The Different Types Of Trim Sheets & How They Are Used In Games (Part 1)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- In today's video we dive into the different types of trim sheets and how they are used in games. Topics include old and new games, texel density, shaders, topology, art tests and more.
Patreon: / emc3d
Portfolio Reviews: / shop
All Links: linktr.ee/emc3d
00:00 Lecture Introduction
01:18 Trim Type 1
01:53 Assassin's Creed Boat
04:00 Trim UV Unwrap Example
06:02 45 Degree Corners
07:13 Trim UV Unwrap Example
08:26 The 0-1 UV Square/Box
09:27 Tilable VS Trim Sheet
09:50 Assassin's Creed Castle
12:14 Hiding Geometry Seams
13:22 Asset Skirting
15:14 Type 1 Conclusion
15:40 Trim Type 2
17:25 Racing Games
17:37 Harry Potter Rugby
19:34 Escalator
19:46 Texel Density
21:35 Scaling Trimsheets
23:30 Bizzare Creations Art Test
27:50 Modern Hybrid Example
31:43 Trim Corner Error
34:04 Lecture Conclusion
For Pay Day 3, we were creating interiors using texture atlases and photographs.
Personally, I’m not a big fan of these fake interior shaders (I think they’re great, but only for the second floor). On the ground level, however, I believe all "fake" interiors should be in actual 3D. But creating true 3D interiors with the same level of detail as exteriors is very expensive, not only in terms of performance but also in terms of game budgets.
This is where we turned to some old game development tricks.
We approached the interiors in a way similar to how levels were built in Silent Hill 2. We used a texture atlas that included walls, doors, various props, ceilings, etc. For instance, we had a flat texture of shelves with bottles for a pub. We created several thematic sets, like a pub, a hospital, an apartment, a store, a burger restaurant, etc.
Since we had a limited number of assets, we could reuse them to create new interiors of any shape and form. Some textures were just edited photographs where we removed any copyrighted elements. For example, if we needed a pack of Coca-Cola bottles, we would take a photo of a box and apply that image to a flat surface, just like it was done in Half-Life 1.
This approach is very cost-effective and looks much better than any complex shader you can create.
And because all this is in the dark and behind dirty glass, the fact that the textures are low-res or the bottles are just painted on a flat surface becomes unnoticeable.
You can even bake lighting into the vertices, use unlit shaders, and disable shadow casting to make it even cheaper - essentially the same techniques used in games from the 2000s. But they was using this technics for walkable environments.
This technics also can be used for backdop buildings as well. You can even break pbr rules for them and not do any normal maps which makes this very cheap in production. You just take photos of some buildings - making textures from them and using this textures to make 3D buildings. Which at the distance looks even better than if you do them in painter from scratch.
Really great comment, thanks for sharing
Thank you for sharing!, great insight
nice breakdown video! thanks for featuring my stuff as an example :) happy to see your channel growing dude! loved your interview with nate.
Heeey! Thanks so much chap! :)
I've been following your stuff for years from Polycount, as well as your channel, which is super inspiring and was a big reason for me to try this stuff out.
Hope you return to drop some knowledge on the PA channel again! Always down to vibe/catch-up if you're game in the future.
Your channel is so useful, I cant express that enough, like I am learning an insane amount. Keep doing what you're doing
I know there are a lot of tutorials on this matter, so to anyone wondering if this is worth watching, I say yes, go ahead! The video is very informative, and the man shares valuable insights from experience. Whether you're a beginner or intermediate, you'll learn a lot.
Great material! There is clearly a shortage of vids about texturing large scale assets.
I would argue trims can be used almost everywhere, even at mid scale or small scale props, like for example furniture. Trims/hybrids/atlases are great tools to reduce precious drawcalls. It would be great if you could expand the topic of drawcall optimisation, since it is very often overlooked by junior or even higher grade artists.
Exactly what I need right now. Thank you so much sir.
Thanks!
Heeey! Thanks a lot for that Super-Sloth, that's the first super thanks I've ever gotten :D, much appreciated.
@@EMC3D oh awesome hahah, glad to help, your videos are great!
I graduated from Full Sail and this taught me more than one class did
Hey!
just want to say ive been an ENV artist for 7 years. Ive worked at triple AAA studios...INDIE studios and honestly listening to your channel is refreshing and really appreciate this!
OMG, this channel is a treasure trove of information! Thanks so much for your insight!
i agree
This is really good thanks. I learnt about trim sheets from working in games, which is surprising because I did a 4 year degree specifically for art in games and they were never mentioned once. Glad you're helping people more than my degree lol.
Thank for the video!
Good to see Assassin's Creed as example:) I'm creating AC Odyssey fan scene in UE5 and watching at the game in search for references I was impressed how heavy the devs relied on trims not only for architecture or something big, but also for hundreds of small props too
Thank you for this video. It will be very helpful for my commercial projects.
