resolution that it does. Say you have a human character and the skin texture is kinda low res. You don’t want to totally remake it, so maybe you can tile some high resolution skin detail normal map and roughness map. That can make a difference and its easy for anybody to do.

I think the key word here is “look”. As long as it looks correct then it is. Trying to measure your pixels-per-world-space coordinates and trying to make them consistent (just for the sake of it) is a waste of time, in my opinion.

I don’t know what they do in professional studios, but not every type of texture in every scenario requires the same amount of pixel density in order to look clear, sharp and correct. I think you’d get better results in less time using your own visual judgement, rather than some arbitrary number, but try it yourself and see.

I think the broader version of this question is more relevant. If you are populating your game with lots of 3D assets from the asset store you are going to run in to problems with assets that don’t match. It could be texels, or just textures, materials, polycounts, rigging/proportions, animations, or just the general shape of things (realistic vs exagerated, crisp vs round, etc, etc).

In some types of games this is okay, in others its going to be a deal breaker and you will have to spend a lot of time tweaking to build the visual coherence you need.