Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 9.43
UV layout.
Why?
A tightly packed set of UVs means that the texture (when applied) is efficient.
A UV map that has a lot of wasted space means that the texture painted on
that map will have a lot of pixels that aren't assigned to any polygons. This
means that the polygons will not have as high a fidelity as they could.
In the old days, UV maps were so tightly packed that there was nary a
gap between shells. In all reality this is not a bad technique although
new hardware today makes large-texture maps possible and thus the
absolutely most efficient map a little less critical. However, use all the
space possible when laying out the map.
In
Figure 9.43
there is (admittedly) a fair amount of empty space, although
not too bad. For me, there is a balance of creating a map that is efficient
and making a map that is usable to paint on. There is even a tool in the UV
Texture Editor (Polygons>Layout) that will attempt to organize the shells
into the absolutely most efficient layout. The problem with this is that it
scatters shells all over the place. One part of the shirt is in one corner and
another part is in an entirely different spot. This makes deciphering what
is being painted pretty tough in Photoshop. By doing the layout manually,
body parts can be left together, costume pieces can be left in clusters so
that when it is time to paint it is easy to know what's being painted.
