Materials, getting them to tile the right way

[LeamDelaney]

Hey,

In order to try and make some progress with my game, I have grabbed a gametextures account and will be using it (at some point) with substance.

For now thought, I am just creating materials in UE4 and putting them on my objects (things like walls etc)

I am having trouble working out how to best tile my texture on the surface.

Here is an image of what I currently have :

Now, As you can see - the texture is tiling, a lot. I want this texture to fit to the object (at least height wise) and not tile.

I understand that I can just exceed the UV positive are on the map, but I also want to know about this texel density madness I keep hearing about, as I want to add tessellation to this and make it look good.

Any ideas what I need to do to make it fit right?

[anonymous_user_923c79df]

-you will have to uv map your mesh in a 3d program
-to hide the tiling you can also add some variation -> like in the grass material from the starter content
-you can also scale it in your material -> texture coordinate

[HSbF6 (HaselnussWaffel)]

hi,

assuming that your wall is between 0 and 1 in UV space you can simply add a ‘texturecoordinate’ node in the material editor and hook it up to the UV input of your image.
by default it’s on U1 and V1, so your texture will stretch out to fit the entire surface.
then you can increase either vertical or horizontal tiling manually.

[LeamDelaney]

Okay, Thanks and HSbF6 - I will check this out this evening and try to get it to fit properly.

Is there anything I need to do with texel density for this?

[zeOrb]

There are 2 common techniques:

1. Make square UV map in 0-1 UV space and then use tiling via TexCoord node in your material setup. This setup is easier to make, but your default tiling size is off and you have to manually set it up in TexCoord.
2. Make “real sized” UV map according to mesh size, it could exceed 0-1 UV space if real size exceed 1m. This setup is harder to make, but your default tiling size is “real world sized” and you don’t have to calibrate it. However you can use TexCoord size if you want to change tiling

You may take a look at Epic assets and Marketplace guidelines and you’ll see that it’s preferable to stick to the second way.
Related threads:
Submissiong Guidelines
How to create static mesh in Blender with same texel-density as starter content assets

[LeamDelaney]

Thanks !

[Havoc]

In addition to 's suggestion, take a look at the Moss example provider with the starter content, specifically the macro variation nodes in the diffuse chain. This will help break up the tiling considerably.

[LeamDelaney]

Heres is what I have at the moment - From a distance it isn’t the worst thing I have ever seen

Starting to move in, you can see it begin to blur up (especially in that indented area of the wall)

Moving in for a closer look and things begin to get horrendous - the top and bottom sections of the wall are blurred and skewed, and the indented section is a mess.

This is a 2k texture - so it has a lot of detail in it - I am clearly messing it up somehow!

[cybereality]

Looks like you are using planar UV mapping, which will probably look bad on anything that is not a flat plane.

So in your 3D program, you’ll need to use a better form of UV mapping for the mesh (the exact steps will differ depending on what package you are using).

[anonymous_user_923c79df]

To avoid the overall blurriness you can add a detailed texture in your material which will appear over the distance -> like in the starter content (grass material)

[zeOrb]

Indentation - yep, seems like effects of planar/box mapping. Indented surfaces have not enough uv space. Quick comparison to highlight the problem:

://i.imgur/njR8X0c.png

Second one is not final unwrap, it should be rescaled and etc, but I think you got the idea

Quality - Your model is 3.5m and you have planar mapping inside 0-1 UV cell so 2k texture is scaled to this size. Also it could be just a bad texture, looks like photo to normal to me.
For example - this is single upscaled 1k texture, so it’s more like 512px per meter No detail textures or any additional stuff

://i.imgur/KRJFgPZ.png

If you want to use this piece without tiling basic texture at all - you probably need either to use texture with higher quality(I’m not talking about size) or use detail textures

[LeamDelaney]

I moved and sewed each UV shell manually - this is what my UV map looks like now:

Obviously it is not in the 0 - 1 space, so I know it wont scale perfectly, but its still blurring in the indented part.

I am not really sure how you managed to get those better indented areas in yours - Mapping and lighting are mad difficult!

[zeOrb]

You definitely need more space for indentation! They look too small compared to other stuff
This is how I got equal texel size(Unwrap Tool):

://i.imgur/LryFpbg.png

[LeamDelaney]

I tried emulating your setup here, and this is how my UV map turned out :

I can’t seem to get that indented section to be bigger in the UV, I have tried “Project from View”, I have tried the unwrap tool etc and I just cannot get this particular mesh to behave like it should.