Terrain mesh texture

[IvyTechEngineer]

Hello, I was able to create a mesh model for a portion of my region in SL and wanted to texture it in Blender. The model is pretty large and I can subdivide it in Blender but I wanted to find appropriate terrain textures that could be used. The terrain in SL is "automatically" textured based on the height of the terrain and it looks pretty good but I want something a little more realistic. I did find some textures @ https://polyhaven.com/textures but they are coarse and provide an uneven texture for the terrain. 

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions on a work flow and texture resource to texture in Blender or should I attempt to just texture large objects in SL?

Thanks

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

15 minutes ago, IvyTechEngineer said:

Hello, I was able to create a mesh model for a portion of my region in SL and wanted to texture it in Blender. The model is pretty large and I can subdivide it in Blender but I wanted to find appropriate terrain textures that could be used. The terrain in SL is "automatically" textured based on the height of the terrain and it looks pretty good but I want something a little more realistic. I did find some textures @ https://polyhaven.com/textures but they are coarse and provide an uneven texture for the terrain. 

Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions on a work flow and texture resource to texture in Blender or should I attempt to just texture large objects in SL?

Thanks

For larger models you're probably better off using seamless tiling textures in SL if you want them to have any reasonable sort of definition.  Assigning multiple materials to the model to create faces on the mesh in SL then applying seamless textures to each face is fairly simple, and if you want to try something a little more advanced you can add additional polygons to cover the larger "seams" between the different faces and use a separate texture to blend between them.

As for resources for textures, I recently found this site which seems pretty useful Free PBR Materials

[IvyTechEngineer]

1 hour ago, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

For larger models you're probably better off using seamless tiling textures in SL if you want them to have any reasonable sort of definition.  Assigning multiple materials to the model to create faces on the mesh in SL then applying seamless textures to each face is fairly simple, and if you want to try something a little more advanced you can add additional polygons to cover the larger "seams" between the different faces and use a separate texture to blend between them.

As for resources for textures, I recently found this site which seems pretty useful Free PBR Materials

Hey thanks for the fast response. I just found this website, lol. I am still working on improving the mesh but maybe I should add some geometry (loop cuts) around face boundaries? Also, the shading that can be done in Blender with Nodes can't be used in SL? I was watching this YouTube video but don't think it will translate to SL?

 

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

33 minutes ago, IvyTechEngineer said:

Hey thanks for the fast response. I just found this website, lol. I am still working on improving the mesh but maybe I should add some geometry (loop cuts) around face boundaries? Also, the shading that can be done in Blender with Nodes can't be used in SL? I was watching this YouTube video but don't think it will translate to SL?

Unfortunately that technique won't translate to SL since it's basically blending multiple textures and there's no easy way to do that inside SL on a single face.

If SL supported vertex colours in mesh and texture blending then it wouldn't be a problem and we could use up to four seamless textures and blend them together based on the values for each color channel per vertex, but it doesn't so we're stuck with a single diffuse texture per face (I don't recall if clothing layers support 8 bit alpha channels, but since we can only apply clothing layers to avatars and not objects there's no way to cheat and use bakes on mesh to blend multiple textures either).

I'm not a Blender user myself and the software I use most likely has a different workflow, but there are plenty of Blender experts on these forums so no doubt someone will have some helpful suggestions on the best ways to approach texturing your land mass for SL.

[ChinRey]

On 4/19/2022 at 9:54 PM, Fluffy Sharkfin said:

For larger models you're probably better off using seamless tiling textures in SL if you want them to have any reasonable sort of definition.

Even though I generally agree with Fluffy's advice to use tiled textures for large surfaces, I would usually make an exception for a ground mesh. The reasons are that you can add so many details to the ground texture, reducing the need for filler objects and that the high repeat rate you need will inevitably cause lots of annoying artifacts that need to be covered up.

When I make ground meshes I usually split them into 32x32 m faces, each with a 1024x1024 texture. That's still only 64 textures for an entire region and I think it's worth it. Sometimes I use tiled textures for some of the faces, of course making sure they fit with the neighbors.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

3 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

When I make ground meshes I usually split them into 32x32 m faces, each with a 1024x1024 texture. That's still only 64 textures for an entire region and I think it's worth it. Sometimes I use tiled textures for some of the faces, of course making sure they fit with the neighbors.

