Questions about Materials

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:bust_in_silhouette: Asked By Liemaeu

To not do something wrong for every material in the project, I have some question about SpatialMaterials:

  • 99% of the materials I use are from cc0textures.com. Is there anything “special” to know about the materials from this pages?

  • Should I take the .png or the .jpg versions of the materials from cc0textures.com?

  • Should I take the 2k, 4k or 8k versions of the materials from cc0textures.com? (I want to support screen resolutions up to 4K)

  • I simply copy the textures from cc0textures.com into my project folder (in subfolders, of course), create a SpatialMaterial and add the image files to their “slot” in the SpacialMaterial (color in Albedo, normal in Normal, roughness in Roughness, etc.). Is this correct or is there anything else to do?

  • Most of the textures from cc0textures.com have a “displacement” image file. I couldn’t find a displacement slot in the SpacialMaterial settings. What should I do with them?

  • The Uv1/Triplanar option lets every material look “better” (in my opinion). Is it okay to use this option with (every) material? Or does this option has any disadvantages?

Thank you in advance!

:bust_in_silhouette: Reply From: Ertain

Getting your textures from cc0textures.com should be fine. Since they’ve been released into the public domain, they can be used for whatever purpose. The file format chosen shouldn’t really matter as long as the resolution is consistent, i.e. a 2k JPG is just as good as a 2k PNG file. The only real difference is that PNG files support transparency.

With respect to image resolution, go with one that suits the game’s look. The pixels of lower res textures will be more noticeable in 4k resolutions, so going with a high resolution texture is a good idea. Though it depends on the art of the game. Just because the models have 4k textures doesn’t mean the player is going to notice these high resolution textures (though I’m sure the player would appreciate such detail). One of the drawbacks of high resolution textures is that they take up a lot more space, so a balance may have to be found between higher resolution, game size, and art quality.

The placement of the other materials should be fine: the normal material goes with the normal map, roughness material goes with the roughness map, and so on. This answer suggests putting the displacement material in the Depth attribute. As for triplanar mapping the only disadvantage I can see that the engine would do more blending on the model, and thus more processing.