Texturing huge objects

I got big ideas with big problems right now and would need some help.
The problem i am currently facing is the fact that seamless textures looks bad at huge constructions (i am talking 1km in width!).
Is there anything you can do to avoid it looking so damn bad? Or do i just have to avoid building monstrous objects?
I have about no experience with texturing object and would highly appreciate it if someone could shed some light on this for me.
If there is of any help so am i currently using Sketchup pro 2014 (because blender looks like a struggle to learn).
thanks in advance.

 

The thing about seamless textures that get looped is you dont want to have distinguishable details within the overall look of the texture. I mean for example a single bright spot or a scratch in a metal surface. If you remove all those details that stand out of the background, you can have very nice loop effects.
The big disadvantage i see is that you sometimes want details but still not looped as offten as the background.
On this i also still have problems. When i uv-map a texture, i either have to use endless huge textures to preserve the resolution or rearange the uv map in parts by hand which can turn out to be a real monster in worktime on huge objects with thousands of polygons. Im still a beginner on texturing myself. And i dont use sketchup because it is worth to learn blender or similair instead using sketchup!³
But have a look at this nifty little tool http://www.pixplant.com/ I fell in love after a coupe seconds!^^
It can generate seamless textures from single or multiple source images. It mixes them up if you wish so and you can even mask certain details on the source image to have those areas excluded from the source, and so also from the generated texture. It is more than worth its money but also has a demo version, full functionality for 30 days but renders a watermark into the texture.
Maybe you can take the texture then cut the watermark out and make the rest seamless again in gimp. XD
If not, i should be able to generate you some seamless textures that have no single details that stand out, as long you can provide source images and describe what you wish for.

 

Many thanks for the response, but my problem would still remain as the surface is so damn big and long that you can see the tiniest repeated detail.
And i have some webpages that gives out free textures which i am going to use (http://opengameart.org/), because i don't which to spend money at something i might soon just give up (i have already paid a bit for L3DT PRO, which i am quite happy with).
I am also wondering if normal maps is worth it (considering performance usage) on terrain/buildings and such? or is it even possible to apply it (let me guess sketchup doesn't support it...)?

 

I have no idea if sketchup supports it, i dont use it.
But be sure that normal maps are very well worth it performance wise! Performance is one of the main reasons why normal maps are used. Another one is having shadow and light details, that you could not achieve within a game, without normal or bump map, due to the high polycount those details need in case you try to model them.

You can use looped textures on any object size without seeing repeating details, even in hd textures, if you can create the texture.. i cant manualy too myself but pixplant can.. just link me a texture of a material you would want to have as seamless texture for your huge object. I can try to generate a seamless texture for a test.

Edit: im new to the software myself and so some stuff is hard to achieve, most easy i found is asphalt or concrete and such. Also SketchUp does not have to support normal maps if you only use them on texture details but not for faking geometry details of the mesh. Then again i only know programs to generate normal maps from images that would cost you money, like crazybump or pixplant2.

 

I am wondering, what do i have to do to get normal maps on my Collada mesh (or sketchup save file)? I would like to get it working with normal maps as it does indeed look a lot better than the flat image/texture alone.
It was kinda funny that you mentioned asphalt and concrete as it is the two textures i need right now (i am trying to make a looong bridge).

And the demo of Pixplant seems useless thanks to the watermark and the price they take for the full program is ridiculous, so free alternatives would be nice to have...

 

It depends in which software you want the normal map to be displayed on the mesh. If you have a uv mapped texture, the normal map should have the same size or at least ratio, so it will use the same mapping.
In T3D you just assign the normal map in the material editor within the shape editor. So first shape editor and then sub editor for materials on the right side menu. You can assign a main normal map there, mostly used for geometry faking normal maps, but also detail normal map channels in the advanced layer settings, there you could assign normal maps of textures i guess. I tend to mix them up in a single normal map.

I will try to generate some seamless concrete and asphalt textures and normal maps from source images taken of opengameart.org tomorrow, its late here and im tired. ^^

 

I just thought I would add that painting decals in random places can break up repeating textures quite easily in the map editor. As I gather this seams to be a road/concrete/asphalt type texture you are working on. There are already a few decals included with skid marks/pot holes/cracks etc that you could use. Or make your own if you can use Photoshop or similar.
As for generating normal maps with sketchup I found a plugin that's meant to help create them from 3D geometry you create, but I haven't really messed about with it yet. I all so found a plugin for paint.net that is suposed to make normal maps from an image, but it cant really say it made much difference when I applied it to the model in game.