Great video and often ignored I have the feeling. The company I joined in Japan a while ago did do a lot of content uniquely and I reworked a ton of content to introduce Tiling and Trim textures to reduce the amount of textures while raising quality. It's surprising to me how many don't know about it even nowadays. Ubisoft is absolute Pro in this btw. and they are very strict with the rules and as far as I heard from people there even deactivated scaling of assets, which is at times difficult but it makes sure everything is consistent.
Sometimes I struggle with trims in keeping texel density properly because of fitting different sized geometry onto the sheet but that mostly comes from lack of time and planning ahead good enough.
Thank you so much for sharing this! I am still trying to learn about 3d and this channel helps me so much. You are the best!
Amazing content as always, thank you so much @EMC3D !!
There's one passage I didn't understand fully, when at 22:00 you mention a buffer? I got a bit lost there! But regardless thanks again for the incredible video!
20% buffer means scaling a texture/mesh/object up or down. 20% is usually the amount that's acceptable before scaling too much and making noticeable differences to a meshes texture resolution and texel density.
@@EMC3D ohh I understand now. Thank you so much!
The quality of your videos is amazing, keep up the good work!
Awesome, thank you
Thank you this was really informative and you break the complex down to the simple really effectively
I’ll keep checking out your videos, maybe it’s covered, but it would be interesting in a future video to cover any conventions for breakdown of assets. For example the escalator perhaps could have been split into steps and railings etc then assembled in UE.
Fantastic video and a great example of why I like working in the ghetto/mobile. ;)
Not sure if you covered it but I do a lot of multiple uvs with different decals/trims. Also just using the trim normals and having tiling on another UV. Pros and cons of course but gives a lot of flexibility.
Nice vid! Good to note that sometimes overscaling textures can be a stylistic choice that adds softness to large rest areas. Think WoW
Amazingly informative and useful video! Thank you
hello there! these videos are pretty cool man! it's a bit difficult for me to follow because of linguistical reasons hehe but I'm learning a lot! You are pretty calm and informative with the examples. You talk a lot about the real size of the object compared to the size of the textures, is that what 'Texel Density' is? If you've talked about it in another video i'd watch it instead of making you type.
Cheers!
Coming soon! And thanks :).
ua-cam.com/video/sR1sAWWT2x8/v-deo.html a pretty good video I found for explaining Texel Density
Are you planning to go deeper into "detailed normals" (33:47)? Im not quite familiar with that. Thanks for the video!
amazing content!
Very useful video. Thank you buddy
The AC:Mirage gate has a very interesting texture with the decoration parts that have alpha/clipping and i wish i knew how they are put on the model. Second UV maybe?
Could just be modelled over and then trace the polies around the texture.
Great insight broski
Would be great to see video for hotspot texturing considering I've seen a resurgence of that since CS2.
truly gem!
excellent
Of course i just found this at the end of lunch, can someone respond to this so i can find this after work?
This is so good
I'm starting to learn about it now and I have a question, what to do with the decals? Are they made on Trim Sheets? or are they separate objects?
I’d recommend do a texture atlas for many of the objects in the same scene of a similar type (for example an atlas of garbage, an atlas of vegetation, an atlas of road signs, etc)
@@5ld734 Yes, I have been following this line, but I'm still in doubt because, for example, I see some decals, and/or variations in texture like stains and things like that, and I don't really know how they are made, if they are added to a separate sheet, or an effect or an object with transparency
yep decals are just atlas detail with transparency, can be from photographs or highpoly sculpts.
I'm a bit confused, when you say the trim texture goes in one direction, are you talking about the american band one direction?
Planning and making trim sheets is PITA!!! do you have any technique to make it easier to plan and create one ?
Soon! :)
If you could link the miro project it would be very usefull, so i can see in higher quality the images while i watch the video
I'll look into adding a master board in the future, good suggestion cheers.
Sir I also want to become an environment artist but I don't know what will be the best things to make for my portfolio? I am using maya for modeling , zbrush for organic stuff , substance painter and unreal engine for rendering . Currently I have made many 3d assets but no environment 😅
I'd say go from a concept art piece and make that in 3D to start off with, something small and manageable, not huge cities or landscapes.
What about Ambient Occlusion maps, I assume these cannot be baked at all and will be done in the game engine instead?
You can have baked AO if you want, it'll just tile with the trim anyway. But a good reason for modelling in/out detail is so that you can get that nice SSAO/DFAO on the geometry itself.
another option is to bake it to vertex colors.
If 45 degree angles create seams like that, why not just include them in the trim sheet at the corners 🤔
Usually because there's so many corners you may/may not intend for.
You can have set dressing solutions and stuff, like a small lip/pillar, but it's hard to address those harsh angles that split the UV when straightening your unwrap, especially when you're dealing with a whole zone/area of a game.
Second
First!