[Help] beginner question about UV unwrapping/Texturing

[LaniganDev]

Hi, Im am really having hard time with UV unwrapping and texturing. After taking the 3d courses here, its the bit im still very unsure about and have some questions.

If i am making a game asset and need to bake my texture on is it bad to overlap the UVs?
What if i want to use the one texture matieral but different parts of that texture for different parts?

As an example?

Can I overlap all these panels to give the same part of the texture.
and then say the frame all the same texture.

If anyone could help me out, and/or point me in the right dirrection when it comes to this?

[Malachanis]

I am not sure if i understand it right.

But yes, you can overlap the UV’s. i am pretty sure there is an options that you can automaticly get all the same faces share one spot on the UV image.

[NP5]

On the whole it seems games engines are done with baked maps, not lots of single different textures all referenced by the same object for different parts of it.

So the problem is different softwares and uses referencing different things.

A baked map will be made up of non overlapping UVs, as they have been baked from all different textures. Very much more like a cardboard cut out model to make, all the shapes have been coloured in ready so it all fits together when cut out.
However in Blender with less need or use of baking, the textures can be shared and overlapped as they will not be cut out and removed to make another part.

It is the sort of thing you probably need to ask a game engine using community about more than a Blender one. Or Preferably users of both. Like the GameDev Discord. Or someone may pop by here too of course.

[LaniganDev]

I understand when i need to bake a normal map, they can not overlap. But for the baking map they have suggested another UV map attached to the object that will lay out pieces of the whole model.

So in blender, the best way to acchive what i want would to be just overlap the UVs?

[FedPete]

You can have multiple UV-Maps!
The material editor has a node to select a specific uv-map.

Putting all together in a normal map, a diffuse map, glossy map, etc. Different bitmaps, for different data types (normal (purple info), diffuse (all colors), heightmap (grey).
Is pure efficiency to put the same data types on the same map. But not a requirement.

If you have overlapping uv-islands, it’s only a problem when a specific part is used again which is very distinctive. Like a piece of text, a sign etc.
I think you are thinking too much about this game optimalization. Those are details managed at a later moment.

[LaniganDev]

Thank you after, taking the advice of overlapping islands i have something i am happy with.

@FedPete

You can have multiple UV-Maps!
The material editor a node to select a specific uv-map.

Putting all together in a normal map, a diffuse map, glosy map, etc. Different bitmaps, for different data types (normal (purple info), diffuse (all colors), heightmap (grey).
Is pure efficiency to put same data types in the same map. But not a requirement.

This is very good informtation, that i will look more into? Do you know any good books, courses specifically on uv mapping/texturing etc?

[FedPete]

Of course Game Dev has good starter information.
Some course more then others, but focussed on beginner students.

There is always the official Blender documentation.
You can also become a Blender member (payed subscription), whit that you can access all professional projects and tutorial they have.

Further more read, look, search on the web.

UV-unwrapping is a job-type in the 3D development world. Because there are things like:

• Placing seams
• Placing seams, in connection with texture painting. Having island with enough space in between.
• Seeing details, using higher bitmap pixels (ppi)
• Blender has a new system to use some sort of panneling (I forgort the name), but this nes standard is also used on other production systems.
• UV-map stretching (misforming text on faces)
• Animation stretching faces, influencing uv-maps

So many things to learn in Blender. Just follow the courses, do many small projects. Don’t search immediately for optimization. Because Blender can be complex, projects can be complex. And therefor solutions can be diverse.

There is no wrong in Blender, only efficiency. And that last thing comes with experience.

Have fun, show you progress regularly.