high quality texturing and shading

Hey guys,
Since we dont have a texturing section on this forum i might as wel post it here. I have a very big build8ng which i want to texture, but even if im using textures of 2048x2048 it looks crappy when im standing next to it ingame. Is there some sort of techniqeu im not aware of since even high end games dont use such large textures? Or is it something a shader has to fix?

Hopefully someone can clear this up for me.
Cheers

 

It would help if you could show us the texture, show us how it appears in game, and tell us which shader you're using.

 

Hey Ensiferum.
I will post them as soon as im home again. But i remember from quite a while ago someone told me about a techniqeu about texturing huge walls with a single texture of 1024x1024 so i thought someone could point that out.

Anyway, i will post some screens in an hour of 3.

 

There you go (see attachments).
The big.jpg uses a 4096x4096 texture while the bigger.jpg even doubles that. When I created these textures I already double mapped the UWV's so each wall on the texture is used either 2 or 4 times, depending on the wall.
I am using the default Bumped defuse map, but since the pixel quality is extremely dissatisfying, I doubt it has something to do with the shader.

So I would like to know how to create, and use high quality textures the right way.

~Stefan

 

Do you also have a normal map applied on the material? If so can you show me the UV texture?

 

Yes i did. all with the same size as my diffuse map.
I uploaded a screenshot of how the renders look in 3ds Max at different resolutions, but the result when using the 8192 texture in Unity is even worse then the 1024 texture in 3ds Max

The UV texture in the attachment is rendered at 4096x4096, but no need to say its the same when scaled down. And like I said before, i optimized the UV's so I can use the most amount of texture for each wall without loosing the proportions.
I guess I don't texture big things the same way as I do in Max, so I hoped someone can point me out the correct way of texturing big things in the Unity engine.

 

Did you also set the import settings of the texture to match the size of your image?

 

Sir, you made my entire week...
I have been trying to figure this out for at least 2 months now, but gave up since I had different things to work on, but I never had this issue before so I never looked at those settings.

Again, thanks allot good Sir. Here is the end result using a 4096 texture. But still I'm wondering what the technique was I heard of a long time ago. I know it had something to do with LOD, so it increases the detail when I'm literally standing against a wall so it looks pixel perfect even then.

Cheers!

 

Maybe you are thinking of detail textures?
http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/shader-NormalDiffuseDetail.html

Are you saying you never knew about the texture import settings, and that's why it always looked bad for you?

 

Normaly I dont focus on modeling, but more on scripting. If I create something to test, I never used a texture bigger then 512x512, and since the default value is 1024x1024 I never had this issue before.

Thanks for the link, I guess that will help me out allot.

Thanks again mate!

 

No problem glad that everyone was able to point you in the right direction!

Sometimes dependently the texture might look better if you leave it uncompressed at a lower resolution even... just try different combinations.

 

You probably want to use a smaller, tiling texture for things like brick. It's wildly inefficient to use several uniquely unwrapped 4k maps for the entire exteriors of all buildings in your game.

 

So I should unwrap the walls separate from the rest, and pack them in such a way that I can tile my brick texture so all the bricks on all the walls line up? Or can this be done easier?

 

Yeah, generally that's how it'd be done.

Set the walls as being a separate material, then UV it so the texture tiles across it.

 

Thanks for the tip, I will give it a go asap.
I wil be back with the results