How to Model and Texture Huge Props for Video Games

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"How do you approach huge props?" is a question I get fairly frequently. Let's take a look at some of the bridges I've built for games over the years and discuss the approach I generally take. It may not be perfect, but it works for me!
We'll look at the texture in Substance Painter and discuss construction techniques in MODO.
---
Hi! I'm Warren Marshall!
I'm a freelance, hard surface 3D artist living in North Carolina. I specialize in hard surface work but I can do pretty much anything from environments to props.
I worked at Epic Games for over 15 years and started freelancing after that. Since then I've done prop and environment work for some fun projects, including We Happy Few from Compulsion Games and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. I've also done a bunch of asset packs for the various marketplaces.
I have experience with Unreal Engine 4 and Unity and know how to put assets together quickly that look good in those engines.
Here's a link to my Art Station page where you can see a bunch of my latest work:
www.artstation.com/artist/war...
Visit my main web site here :
www.warrenmarshall.biz
You can email me directly if you'd like :
[e-mail]
Questions, business inquiries, support - or just to say hi!
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Motion Graphics : Skye Nelson, aka "SkyeShark" ( skyeshark.artstation.com )

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

What's the biggest prop you've ever worked on, and what advice would you have for someone attempting the same piece?

[@SebastianLarsen]

[INSERT OBLIGATORY BODY PART JOKE HERE]

[@sasaha8389]

I have a huge slumtype building...in the Walls you can clearly see the tiling of the concrete.

[@user-ys2eq7mg1k]

The biggest prop is french 32m tall concrete water tower with interior. Trying to texture it is exact reason to find you excelent tutorial.

[@FluteboxFan]

A bellfry with neo-roman house as my first project - My advice? Just don't.

[@Chris-jo1zr]

I'm actually working on a high detail train and I've just come to doing the exterior shell and oh my I'm not sure how to go about it but I'm enjoying the mental planning on it

[@angelaengle12]

So glad to see a bridge I've walked and died many times on, lol.

[@abuKaJeiN.]

Pewdiepie once stood on one of those bridges and said a very wise word

[@ws6nick]

As a game dev of 12 years this is good stuff, I like how at the end you threw the real life bit about iteration time... which is absolutely freaking true.

[@DarkAutumn3D]

19 years for me and I agree! ^.^

[@pootingplatypus8822]

Im just now getting into prop making and 3D modeling in general and videos like these that go over seemingly simple or obvious ways of constructing things really help. I feel like a lot of people (including myself) go into 3D modeling thinking you have to complete your prop and then texture it. Having textured segments that you can use like legos definitely opens up a ton of techniques I never even considered before and definitely eases my nerves going into larger prop making. Thank you for the vids!

[@melc311]

Iconic bridge

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

When they gave me a shot at building the new bridges I immediately jumped at the chance. Players are always fighting on bridges. It seemed like a no-brainer, yep, I'll do it!

[@baltius22]

Thank you very much for taking the time to explain to us your workflow

[@Longaui]

Great video, very insightful and well explained. Also I greatly appreciate the words of encouragement near the end.

[@danelokikischdesign]

Great work and explanation! It came out looking amazing

[@sheridansteven6864]

Great video, thank you for explaining all that ! Hope you keep it going .

[@BrandanLee]

This was extreamly helpful to a new hire and all of them should see it. Gracias, Warren.

[@andrewbyrnes6389]

Thanks for sharing this. Super useful for me at this point in my journey

[@toxicsludge77]

Thank you so much for the video Warren. I assumed things like this were made from tiling textures, but that would mean pulling more textures. Thanks for shining a light on it!

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

That can be a valid strategy as well. Bear in mind, this is just how I did it. There are many routes to the finish line. :)

[@Steamcrow]

this was really cool and intriguing!

[@valenticu]

Major props (hehe) for this video! I really appreciated your insight on this. I've always worked on smaller scale with environments and props, but been wanting to try out something a bit larger, and while I have an idea of how I would tackle it, I wanted to see how other people handle it, and it's good to see I was on the right track! Thank you for the informative video, gonna follow you from here on out cause you got some pretty good advice (and a cute dog in the intro)

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Awesome, thank you!

[@blendifi]

Thank you so much, especially your words for the last few minutes on this video...!!