On another note, hopefully you already know this but if you are making a really big model in sketchup and plan on using the visible mesh for the collisions then I would consider keeping an eye on the amount of polygons in your model. If you have too many then when you drive/skid/slide on the model the physics engine will start to lag really bad. I have kind of found a rough limit that seems to be around 6-8 thousand polygons for my pc at least. Also really long polygons can cause the same issue, so divide any huge long faces into smaller ones.
I made a 300 meter square block and made some complex bendy overpass roads that weaved around and it was about 16000 polygons. It was so laggy to drive on. I cut it into four equal sized sections so no section was over 8000 polygons. Much less lag than one huge model.

Hope this helps.

 

what oO
my BeaMania track has 50-100 k polygons and runs fine on my pc, which is a phenom 1 quadcore 2,5ghz, 4gb ram, en9800 gtx+ 512 vram...
I was up to 300k polygons at some time in development and i had no problems while drifting or else. I bet it is because of the upper mess sketchup creates upon exporting. Speaking of splitting meshes into seperate ones that have their edges as splines with them... like a happy little family lol. Totaly useless after all imo. :/

Edit: specialy wtf when i saw your specs now in your signature... it so has to be sketchup.. :/

 

I can't believe that sketchup is that bad, i have exported and used the long ass bridge in game with no problems at all (without textures tho), but then again i can't notice it as i got over 100fps on the grid map.

 

It is just my impression because of the way it exports meshes, that where once a single shape, into a mess of 30+ null/empty objects that all contain seperate mesh parts of the former single mesh, and then to make it even worse, it copies every edge of this mesh part and puts a spline for this edge inside the same null/empty. I have no idea what that is usefull for and it is for sure not usefull for T3D at all imo. :/

But as i like to say, i only know what i know and that might be wrong, i am allways happy to get corrected to learn something new.

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Nice, i missed to get better known to those detail slots yet, nice to know, thanks.

 

Thanks for the tips Hutch and NkosiKarbul, but i think i'm going to lay my map project on ice until i get some better overall knowledge to map making and such (I where planning on making a HUGE map with lots of details).
So i am going small first to dodge a lot of the problems i see i will get by using such huge scales, i also noticed the poly count is maybe just a tiny bit high... (btw, it's the textures which you get with sketchup, nothing special)

 

Damn that polycount. XD
I can just repeat myself like a broken record, please learn blender instead of sketchup, i mean if you continue to use it you are spending time on the topic anyway, you could just spend it on another software imo.
Edit: damn my short term memory is seriously damaged...

 

Yea i am most likely gonna need to get used to blender, just too bad it's not as fun as sketchup, imo.

 

Yep, I agree sketchup is a total disaster for this application. If you know its pit falls and are prepared to have a substandard end product then its the easiest way for noobs like me to make stuff that resembles something. If you know Blender then use it, it will be so much better if you can use blender to its fullest. If like me its too hard and long winded to figure out and the stuff you make with Blender looks worse than the junk sketchup produces then choose the easier but less professional way. Its not like I get payed for making mods for beamNG so I'm not going to put in more effort than I have to, its just for fun after all, and Blender is not much fun to learn imo. All your hard work ends up being ripped off and uploaded elsewhere without your permission anyway, so why waste too much time on it. It still has some play value even though its not as nice looking as stuff made in Blender.

Dont give up just yet though. Have you got the bridge you made in game yet? If so then try skidding on the bridge and look for reduction in fps. If its too complex then you will notice the fps literally take a dump dive when you yank the hand brake on at 70MPH. If you notice no reduction then all good. My poly count figures are just rough observations I made while making stuff using sketchup. your model may have more or less polygons and may or may not lag. As a rule I make it how I want it to look then try driving about on it. If it lags I chop it into smaller sections and line them up in the map editor. (snap to grid is your friend there provided you make things nice even sizes)

This was the lag monster I had to cut into four sections. you see in the picture Its just a case of drawing some faces where you want to cut it and selecting it all, right clicking and intersect faces with selection. Then just delete everything on the other side of the divides and the divide itself, save it. undo it back and delete the other side and save it. repeat until you have all the sections saved.


I must say I really do enjoy using sketchup, It's so easy to get the job done. Its just a shame its not optimized for this kind of application. I know there are a heap of plugins for almost any situation that you can try. I saw a UV unwrapping tool that I might have a play with when I'm bored. I also need to figure out a plugin for making normal maps that I installed a while back.

I hope you continue your project and find solutions to problems that you encounter along the way. Unless you are wanting to be a true pro then just use what you know, and work around any issues as they arise. If you need any sketchup related help in the future I might be able to help you set up LOD's for your sketchup models, or other work around's for collision meshes if you don't want to cut up your model. I don't want to promote bad practice, but if blender makes you want to jump off a cliff you can kind of bodge most stuff with sketchup if your not OCD about correctness.

