Digital Painting Color Maps - Game Character Creation with Blender and Unity - page 147

Working in High Resolution
In Chapter 4, you saved your UVs at a resolution of 2048 n 2048 pixels. This creates the
base for a texture that allows lots of intricate detail. For many engines, 2048 n 2048 is the
maximum texture size the engine will use, though 4096 n 4096 pixel textures have begun
to emerge in some high-resolution engines.
The guideline for document sizes when digital painting is to work in very high resolu-
tions. Once you decide on the proportions of your canvas (i.e., what kind of paper you'd
like a printed version to fit on), you can scale your painting appropriately. For most paint-
ings, it is safe to work in sizes where one of the dimensions is in the 4000s.
Textures, likewise, follow the mantra of “work big, save small.” Even if you are creating
the art for 128 n 128 textures or below, you will want to work in very high resolutions to
create lots of detail and then save to a smaller image file. Many engines have features
that will automatically scale textures according to how far away they are; this is called
mipmapping. It is therefore critical to make sure you have lots of detail in your work.
Another important element of texture creation is to always work in pixel dimensions
that are in powers of 2. Common texture sizes are:
• 32 n 32
• 64 n 64
• 128 n 128
• 256 n 256
• 512 n 512
• 1024 n 1024
• 2048 n 2048
• 4096 n 4096 (for engines that support this size)
It is a good idea to base your texture work and export sizes on these numbers. Many
modern engines, Unity included, are able to convert off-sized textures to a power of 2, but
doing so gives the engine yet another thing to think about as it renders your game in real
time. Give your engine a break and size your textures correctly.
When saving your work, understand what file formats work best for digital paintings and
textures. You will want to work in the native file format for your digital painting program.
These formats save layers and other features that make your work easier. Otherwise, it is wise
to save your actual textures and paintings in formats without “lossy compression” that will
make the texture look muddy. Targa ( .tga ) and PNG ( .tif ) are lossless formats that are great
for textures. They also save with alpha map data.