[@AchtungRussish]

Thanks Mr. Marshall! It's was very usefull for me!

[@HubertKnoblauch3DContentOnline]

Great stuff!

[@3Dobjects]

Best topic!

[@DanijelTeofilovic]

Thank you so much, this was very cool :)

[@DreyzieArt]

Wow, I had no idea you worked on those bridges. Small world lol. They look awesome and I love your micro to macro approach to big pieces like this. It makes them less intimidating to tackle.

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Yep, absolutely. The "micro to macro" thing is really the only way I can sanely tackle stuff like this. :P

[@jozseflaszlo7445]

Oh man thanks for those last words, they just saved me from jumping out the window! For real, it's the first time I'm making a large building (a church) and I'm so dreading having to decide for myself how much resolution and detail I need it's absolutely nervewracking.

[@darcytaylor2442]

Just stumbled onto your videos excellent content thanks a lot Warren!

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Awesome. :)

[@xylvnking]

iconic bridge

[@andallicansayis]

good vid! thank you!!

[@Najebanski]

This was really helpful! Subscribed

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Thanks for the sub!

[@user-ys2eq7mg1k]

Great tutorial. I did not took similar project (50m long rotating bridge) some time ago, because doing mostly small props, not architecture and did not figured out how to texture it efficiently. With textures limited to 1-2k it looked impossible to make it look decent. Thank you.

[@keelfly]

Amazing video. Please make a video to teach people how they do not need to manually unwrap every asset and how to know which one should be manually unwrapped vs others that could be quickly done automatically to increase productivity. Many people have been led to believe, that they should manually UV everything out there.

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

You know, I've been tempted to do exactly that. You can get away with a lot these days using automatic unwrapping and/or tri-planar textures. Not a bad idea!

[@DarkAutumn3D]

That's why, when I make a tutorial, my approaches aren't always the fastest way. It's because my ideas and such may change so, when I look at the final project, I look back and think "actually I could have done it like that to save time..." A lot of my tutorials are pretty much just me designing it as I go. But it helps you to learn! I work with a lot of modular pieces myself ^.^

[@Daniel_Vital]

Hi Warren! Thanks for the video. Would you change your workflow if you did this today? For example, would you consider using material layers with masks on a seamless texture for example?

[@corpwars.origin]

Before I fade to black "Words of encouragement" . . . probably the best part. When I'm working on large models I pick a small section and copy to a new scene so there are no over whelming 'big model' distractions. Useful for raising the over all quality of the model by making sure the detailing is consistent. Also, keep those mini scenes in case you have to redo, undo or do do . . . more later. (hmmm, should add a bit of detailing to my vocabulary)

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

I tend to make copies within the same MODO scene, but the concept is the same. I have to flip back and forth between the detail view and global view so I don't spend TOO much time noodling on one small thing while the rest of the model suffers. It's an interesting challenge sometimes.

[@thane1448]

Thanks

[@Skyefaux]

wish I found this at the beginning of my semester haha

[@dktheking996]

Damn is that the famous gamer word bridge?

[@shlipon4927]

the legendary bridge from pewdiepie's video

[@ConfusionWood]

great tutorial. like and sub:D

[@judofernando8298]

i really need help about texel density, so just to make it clear, is it okey if building had diffrent density such as rooftop because the player wont be near the object ?? cause im trying to make it every object had the same density but for the large object, the uv are out of the uv border.

[@bruselperro458]

The video was good and I fully watched it but I thought the video will explain more variety of assets. For example, how to model and texture a road that goes through a whole city and has different intersections and roundabouts... I also missed explaining something about how to hide the seams with repeating textures. Good video anyways!

[@MatthiasVichte]

I think it would be better to make the big trim pieces tileable so you can use them on a larger scale and you won´t have to worry about hiding the seams.

[@AlexandrosDemetriades67]

Hi Warren! Great and useful tips as usual...I have a question though: Wouldn't u be better off using a tiling texture for the bridge with masks for the rust/dirt etc to maintain resolution even up close?

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

It depends on the project, but sure, that's a valid approach. There are many ways to get to the goal on this particular task, this video just shows the one I chose and am comfortable with.

[@pygmalion8952]

hello warren, why don't we use opacity maps for the part at 8:53 ?

