PLUGIN: Render to Texture: Light Maps, Normal Maps, AO

[luuckyy]

Originally Posted by lordfly

Hmm; I suppose that's where I'm having the issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't "proper texturing" include having the same textures going over multiple surfaces? For instance, say I have a tree made with multiple branches; they are all made of the same material (in this case, bark). Rather than having each surface have a unique texture (and thus eat gobs of memory), aren't you supposed to share pixels between surfaces to cut down on texture memory? Obviously this doesn't apply if you're doing static renders, but I'm pretty sure you have to do that for game rendering.

Thus, if this plugin requires unique UV coordinates for every surface it to do it's thing, it's kind of pointless for games, isn't it? Or am I missing something here? I'm sure I am.

Yes the plugin requires unique UV coordinates for every surface. That doesn't mean it requires a unique texture for every surface in the model.
Put simply, each UV must not overlap with another one on your UV map.

Take a cube, it has 6 faces. If you put all these 6 faces in a unique place on the UV map (and all these UV are not overlapping each other) then it's ok.
But if you put for some reasons, let's say the top and bottom faces at the same place on the UV map (or both are overlapping somewhere) then it's wrong (for a proper use of Lisa's plugin).

[lordfly]

Originally Posted by luuckyy

Yes the plugin requires unique UV coordinates for every surface. That doesn't mean it requires a unique texture for every surface in the model.
Put simply, each UV must not overlap with another one on your UV map.

Take a cube, it has 6 faces. If you put all these 6 faces in a unique place on the UV map (and all these UV are not overlapping each other) then it's ok.
But if you put for some reasons, let's say the top and bottom faces at the same place on the UV map (or both are overlapping somewhere) then it's wrong (for a proper use of Lisa's plugin).

Hum; that's what I thought. Kind of unfortunate; I can't properly conceive of an efficient texture/UV map that would accomodate more than a few faces (complex organic shapes would be impossible, such as tree branches). Maybe I'm just visualizing it wrong.