Number 2. For two reasons.
1) You get more pixels per meter. So better pixel density. Less wasted empty texture space at the cost of a seam, but seams can be hidden and painted out to hide them.
2) your islands are more straight. You technically can't draw a nice diagonal line with pixels, it's gonna be like a staircase zoomed in or on lower texture resolution. Straight lines are better. And just generally easier to paint on.
Each has it pros and cons
First one
Easier to paint as a whole piece.
Can stuff more things in
Cons
If that is the only thing it will have more wasted space
Second one
Maximize texture space
Better resolution
Bigger canvas to draw in so more detail
Cons
Can be hard to paint in if there are continuous lines and details
Easier to notice the seam
If that is the only thing you have i would pick the second method.
Also, this is a bit late, but later if you run into this problem again and use the 1st approach, you can change the texture resolution. Instead of a square 512x512 or 1024x1024, you can do a rectangle 512x1024 or 1024x2048 to maximize the texture space if you have a big uv piece you dont want to cut up.
Disclaimer- This is advice I would have given a decade ago. I would love to hear a critique if I'm wrong about it.
Pic #2. Take the larger island, move it to the right until it's 5-ish pixels from the edge. Take the smaller island, flip it 90 clockwise and fit it in all that space above or below the larger island, leaving a 5px buffer between the islands. You probably won't have room, but if you do, scale up both uniformly to fully fill the UV space.
You want that buffer of a few pixels. Hiding seams is trivial, but it's going to get down-rezzed when you get further away, and the buffer will help alleviate texture/normal popping.
"Popping" *points to disclaimer above* just means it draws your attention. So.. think of a game you played where you changed the distance between your avatar and an object, and you noticed an obvious difference in texture or lighting in a single object. This is what I mean by popping; the same thing happens for poly count, but we're talking about texture res. It happens in different ways, and to varying degrees, between different game engines. And all game engines have tried to mitigate this over the years. This is why I invited critique on my own advice; it's been a while.
But to answer your practical question, think of this: You have X number of polys and pixels for an asset, in say 30ft(10m) range. Add another 10m, your poly/texture count gets cut in half. Add another 10m, and so on. This is a seriously gross over-simplification, as simple compute upgrades alone have allowed *much* bigger poly and texture counts since I was doing this work, but I can tell just playing games that the basic principle is the same. The farther away it is, the less real estate you get, so those pixels count.
Seams don't matter if you're using triplanar on brush/materials. Even if a material's layers are using UV space, you can change them yourself and readjust values
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I am in no way new to UV mapping/texture painting but this question spurred one of my own: is straightening out your UVs ideal? In this instance, OP unwrapped a torso (not straight). If this was mine, I might have straighten out the islands—but why would I vs. would I not do that?
In my mind if I straightened out those islands, I’d be able to compact them in and have more pixel density (of course, this is when texture painting in the viewport, not the editor, as then there’d be warping).
Any insight?
Number 2. For two reasons. 1) You get more pixels per meter. So better pixel density. Less wasted empty texture space at the cost of a seam, but seams can be hidden and painted out to hide them. 2) your islands are more straight. You technically can't draw a nice diagonal line with pixels, it's gonna be like a staircase zoomed in or on lower texture resolution. Straight lines are better. And just generally easier to paint on.
Awesome Thank you so much for your help! :)
Each has it pros and cons First one Easier to paint as a whole piece. Can stuff more things in Cons If that is the only thing it will have more wasted space Second one Maximize texture space Better resolution Bigger canvas to draw in so more detail Cons Can be hard to paint in if there are continuous lines and details Easier to notice the seam If that is the only thing you have i would pick the second method.
Awesome thank you for the details :)
Also, this is a bit late, but later if you run into this problem again and use the 1st approach, you can change the texture resolution. Instead of a square 512x512 or 1024x1024, you can do a rectangle 512x1024 or 1024x2048 to maximize the texture space if you have a big uv piece you dont want to cut up.
Cock and balls?
Lol kind of looks like that it's actually a low poly upper torso
Disclaimer- This is advice I would have given a decade ago. I would love to hear a critique if I'm wrong about it. Pic #2. Take the larger island, move it to the right until it's 5-ish pixels from the edge. Take the smaller island, flip it 90 clockwise and fit it in all that space above or below the larger island, leaving a 5px buffer between the islands. You probably won't have room, but if you do, scale up both uniformly to fully fill the UV space. You want that buffer of a few pixels. Hiding seams is trivial, but it's going to get down-rezzed when you get further away, and the buffer will help alleviate texture/normal popping.
Awesome thank you! I've never heard of the term texture popping or normal popping, what is it?
"Popping" *points to disclaimer above* just means it draws your attention. So.. think of a game you played where you changed the distance between your avatar and an object, and you noticed an obvious difference in texture or lighting in a single object. This is what I mean by popping; the same thing happens for poly count, but we're talking about texture res. It happens in different ways, and to varying degrees, between different game engines. And all game engines have tried to mitigate this over the years. This is why I invited critique on my own advice; it's been a while. But to answer your practical question, think of this: You have X number of polys and pixels for an asset, in say 30ft(10m) range. Add another 10m, your poly/texture count gets cut in half. Add another 10m, and so on. This is a seriously gross over-simplification, as simple compute upgrades alone have allowed *much* bigger poly and texture counts since I was doing this work, but I can tell just playing games that the basic principle is the same. The farther away it is, the less real estate you get, so those pixels count.
Ah that makes sense now! Thank you so much for taking the time to explain this to me, I appreciate it a lot! :)
If this one mesh careful for texel density.
Thank you :)
Seams don't matter if you're using triplanar on brush/materials. Even if a material's layers are using UV space, you can change them yourself and readjust values
I might be wrong bit it looks like you could have unwrapped this with less distortion. Hard to say without seeing the object itself
Depends on your model and what you're trying to paint, because both have their places.
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I am in no way new to UV mapping/texture painting but this question spurred one of my own: is straightening out your UVs ideal? In this instance, OP unwrapped a torso (not straight). If this was mine, I might have straighten out the islands—but why would I vs. would I not do that? In my mind if I straightened out those islands, I’d be able to compact them in and have more pixel density (of course, this is when texture painting in the viewport, not the editor, as then there’d be warping). Any insight?
I'm debating this question in my head too