Seamless texturing between Objects

[catch22]

First, I'd like to say, I am not an artist.  I'm a programmer who does art to get by ?

One issue I struggle with is textures being seamless between separate "modular" dungeon pieces.  This is like walls and such.  The problem I'm having is with texture scaling when making my unwraps and using textures for the sub parts of the model.  It's very hard to unwrap each modular set piece and then like, stencil in the textures, because they'll never line up; the scale in the uv could be off, etc.

I ended up making basically making a small texture atlas because then my texel to unit ratio is consistent and the coordinates are always roughly the same...  I tend to model geometry first then try to texture after, maybe I'm doing it the wrong way?  At the moment I've kind of gone back to making modular geometry pieces that I will use to compose larger "set" pieces that are groupings of these... however,  it's limiting.  Not everything comes down to a square.  I tend to do a lot of bevels and other geometry embellishments.

I also wonder, then, about using different materials, but the same texture. So I have a "set" atlas so all these modular geometry unwraps and scales correctly, but some of it might be wood, or stone, or metal... and I'd want each part to have it's own material.  But then, does this cause performance hits having a big-ish texture with multiple material properties?

I thought I could get away just doing each piece with its own custom unwrap and stenciled texture; im not too worried about it from a performance perspective -- just a visual one.  Because in this case as I said, making stuff "line up" is tricky.  Of course, a trade off might be to do "seam hiders," ie, like pillars every segment to cover the few pixels off.

 

... anyone more experienced with art pipelines comment? Am I on the right track, totally off, etc?  My environment art is intended to be pretty elaborate, but considering uv scale, texels per unit, and seams, I'm kind of scratching my head on the best approach here?

[Josh]

I prefer the approach where you model some props and then place them in a CSG level. Texture alignment problems on walls all go away:

[reepblue]

Like Josh said, just use CSG to shell your level and add props later. Just because other technologies push the "model and UV walls and floors into modular pieces" doesn't make it right.

The advantage of using CSG is that you can get an idea out fast. You can reshape the layout at any time and once everyone is happy with it, then you detail it.