Bought it just now and going to reverse engineer the example pack to learn more about this. Would love to know how exactly you did the ornate pieces in that sheet. Thanks again!
@@adamplechaty thanks so much for the support! the ornate pieces were literally just using jonas ronnegards ornate brushes pack, just search for JRO tools on gumroad, and they are super useful brushes for zbrush, and then i just turned wrap mode one while using them to get it to tile properly ;) hope that helps!
Have you done any tutorials on how to make the water shown in that level? Mine never really looks as nice as that even with a fresnal. Or even made any on Gumroad that we can purchase to use? Water has always been my weak spot.
I have no idea how many hours of my life I have spent looking for EXACTLY this information!!! THANK YOU!!!! Why is this so seldom touched on in tutorials when it's so important?!?!?!
@@PolygonAcademy At my college and again at uni you had to show your UVs, anything outside the 0/1 area and you'd fail =/ They insisted everything HAD to be inside the area. Are you making any more modular kit tutorials? I feel like I've shed several years of ingrained bad advice!
Man, I'm confounded. I begged instructors to discuss this kind of stuff during classes earlier this year and they just glossed past it. It's equal parts essential and useful as hell! Thanks so much dude
thanks so much! I constantly keep hearing instructors are not teaching this technique which is appalling/mindblowing to me haha. glad the video helped!
What was really confusing for me back when I started working with games and engines, was the MAJOR difference between a trim / atlas texture and a lightmap texture. The short version, which I came to understand the hard way is - trim/atlas textures CAN have UV islands overlapped, lightmap textures CANNOT. In your 3D modelling program, you should have TWO sets of textures - on channel 1 (which will be channel 0 in UE4) you have your UV islands mapped according to your texture, overlapping or not, and on channel 2 (which will be channel 1 in UE4), you have your UV islands spread across the whole texture (0,1 space) with some gap between the different islands (people recommend 3px, I can't say for sure, because I seem to always have problems regardless of how much px gap I leave). They MUST NOT overlap, or otherwise you'll get visual artifacts after baking. Another thing I learned the hard way - if you manual unfold, all the sharp edges in your model (edges > 45°) should have seems.
Jason Voor yea exactly, multiple uv channels is the way to go, you can reuse the second uv set for unique grime masks, tiling detail normal maps etc as well :)
I also wanted to mention this because when I started modelling last year I begun to use this workflow first but then I had the lighting issues in UE4 because of overlapping UVs. I don't understand why this possible issue isn't broached in this video as it seems to be very important when using this workflow. Beginners need to be teached about the pros and the cons of using this technique.
Manollo Bango nowdays unreal should automatically make a clean uv2 for your lightmaps on import, but i know what you mean, so many people asked about this that its gonna be the entire subject of my next video ;)
@@PolygonAcademy Okay, nice to hear. Like I said before, last year I had issues within UE4 because of overlapping UVs and I didn't touch the engine since then because I focused more into modelling instead. However, I don't think that all your viewers are using UE4 but Unity and I don't know how the latter does handle this.
@@manollobango I believe you can create the Second UV channel well in advance in your modeling software, rather than relying on the automated process of some engine. This way you are the one that's driving the result of how the lightmap Uvs are distributed, depending on the size of the Lightmap you choose. Also I believe most of the people in the Game Industry or learning the game pipeline, will eventually know about the need to create a separate UV channel for the same.
Notable Time-stamps: 0:00 - Introduction 3:31 - Within Unreal / explanation & example of trim textures 6:15 - Within Substance Painter / explanation & example of trim textures 6:59 - 3ds Max & Zbrush geometry creation for trim sheet (Sped-up) 7:36 - Further explanation of trim textures 12:24 - How the unwrap affects trim textures (Circular Floor) 19:25 - Modeling tips for trim textures (Pillar & Curved Wall) 27:02 - Using trim textures on small objects (Pottery) 31:36 - Balancing high and low detail within trim textures 33:10 - More examples of professional trim texture usage 35:43 - Conclusion / Wrap-up
almost 20 years in game industry as a 2D/3D enviro artist. I went from this type of trim texturing to unique UVs and now I'm getting back again. It's nice to refresh memory :-) Great tutorial btw. Keep up great work! ;-)
Believe it or not, without your article about motivation I don't know If I would've been able to finish the project I was working on at the time. I kind of needed that fresh dose of reality right on my face hahaha so big thanks for that!!
For someone who's just getting started in asset creation / texturing, I'm very glad that I came across your channel. Your videos are really insightful! Thanks, man! 😊👌🏾💯
I am very glad that you listen to your community, you are the best teacher I ever had. I wish you the best possible luck in your life and career because you deserve it. Thank you again.
God damn, finally someone that is explaining clearly how you make and use those trim sheets. I never found anyone really taking the time to explain that correctly before, what a shame really. Thank you so much for what you do, its really cool, i'm gonna help support you in return for that, you just made yourself a fan!
So much of this video was answering questions I've had for months but could never even figure out how to ask to begin with. Thanks so much for this video!
