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A few questions

PostPosted: Sat Oct 05, 2013 2:04 pm
by Mark_T
Hi,

I`ve read a bit more on the Unity forums and I have a better idea about Amplify, that is why I edited the initial post. I`m not sure I properly understood how it is working, and I have to give it a try, that`s for sure. Any way, I would still like to ask a few questions.
If I understood correctly, Amplify creates and stores all the textures in a virtual texture which is the equivalent of a maximum, let`s say, 512k x 512k pixels. Or. 1Mx 1M pixels. If I want to export from world Machine a huge terrain area, something like 16 x 16 tiles, 8K each, will result in the equivalent of a 128k x 128k pixels image size. I suppose I will have to import each image manually and assign the corresponding texture to the correct tile.
My questions are:
1.Considering I import in Unity for each tile low poly geometry and not displacement maps for Unity terrain, do I have to be worried about bleeding on the edge of the tiles, or rendering artifacts because the vertices on the edge of the tile are not merged? I would like to use geometry because displacement maps don`t allow having hangover cliffs on the terrain.
2. If I use proper naming conventions (even a custom one), would it be possible to have an automatic way of importing the tiles and creating and assigning the materials, using an automatic method?

3. What do you mean by World Machine, Mari and Modo integration?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Re: A few questions

PostPosted: Tue Oct 08, 2013 2:02 pm
by Ricardo Teixeira
Hello,

My apologies for the late reply, we seem to be having some forum notification issues.

I already sent you an email but I will reply here for the record.

1- You probably won't have any issues but just be sure you should try the Trial Version, http://amplify.pt/download/
I have personally done some “extreme case” testing with separate meshes generated from scan data and it worked like a charm.

2 & 3 - Amplify Texture 2 will do that, the import process will be extremely simplified. With Mari for example, all you have to do is select the first UDIM tile, the system does all the work in the background.
We already have some MARI scenes running and it’s definitely something to look at, simply amazing.

I can hardly wait to get it out there :D

Re: A few questions

PostPosted: Thu Oct 10, 2013 12:17 am
by Diogo Teixeira
Hi Mark,

From my understanding you're a bit worried about the workflow with World Machine. That's ok, let me tell you about our plans:

The initial integration will work for all apps the same way in AT2. We will import an entire texture grid, let's say 16x16 at 8192x8192 each, as if it were only one texture. Tiles will have enumeration in their names - e.g. 1001 (UDIM/Mari), u1_v1 (Mudbox) - and you will simply drag the first texture into the texture slot of the your Unity material and AT2 will automatically detect and import all the tiles.

There are no continuity issues on the texture itself. We already have this feature partly implemented and have been successfully testing high density environments and models with grids up to 40K x 40K, on a single Unity material, exported from Mari.

I can't guarantee, however, that using virtualized displacement maps won't generate border discontinuities on the tesselated terrain tile mesh. This problem may exist regardless of texture virtualization and it's probably caused by mip-mapping differences. This is theoretical, of course, and it might just work out fine.

Soon, we'll be releasing a AT2 progress video showing this exact workflow from World Machine, Mari or Mudbox.

I'm hoping this is the answer you were looking for :)

Please let me know if you require additional information.

Re: A few questions

PostPosted: Thu Nov 14, 2013 10:54 am
by Mark_T
Thanks for your answer. It`s highly appreciated not only because brings a bit of light in our future workflow but also because it makes the waiting a bit easier. :)
Regarding my question no. 2. Lets say I have a set of mesh objects named: objmesh_001, objmesh_002, objmesh_003 ...objmesh_078, etc.. Each of them are textured with the corresponding color and bump maps: objmesh_col_001, objmesh_col_002, objmesh_col_003, .....objmesh_col_078, etc., and the same naming convention for the bump channel. Will I be able to do an automatic import for all these assets, objects and maps? I`m asking this because I`m not a big fan of Mari`s UDIM naming convention. I find it a bit spartan and limiting the 10 tiles offset on the U axes, especially considering you might wanna use Amplify2 for the whole scene. Splitting the assets in groups of 10 on the U axes, it gives more unpleasant renaming workflow headaches.
Again, many thanks for your answers.

Re: A few questions

PostPosted: Fri Nov 15, 2013 5:34 am
by Diogo Teixeira
You won't be limited by UDIM or 10 horizontal tiles. We also support other types of naming for tiling, including mudbox's u1_v1 and others.

I hope this helps.