I haven't had much to do with games for the last two years so some info
might be outdated already, but Unity seems to be a good starting point
both in terms of features and affordability.
As for textures, it totally depends on what type of asset you want to
build, and for which Platform (Hardware).
A typical character texture set three years ago (diffuse and normal map,
maybe specularity map and AO map too if needed) used to be 512x512 in
resolution for the head and hands and another 512x512 texture set for the
body (usually you want higher texture detail on the face if it's seen
close-up), plus the same again for the body. These days it has most likely
quadrupled for modern hardware.
I've also seen combinations of resolutions where the diffuse texture would
only be half the size of the normal map (if the diffuse texture is
low-freuqent compared to the normal map for example), and vice versa, it
depends on what maps contain the look-defining detail.
Good practice is to use textures with resolutions of the power of two
(128x128,256x256,512x512,1024x1024), since depending on engine and target
hardware non-power-of-two
textures are often scaled up the the nearest power of two automatically,
consuming the same amount of RAM, but not offering anymore precious
detail. There are exceptions to this rule, on Wii for example you may use
combinations of power of two and non-power-of-two textures, like 256x512,
without wasting any RAM (textures are not automatically scaled to power of
two).
If you are using texture baking, and the engine makes use of mip mapping
(as most do) make sure to keep the individual islands far enough apart
from each other so they don't bleed into each other when scaled down in
the mip map creation process. Choose a suitable fill color (one with low
contrast to the surrounding baked color information) too for the same
reason.
For skinned geometry use as little a number of skin weights as possible,
most engines have special code paths for fast deformation of various
numbers of skin weights per vertex (e.g. 1, 4, 8, but not 3,5 or 7), as
well as the maximum number of joints deforming a single mesh (e.g. 64),
though I'm sure on modern hardware the latter is not so much of a concern
anymore. I found 4 skin weights per vertex to be sufficient for pretty
much anything, including joint-driven facial animation).
I'm sure there are tons of tutorials covering all those aspects, also in
regards to Unity, different engines and hardware may have different needs
or specialities.
Hi all!
This might be a strange question, but what would be the normal texture
size today when creating content for games?
I'm trying to learn a new profession and need to test out the basics
at home before I jump out into the void :)
Also, would unity be a good practice platform? Or any other
recommendations?
I'm trying out something new here, so any suggestions and tips are
welcomed!
Best regards
Stefan
-- Sent from a phone booth in purgatory
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Stefan Kubicek
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keyvis digital imagery
Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
Phone: +43/699/12614231
www.keyvis.at ste...@keyvis.at
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