I'll admit I haven't tried any really large ground meshes or landscape objects, and since my workflow usually starts with a super high poly (usually 4-8 million tris) sculpt followed by retopo and baking details to normal maps, etc. most of my experiments have involved single non-repeating textures with a lot of the finer detail on the mesh being provided by the normal map and PBR materials baked into the diffuse and specular maps.  You can still achieve some really nice detail and it's ideal for backdrops or a more stylized look but, as you point out, getting that up close photorealism that some people seem to prefer definitely requires multiple faces/textures.

[Codex Alpha]

22 minutes ago, ChinRey said:

Even though I generally agree with Fluffy's advice to use tiled textures for large surfaces, I would usually make an exception for a ground mesh. The reasons are that you can add so many details to the ground texture, reducing the need for filler objects and that the high repeat rate you need will inevitably cause lots of annoying artifacts that need to be covered up.

When I make ground meshes I usually split them into 32x32 m faces, each with a 1024x1024 texture. That's still only 64 textures for an entire region and I think it's worth it. Sometimes I use tiled textures for some of the faces, of course making sure they fit with the neighbors.

That's how I might do it, break up the entire piece into smaller pieces.. but still 1024px/32 m = 32px/ m Texel Density... still gonna look blurry, higher texture load for the server, and you'll have to cover up that blurriness with mesh objects, ground cover, bushes, trees anyway

I would probably start off with a general texture like the grass, then maybe forest edge then a forest floor type thing, and yes the transitions will be seen, but the tiling will be better, then use meshes and the rest and go from there...

[IvyTechEngineer]

I think I might have copied the wrong url link to the YouTube video I was watching. I think this might work

 

[arton Rotaru]

No matter what tutorial you are going to use, the problem will still be the same. Low resolution in SL because we have a 1024x1024 texture size limit. So it's either, live with the low res look (can look actually OK on landscapes) or, create a seamless tiling texture (good resolution but repetitive and usally boring looking) or, split it into multiple materials and try to hide the material seams as good as possible. Unfortunately there is no good method in SL to texture landscapes nice and easy.

As Aquila put it a few weeks ago, the texturing will be the Elephant in the room.

[ChinRey]

On 4/21/2022 at 1:36 AM, entity0x said:

That's how I might do it, break up the entire piece into smaller pieces.. but still 1024px/32 m = 32px/ m Texel Density... still gonna look blurry, higher texture load for the server, and you'll have to cover up that blurriness with mesh objects, ground cover, bushes, trees anyway

1024x1024 pixels across 32x32 m gives the same texel density as 256x256 textures for the system ground. I agree it's not ideal but with good textures it's not nearly as blurry as you may think and nobody's complained so far.

There are places in SL that use 128x128 ground textures and I've seen Unity scenes with a single 4096x4096 across an entire 256x256 m scene. Both those solution give only half the texel density of 1024x1024/32x32 and they still look perfeclty ok when done well.

[ChinRey]

18 hours ago, arton Rotaru said:

...

or, split it into multiple materials and try to hide the material seams as good as possible.

...

Hiding the seams shouldn't be a problem at least. Make one huge texture covering the whole ground and then split it up into 1024x1024 segments.

[Fluffy Sharkfin]

This video on UDIMs in Blender might help to further explain the process of splitting your mesh into multiple UV's and gives a good explanation of the general principle, but bear in mind that while they're talking about using 4k vs 16k resolutions and large numbers of textures you'll need to be a little less extravagant when making stuff for SL since you're limited to 1024x1024 and 8 materials/faces per mesh.

 

[IvyTechEngineer]

1 hour ago, arton Rotaru said:

No matter what tutorial you are going to use, the problem will still be the same. Low resolution in SL because we have a 1024x1024 texture size limit. So it's either, live with the low res look (can look actually OK on landscapes) or, create a seamless tiling texture (good resolution but repetitive and usally boring looking) or, split it into multiple materials and try to hide the material seams as good as possible. Unfortunately there is no good method in SL to texture landscapes nice and easy.

As Aquila put it a few weeks ago, the texturing will be the Elephant in the room.

 

1 hour ago, arton Rotaru said:

No matter what tutorial you are going to use, the problem will still be the same. Low resolution in SL because we have a 1024x1024 texture size limit. So it's either, live with the low res look (can look actually OK on landscapes) or, create a seamless tiling texture (good resolution but repetitive and usally boring looking) or, split it into multiple materials and try to hide the material seams as good as possible. Unfortunately there is no good method in SL to texture landscapes nice and easy.

As Aquila put it a few weeks ago, the texturing will be the Elephant in the room.

I think I might have copied the wrong url link to the YouTube video I was watching. I think this might work

Stupid question #14, lol - so why bother with texturing in Blender? Why not just use the textures in SL?