Hello everyone! I’m fairly new to modelling and texturing for Unreal, and games in general, so I’m still a bit unsure how to do things efficiently. I’ve modelled this bunk bed asset for our game:
should I unwrap the bed fabrics (orange in the picture) into separate UV islands, or could I texture it with just one bed, and then duplicate it in the blueprint after importing the mesh to UE? This would save space in the texture, but is there something important I’m not considering?
There might also be a need for this bed to appear unassembled later on, so I’m wondering if I should bake AOs at all?
Generally if it’s not a hero asset, and just some background prop, I’d try mirroring and flipping the fabric part to create variation while reusing the same texture space. You can do that with the metal supports as well. Treat it more like a building with trim sheets instead of a completely uniquely unwrapped asset.
AO in the material should be treated more like a cavity map for small scale AO, it can look nice for tight spaces that need a little more darkening.
flat part of cloth 1x3 (or calculate more accurate ratio)
for all sticks: cylinder or box with length in same size as that first 1uv (ie depth of shelf). then around stick proportionally
same for sides of cloth tubes.
In short: keep same texel density at least for model, or if possible for all of them.
Split all into separate uv islands also separate materials for fabric and metal.
This way you can have material like skin or use tillable separate materials for fabric and metal rods. For games do not go over the top with details and quality of textures, they all should be coherent and same quality. If you make really nice quality assets (or use megascans) then you need some other asset and cannot produce comparable quality it will stick out.
And for indies: layered tillable materials and meshes with muliti mats are way to go.
