Topic: Just came up with a new technique...

[FoaS_XC]

(Images are pretty big, so view them in their own tab to see the full render; also understand that I'm losing a lot of the detail in these renders due to JPEG compression).

Okay, I just came up with a new technique for making textures.  There are advantages and disadvantages to each method, and I will list them here.

Method A (Traditional)
 - Possibly many textures (the K'Tinga uses 27 MB worth of textures)
 - Overlapping UVs can prevent things like GI-baking
 - Easier for retexturers to play with
 - Parts that use the same mapping can be interchanged

Method B (Re-Unrapping and Baking textures)
 - Single Texture (well, 2: one diffuse, one illum; the new K'Tinga uses 15MB woth of textures)
 - Slight loss of detail depending on size of the single texture
 - No UV Overlap means I can add cool effects like Baking GI or Glow spillage (like how the glow from bussards should illuminate the bottom of a saucer).
 - Realistic Lighting much easier
 - Loss of interchangability of textures from part to part (the autounwrap would prevent such things)
 - Baked GI mapping would make parts bashed from these guys stand out.

[Tus-XC]

B looks much better, but i suspect there might be a bit of directional lighting involved which would make this not work outside of SFC - I personally would minimalize the shadows to areas that will almost always be dark - the skylight feature in 3dsmax would achieve that i think (or is that what you did?)

[Bonk]

If you are interested in decreasing the size of model files... well wait, what file format are you using for the textures tga, pcx or bmp? ... I'll assume bmp as I think only the earlier games could use the other formats... anyway, the point is have you tried saving your final single texture files as indexed colour bitmaps? (keeping an rgb master) (can hugely reduce the file size) So long as the original palette is small enough (most are - and this one looks to be) there can be little to no colour loss and no effect on the models in game from what I can tell. (may take a few trials of palette indexing to get the best result). Dizzy and I have been doing this with textures used in the SGO mods for years - which in conjunction with NSIS lzma compression in installers dramatically reduces custom server mod download sizes...

I think I have seen a few single texture file SFC models out there already (or I could be mistaken).

Not a very coherent post, but I think you'll get the idea.

[Klingon Fanatic]

Method B (Re-Unrapping and Baking textures) gets my vote. Nice work too!

[GotAFarmYet?]

Think it would come down to system impact more than anything. If you can get near or next to the current level of A by using method B without impacting game play then go with B. If the over all size of the texture affects the game more with version B than A then you are stuck with A. I hope B works with the same or less impact that doing it in style A, as it means the ships we do and rework will be able to work on more plateforms.

[Adonis]

Method A (Traditional)
 - Possibly many textures (the K'Tinga uses 27 MB worth of textures)
 - Overlapping UVs can prevent things like GI-baking
 - Easier for retexturers to play with
 - Parts that use the same mapping can be interchanged

Method B (Re-Unrapping and Baking textures)
 - Single Texture (well, 2: one diffuse, one illum; the new K'Tinga uses 15MB woth of textures)
 - Slight loss of detail depending on size of the single texture
 - No UV Overlap means I can add cool effects like Baking GI or Glow spillage (like how the glow from bussards should illuminate the bottom of a saucer).
 - Realistic Lighting much easier
 - Loss of interchangability of textures from part to part (the autounwrap would prevent such things)
 - Baked GI mapping would make parts bashed from these guys stand out.

I will always defend method B with passion. It is a sign of a skilled modeler (besides making your models a single object with a single element).

One thing tho, don't ever use autounwrap, do it by hand. Autounwrap is just waaay too stupid to adequately map a mesh. Use up as much of the texture surface and the tiles of it that the mapping gives you. Also, the symmetry modifier is your best friend when it comes to mapping.

Also, you cannot beat the possibility that method B gives you that you can have 24 ship classes using 8 textures total (4 used at one time max on a mesh). Just imagine how much memory I saved doing that.

[FoaS_XC]

In order to get the shadows the way I did, I did a GI-bake (that is a sky-light Tus) and did a render-to-texture with the lighting. I'm going to try refining it a bit more in the next few minutes, see if I can get the total effect I want. To answer your question Bonk, they are 24-bit BMPs (2048x2048 for the diffuse, 1024x1024 for the illum). I'll look into what I can do as far as indexing, but I think the color count might be too high.

Will post again soon with an updated idea.