[@Zeriel00]

So you have two files? One with the parts separated for texturing and then one with the bridge put together? sorry Im a noob

[@harrysanders818]

Interesting Approach. Thanks for sharing. Currently wrapping my head around Trim Sheets and this one indeed seems like a hybrid approach. I guess the layout was done this way because so that the islands correspond to the real life sizes of the objects and their texel density? Otherwise I would not undestand why the gaps inbetween would be neccessary. Is there any other particular reason for this? I mean like not to use a fully filled trim sheet and rather go with this approach? Anyways, great looking stuff!

[@CptBlaueWolke]

Good Question, seems like Texel density is a valid concern and might be a reason to use this. But i wouldn't say it's a hybrid approach as you aren't much able to reuse the texture on almost everything imo.

[@leatherandpoemscharmyman5774]

Hey warren,first of all , thx for the video I like it , because, yeap it is really hard to see and undesstand how to deal with huge props , somedays ago I askyou here about TD (texel desnity) with atlasing combination , for saving batches ,etc.... some hours ago I decided to model and texture a Huge but huge gates (similar to Warhammer 40K) with huge doors, all hardsurface (but this is another topic) ...and nice, your pov are great ! thx.

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Thanks Richy! Yeah, it's a little overwhelming at first and you can get a little paralyzed when trying to decide just HOW to get started...

[@leatherandpoemscharmyman5774]

@@WarrenMarshallBiz thx!

[@massivetree7937]

In my experience, finding a lot of information about texturing huge game assets is not easy to do so thank you for the video. I've transferred some Unreal assets to Modo and seen where the UV map is huge in comparison to the 0-1 UV space for tiling purposes. Is the trick/rule to create your UV space in terms of the 0-1 UV space multiplied by the number of times you want it to tile?

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

It CAN be. Sometimes it can also be a result of selecting a specific texel density while using a tiling texture. So you have a tiling metal texture and you want apply it to a set of polygons. However large those polygons need to be on the UV map to match the required density will determine how large they are. Another case can be where the tiling texture has a defined edge (like wood panelng or something). Then you can limit the size to even numbers. So scaling a UV island from 0-4 instead of 0-1 would give you an even 4 tiles across the surface while still looking correct in the corners.

[@leatherandpoemscharmyman5774]

hey waretn , did you use floaters to bake the hp to lp? thx. how many materials for this pieces?

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

On certain things like the bolts, yes. Not everything is stitched together. It's one set of materials for the entire bridge...

[@jayantverma7016]

I wanted to ask that should i use huge props like this as a whole one big mesh or should I break it down in pieces?

[@sergioaguis]

Oh, pewdiepie disliked this.

[@TheSairenSA]

Thanks for the video Warren! A few questions if you don't mind me asking, • How do you tackle LODs in this workflow? Do you just remove the detail pieces and fill in the missing textures with something else? • If you're using baked lighting then I believe this approach won't gel well with the texture bakes. Maybe I'm wrong but how would one approach big props in a baked lighting setup? If I'm not mistaken, GTAV used extra geometry with an offset of a few micro units away from the "static meshes" and applied a grime texture with an occlusion mask to provide an appearance of darkening/grime build-up. Thanks in advance!

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Hi Shaun! I did do LODs on this, that's a good point. It was basically a matter of taking the existing shapes and removing edges and faces here and there. From a distance you won't notice missing faces and things like that so it worked out pretty well. For something higher res, it might be trickier but it's fairly straightforward for something like this. As for baked lighting, I didn't have to do that here since the game was using real time lighting. However, lightmap UVs are generally done with a second UV channel so it wouldn't affect this construction method at all. Just add a second UV channel and pack everything uniquely into the 0-1 space. Given the size of these meshes the lightmap would be pretty low res and might not look great, but that's how you'd do it. :)

[@Mr3DRenders]

Awesome howTo, how do you get this layout of painter ? it's so photoshop like !

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

I don't think it's anything special. I may have redocked a few windows but I didn't get wild or anything. You could replicate this in no time! :)

[@kimandersendk]

how do you decide how big the model should befor going in to a game, do you use real size from real world. what size do you make the uv texture.