 

I have lots of trouble applying normals to my bridge, so i am going to try to make something in blender and see if the problems disappear.
The problems is as following:
1. 4 different textures applied to the whole mesh (everything is highlighted when i try to apply normal maps to a specific color/texture i applied in sketchup, and i only applied 2).
2. textures applied turns blue or follows camera in a weird way (like it was a mirror).
3. collision is one huge box which doesn't follow the mesh at all.

Sketchup might be a bigger struggle than i believed at first.

 

Are you trying to apply a normal map to the bridge in sketchup or the bridge in game? no point applying them to the model in sketchup, you are meant to apply them in game with the material editor. (not sure what way you tried)

Basic workflow for sketchup is as follows:

Make and texture the model in sketchup. don't worry about normal maps.

Explode all groups in the model , make sure the model is positioned on the correct side of the origin and export. (you should be able to over write the existing model you have in game already)


Import into game and set it to visible mesh. select it and open the material editor (F4).

Apply normal maps if you have them to the material and click the save icon. repeat on all other materials.



sorry for the garbled response, if you need more info tell me where you are stuck and I will try to help.

 

Hey Jon, in first i have to say im sorry.
I did not want to demotivate you to continue with your projects when i was pushing sketchup around that much earlyer, but a helpful person, we both know, luckily made me aware of it!^^
I just realy wanted to help you by convincing you of my opinion it seems.. wasnt conscious enough about how i express that i guess. Please dont give up and take it easy, we all struggled and still do so on a daily basis. The start is obviously always the hardest part, but as you see on other projects you can very well succeed with sketchup too, despite my futile opinion!

Sounds like a failure in the Texture tag assignment, i have no idea how sketchup does that, i just thought to mention this as jammin2222 might be able to help.
The materials you choose in the T3D shape editor->material editor are obviously the materials you assigned in sketchup in front, if the yellow preview grid is not displayed within the same areas that you have chosen to display certain textures in sketchup, then it seems like there is a failure on their reference for which area they are supposed to cover.

Still no real idea about the collour effect, only thing i can think of is some random setting in the lighting properties within the material settings in T3D.
The textures following camera movement sounds like camera mapping for me, just that i could not find any option to have your textures be displayed using camera mapping in T3D. Otherwise i could only think of some kind of texture animation within T3D.

With the rest, such as collision meshes, jammin2222 should know it all.

 

I'm curious as to how you generated the normal maps. I have used a plugin for paint.net that is meant to create them, but depending on the settings of the plugin you can sometimes get an odd color tint. I personally have had no real success with with normal maps and don't bother with them at all. (shocking I know)

If you are willing to learn Blender then by all means try it, but I always end up crying when I use it. Though I am slightly retarded.

For collision meshes I have two plans of attack. I try it with visible mesh first. If its lagging when you skid on it there are two things to try.

1, Cut the model into smaller sections and import them again or

2, Make a low poly version that will be used for collisions only, texture all of it in a material that you will not use elsewhere in your map and use the material editor to make the entire object transparent. Disable visible mesh collisions for your original model and place the transparent version exactly over the top and enable visible mesh for the transparent low poly version. You can copy/paste the position/rotation from your high poly model to your invisible collision model. That way it will be lined up neatly.

There is potentially a third way to get collision meshes to work that wold be more professional if I understand the T3D documentation correctly. Though I have spent a good 4 hours trying to get it working with no luck. The shape editor did report that it had a collision mesh but sadly no collision in game. (I have most likely not named my models in the correct way)

something NkosiKarbul might know in fact. In blender the LOD's and collision mesh are part of the same .dae file and its called Colmesh-1 in the layer window thing. (if I understand it correctly). The T3D documentation says when setting it up from separate .dae files the name of the collision mesh has to end with col_lod-1

Though this does report that the model has a collision mesh in the shape editor, shame it doesn't work. nor does putting Colmesh-1 at the end of the file name. I think I have a few more things to try before I totally give up on this method though.

I might misunderstand the T3D documentation but the top line says you can use .dae or .dts for your LOD's and collisions, and point 2 shows how I would need to name my models

Now I haven't named all my models the correct way, only the one for collisions so this could be my problem. Though I have a hunch the names are not important because you can rename them in the shape editor anyway. I will have have another try tomorrow now this post got me thinking about it.

 

The same problem for me applies to blender, i think the problem is that i don't know how to actually apply the textures...

I don't know where to put the 4 different textures Nkosi gave me and as a result they get glitchy and weird (the blueness in the texture is gone after i tried to export a simple blender mesh so something is changed).
Only odd thing now is that the preview texture light is flickering slightly, and i still doesn't manage to get the texture on the actual mesh.

And it looks like if i give the mesh no texture at all from blender i can't get any texture at all applied to it...
only option i got in the shape editor>mat is <none> or Material (unmapped)
and this is how it looks like when i try to apply texture to the material: