confused with the workflow...

News & General Discussion
1

Hi… in all the time that I was making games (model and texturing), I always joined all static objects into one mesh, for instance, a chair (wood) with a tablecloth (fabric), different textures inside one mesh, so in Unity in Inspector Panel i got one mesh with multiple materials (each material equivalent to one texture)…

In various of my cases, i don´t use Atlas because I preffer to repeat the texture many times (tile the texture into the face), because that… i have one texture per method:

I have a big mesh named “House” (table, chairs, tv, library, tablecloth, windows, and many many things. all statics).
For that, i´m using many textures as "tableWood.jpg, chairWood.jpg, libraryWood.jpg, tableCloth.jpg, windowFrame.jpg…etc).

When return to Unity, house mesh appears successfully. and when i click on it, inspector panel shows me all the textures with their respective materials…

does this method is troubled to build a scene?
what method do you actually using?, separate meshes per material, atlas, combine meshes using the same type of material (sort as reflective, diffuse, normalmapped, transparent)…

Thanks.

2

  1. I use seperate tiling materials for large objects like buildings etc.

  2. For chairs and smaller items I always do a proper UV map, and try and fit as many objects onto one large texture. (Texture atlas)

  3. If I have lots of objects that only tile in one direction, or can be mapped to only tile in one direction then I put multiple ones of these on one large texture in strips.

For seperate lightmaps, I create a 2nd UV channel for objects that have tiled textures and make an atlas for all those objects to be lightmapped together in channel 2. Everything else might be able to use the original UV unless it has overlapping or mirrored geometry. Then it gets lightmaps added to UV 2.

The aim really is to get as few textures and materials as possible and share whenever you can. You almost always have to make compromises, experience helps best to know what you can get away with.