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

In this case, I had the original bridge from the old map to use as a template. Which is sort of cheating but I'll take whatever advantages I can get! As for texel density, which I assume is what you're really asking about ... that was an eyeball situation. "As good as possible" but there are some unavoidable realities when building something this large.

[@faryanblender8946]

Im trying to make an game-ready building, since 2 weeks ... Thought that I can do it by making uv-tiles but it doesnt seem to work, I guess I have to give ur way a try.

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Yeah, this way works well. The main challenge is texture resolution/density. Keep an eye on it, it can blur out pretty quick if you're not mindful.

[@vegitoblue2187]

so basically go modular?

[@vinceofscandal]

Luvit

[@phalhappy8612]

how about ao, is it baked in engine like shadow map or something I'm missing here?

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

With this method, you can't bake AO on the mesh since you're sharing the pieces all over the mesh. You MIGHT be able to get away with some very localized AO like around a bolt or something but it's just the physical reality of this way of building. You'd have to rely on in-engine shadows or what-not to give you some sort of depth.

[@CptBlaueWolke]

honest question: as many of your assets are repeating so much, why not directly working with Trimsheets? That would make it easier to reuse the bridge Texture for other props as well, no?

[@BaratoneBass]

i always fuss over where or not to make each floor tile seperate or to just model the entire map as one object lolol.

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

I guess it depends on your game engine and what it can handle, triangle wise. This is a different decision if you're using UE5 compared to UE4 for example...

[@andrewmajewski1756]

Thanks for sharing this Warren. Your videos and explanations often help to reinforce or correct whenever I'm on the right or wrong track but still lack either the confidence or experience to know for sure. One thing, since I know you're an Unreal user; have you played around using multiple UV sets for a single object to "resolution cheat"? It's not quite the same as using a decal since that's mapping a separate poly altogether, but say you have a car you've textured, but then you want to make a cool flame design or logo but don't want to be locked into a single UV map where it lose detail. So you create a second UV set from the selected Polygons and use your logo at a higher resolution, and then composite the maps together for the final output. I've done it in Modo, but not for anything to be used in Unreal or Unity (which I think with Shadergraph, this can be done).

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

I haven't but that's a good idea! As a contractor, I'm usually working on projects where they have an established set of master materials already created and you have to work within those constraints. On a personal project, yeah, I'll keep this idea in mind thanks!

[@josephvanwyk2088]

I just don't understand. When I play Cyberpunk for example, I walk into a building and see 100s of textures. When I create a simple building in blender using 5 textures, unreal freaks the hello out when importing that building... Clearly there's something I'm not doing right.

[@timarenski8137]

Hey, nice vid man! I know it's a bit late, but I have a question - is this ok in gamedev to make like 2-3 texture sets for medium size "hero prop", so this prop will look good in close up? Or should I search for another way to texture this in single texture set?

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Oh sure, use as many as you need to get the visuals you want. The project I was on didn't need high fidelity up close, so a single texture was fine. But you may have different needs. The point of the video is mainly about how to do more with less rather than advocating a single texture for everything. :) Do what you need to do.

[@timarenski8137]

@@WarrenMarshallBiz Thank you very much!

[@timarenski8137]

@Harry Bond good thought man, thank you!

[@waynesun3835]

I'm a little bit confused , so you break the bridge to multiple individual pieces and textureing them in SP ? but it seems you just combined the whole pieces into one object , how do you use them to rebuild the bridge if they're one single object?

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

I use my modeling app to assemble the smaller pieces into larger pieces. It's sort of like building a kitbash kit of bridge pieces and then assembling those into the larger bridge segments. Does that make sense?

[@waynesun3835]

@@WarrenMarshallBiz It's much easier to understand with kitbash explain , thanks . And in theory we can use the bridge pieces to create something different right?

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

@@waynesun3835 Of course. They're your mesh chunks, they will do your bidding.

[@ajaykumar-zx8wt]

But this kind of workflow will make shadows (AO) look incorrect right ,as the uv's will overlap . It's just a doubt I have in mind .

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

Everything comes with a compromise. In this case, yes, you won't get AO between the various pieces. But on something this large, odds are you won't notice anyway ... The individual pieces will have AO, however ...

[@ajaykumar-zx8wt]

@@WarrenMarshallBiz thanks for your reply 👍.