[Tus-XC]

If you are interested in decreasing the size of model files... well wait, what file format are you using for the textures tga, pcx or bmp? ... I'll assume bmp as I think only the earlier games could use the other formats... anyway, the point is have you tried saving your final single texture files as indexed colour bitmaps? (keeping an rgb master) (can hugely reduce the file size) So long as the original palette is small enough (most are - and this one looks to be) there can be little to no colour loss and no effect on the models in game from what I can tell. (may take a few trials of palette indexing to get the best result). Dizzy and I have been doing this with textures used in the SGO mods for years - which in conjunction with NSIS lzma compression in installers dramatically reduces custom server mod download sizes...

I think I have seen a few single texture file SFC models out there already (or I could be mistaken).

Not a very coherent post, but I think you'll get the idea.

What i have ended up doing is actually reducing them to 8 bit indexed since SFC will do that for you anyway when it displays the textures... might as well get it done right yourself then have the render do it for you

[Tus-XC]

In order to get the shadows the way I did, I did a GI-bake (that is a sky-light Tus) and did a render-to-texture with the lighting. I'm going to try refining it a bit more in the next few minutes, see if I can get the total effect I want. To answer your question Bonk, they are 24-bit BMPs (2048x2048 for the diffuse, 1024x1024 for the illum). I'll look into what I can do as far as indexing, but I think the color count might be too high.

Will post again soon with an updated idea.

ahh, good, then its probably just a trick of the eye then that is making me think that directional lighting is being involved (which is good)... your going to have to better explain this to me at some point

[FoaS_XC]

To be honest, in order to get the glow effect that I'd be happy with it'd be much more work than it is worth - I think the remap and redux plus GI-baking should be enough.

[Roychipoqua_Mace]

Method B looks awesome as far as rendering goes, but I voted for Method A for use as an in-game model. When playing, I usually like clear models that are nice and bright, even if that means they're a little less realistic.

[Kreeargh]

Boy i wish gmax had a auto unwraping function. Im a fan of the single texture per model thing but its a pain to have to map the small polys by hand, Its really easy to miss some polys for detaching.

[Rod ONeal]

I "bake" my lightmaps. I've also baked a reflection map and overlayed it with varying amounts of transparency to make it more subdued. Baking is great! Two issues though are rendering times, especially if you are baking shadows and using multiple light sources etc., and you have to map your models properly, no overlapping UVs etc. The 2nd one isn't really and issue, though. Also I've found it works much better if the model is one piece, as Adonis has stated.

[Kreeargh]

  Im confused here i guess, from some poeple at Scifimeshes tell me bakeing is renderings of high poly model detail with stock coloring added .  Is this high poly works  or renders of low poly works fit to a single texture map ? Or is this simmler to what i did with GOW's work 1 texture for 1 ship?

[Tus-XC]

you don't neccesarily need a high poly model to bake, what it lets you do is add effects that you would only see in a full blown render (aka lighting, spec mapping, illuminations, glows etc) and putting them 'on' the texture.  It a way to work around the engine limitations (aka sfc) and get render qaulity looks that you can't get in the game.

[FoaS_XC]

That's not even what I'm using it for, Tus.
What I can do is take a model that has 15 textures. I can Auto-Unwrap it on a new map channel, and then bake the old textures onto a single new texture that lacks any overlaps or anything of the sort.

Take a look at WZ's K'Tinga, the model has a large number of textures.
Now look at the rebaked texture.

One texture - little detail loss if done at a big enough image size, and the lack of overlapping UVs lets me do some cool stuff.

[Tus-XC]

ooooooo, hmmm... might need to try on the daed... you need to get on aim at some point

[Starfox1701]

I have been doing somthing like this for Armada 2 for years now though I tend to keep the texture size at 512 so my conversons end up with more then 1 texture but it still helps alot. did WZ's Sword of Kahless and took it from 50 somthing down to 6.

[Kreeargh]

Know of any tutorials on this ? This would save me alot of time on my mod projects.   Ive got way to many models to remap by hand if i could bake new single map textures and be able to use my existing textures that would rock.

[Starfox1701]

It works like this you make a file.  I use photoshop so for me its a PSD. Don't flaten all the layers. Make your verous effects that you want to transfer and save. When your ready to use one take the lasso selection tool to select that effect. Copy/paste to your texture and adjust the opacity of that layer to your taste and move where you want it. Flaten down the image to composit together. Repeat till done and save your finished texture.