[@wesleywatson214]

I’m still a little lost, if I had a large building would I be baking out a 10k plus texture??

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

If something is massive, you may need multiple texture sets. It's just the reality of texel density. At some point you WILL run out.

[@christopherrapczynski204]

@@WarrenMarshallBiz oh my god Im so dumb, I mainly do character and small prop modelling and was wracking my brain on creating a giant obelisk with a lot of clean lines on it, it never occured to me I could separate the huge face into smaller portions with their own texture sheets that assemble together like a puzzle, seems so obvious in retrospect, thank you for leaving this reply

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

@@christopherrapczynski204 Yeah, it's easy to get stuck into the mindset of everything needs to be a single unwrapped object and ... that's not really the case. :)

[@soljafon]

0:56 pewdiepie moment

[@danksley]

Why do I feel the urge to say a word I know I shouldn't?

[@drumboarder1]

Wait a minute... It's this THAT bridge?

[@longjohn7992]

UDIMS.

[@TaiganTundra]

What about them?

[@tomaszneosapiens5111]

or you can just google two magical words , Trims and Modular

[@MrLunox]

"less and less worrysome on polygons on props... " * crys in optimizing for quest *

[@allamudigopi7300]

ah man, doing for quest in ue4 is a mess with life.

[@MrLunox]

@@allamudigopi7300 unity, but the same story i guess. Combining the Quest with PBR style graphics , no good. Needs a lot of opt. and creative workflows

[@allamudigopi7300]

@@MrLunox unity has 300 draw call limit for quest where as ue4 has 100, 500k tri limit for unity and 100k for ue4, i work on both of them.

[@allamudigopi7300]

@@MrLunox Can you explain your workflow if possible, i would like to know more about the optimization for quest. PM me please :)

[@MrLunox]

@@allamudigopi7300 Well there is sadly no option for pms on youtube, at least not anymore. Basicly its a Highpoly - Lowpoly workflow to bake down as much detail as possible while reducing the geometry as much as possible. I also try to make use of repeating UV´s so the overall texel density for an asset can increase. Then in-engine, we use simplyfied shaders, the unity URP pipeline for example has a "baked-lit" shader that acts like unlit + lightmaps, it still has normalmaps but gets rid of reflections. While that is mostly for enviroment-assets for others you might still need the standart lit. What sometimes can also help for certain assets is to reduce the resolution of the diffuse-map but keep the normal-map sharp or vice-versa since the most performance-costly drawcalls for the Quest are Textures if i recall correctly. So all in all there is nothing special about the workflow its just to keep an eye on the whole scene it self and use every mesure to increase performance while modeling and in-engine, with occlusion culling, lightbakes, etc. I´m only working full time for a bit over a year now and dont have any seniors at all in my company so its trial and error for me.

[@Frostiedkdk]

I love the models for the game, and thanks for this breakdown, my only beef with PUBG is their lighting artist, he just butcheres all the work, it looks so horrible, that guy needs to go back to work at 7-11, they keep doing horrible lighting in every map, if its not even just the standard unreal light.

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

In fairness, it's tough on a game like PUBG. You want it to look good but player visibility is also super important.

[@Frostiedkdk]

@@WarrenMarshallBiz i guess, still, the mood and the overall rendering could be alot better, and feel more epic, to me it looks alot like just taking the standard lighting in unreal 4, creating a huge map and just calling it done,. But hey, its not in any way directed at you i love your work been following ever since i got into modo! :)

[@jamarch3982]

Problem is, this vid doesn't actually reveal how to texture a huge prop. Because the props you're talking about are small. The huge props are the road and the sidewalk, but you don't talk about those. They're not even textured. This isn't quite what I hoped to see. I have a huge prop which I can't devide into pieces. Say, I want to replicate the Newton Cenotaph. How huge and undividable is that? So I was hoping there was a way to properly texture such things. But I'm really, really tired of those clickbate names of videos on KZbin. Hence the dislike.

[@WarrenMarshallBiz]

If you have a huge prop that can't be broken down into pieces then you don't have a lot of options beyond the obvious. Either you're going to have a bunch of unique texture maps, or you're going to use tiling textures - or some combination of the two. The Unreal engine mitigates this somewhat with it's virtual texture support but the logistical realities don't change.