I have only recently heard about the concept of Trim Sheets and this is mind blowing. I am very much self taught and do the whole beginner thing of unique unwrapping everything I do, sometimes sharing a UV map across several things that may not need too much detail. This will be a game changer. I can't wait to play with that.
awesome glad it helped! i have a 4 part tutorial on creating and uv'ing trim sheets on my channel if you havent seen it. I am also self taught so love to hear others going down that route as well! pays off in the end if you stick with it :) thanks for watching
I have started learning environment art the last few weeks. I appreciate you explaining the reason and theory behind why its such an important skill to have. I haven't worked in the industry so memory constraints aren't an issue on my small personal projects. I will definitely learn more about trim sheets! Thanks you for sharing!
a huge preesh for you, man, i've struggled with this stuff by myself a lot, but yours tutorial explains and shows a lot in a simple and understandable way. thank you. i'd give my kidney for our teachers explained this stuff to us as you did.
15 people still don't understand trim sheets - This is an amazing video, thank you so much for taking your time out to do this video for everyone, keep up the good work Tim! looking forward to more videos.
Okay so basically: - Trim sheets are perfect for environment art. - Not knowing trim sheets, is one of the reasons why people cant progress in environment art and it feels like huge amount of work, its just that the workflow is wrong, adds up work, make ppl lazy, postpone or actually start watching videos like this. - Trim sheets allow reuse, and the main focus are the actual textures, so the fun part is actually doing the trim sheet texturing AND texturing the model, while usual workflow, has the fun in only substance. Thats how i feel at least. Correct me if Im wrong anywhere, if not I quite start to really get it and it feels "right". Thanks for this!
yea you are right, a lot of it hinges on creating interesting textures and then being super creative with your meshes and UVs. those destiny vehicles are insane examples of someone mastering the technique to the point where its very invisible unless you really study them. the biggest gain is the project momentum, using a couple trims and tiling textures, you could tackle a huge medieval city modular kit and get something really impressive in the same time that someone spends doing a highpoly gun or tank and baking it down to a single asset.
@@PolygonAcademy ohh that is actually crazy, also it didnt cross even my mind that destiny was tiled on vehicles, it kinda feels like closer to the industry level, optmisation. Again, my appreciation sharing such hard to find information
As someone who's self taught through youtube tutorials over the last year, seeing the UV layout at 16:38 blew my mind a little bit, the sky just opened up before my eyes LOL! Thank you so much for all of your tutorials, they're so helpful!
cheers, the assets are up on my gumroad if you wanna bring them into your 3d software and slide around the uvs with the texture applied, should help fill in the picture more. Link in the description if you are interested.
As i was finding things out with this video, I was actually starting to get annoyed that this wasn't taught to me earlier, went through an entire degree this wasn't even hinted at. So thank you, like a lot a lot, cause i feel this is a huge step to allowing me to make really good looking assets through tilling (and now trim maps, because thats a thing), rather than just accepting something that looks "fine" cause the tilling wasn't working with the geometry i needed So thank you!
Lol, a couple of days ago I had a work interview and they asked me about trim sheets and I was like "yeah, I know what those are... but DO I REALLY know what those are?" This in-deep explanation comes perfectly timed for me, thanks a lot man!
Super side note, but I always had problems sculpting cracks on stone in zbrush, could you show us which techniques you use for that? like just the basics will be more than enough for me.
@@juanmilanese sure, but spoiler alert...its all an alpha pack I just slapped on quickly hahha. search for plaster damange zbrush alphas, I am pretty sure it was a free pack.
I just started in the game industry... Man you just save my life, doing 100 assets per week was a real pain until i saw this video. Thank you very much!
I seriously love you. At first I was kinda "afraid" I might miss out on some awesome hacks because I use Maya and not Max, but as you've mentioned, by the time you explained UVs I didn't even realize this wasn't Maya at first because it was all so clear in itself, thank you!! :D (honestly, everyone struggling with this, just watch an up-to-date Maya UV Tool Tutorial, there are so many profound ones out there, then you just immediately know what's the Maya counterpart of what he's doing and where to find it) SO comprehensive and helpful!
Thank you Tim, this is actually one of the best free tutorials out there for trim sheets. I like your process of breaking down the info and your workflow. I was hoping that maybe you could post at some point a sped up timelapse of this process, just for anyone who maybe wants to check it in detail, not even any commentary is needed. Again, thank you very much! Cheers!!!
This is the first time I've seen one of your videos, so figured I should comment. Your videos are definitely at a professional level, yet they come across as friendly and informal. You communicate like a normal guy that's trying to teach his friends how to do something, and it works very well. Well done!
With this tut on Dec 22' I started remodel thinking of unwrapping and creating models from simple trim sheet. 1 texture gives many, many variations of a mesh. And for method of this tut, it's nothing extra, no digress, just essentials in a pill, easy to follow. More such vids.
@@PolygonAcademy And since the extra amount of geometry is not a problem nowadays as the amount of memory of textures it's really worth it. Another thing I usually do is group if I can the metals in a texture and no metals in another texture. So I can skip the metallic texture and achieve PBR with only 2 textures (Base Color in RGB and Roughness in alpha in one texture and Normal in the other texture). This way you save a very large amount of texture memory.
@@danielcortijos1037 hell eya, good tip. plus then you can quickly tune your different surface materials in unreal with material instances with very little effort/masking/going back to substance.
@@PolygonAcademy Yeah, I always try to follow a workflow non destructive so I can go back and forward any time. Substance it's very good for that. I always try to keep all the environment at the same level of quality so maybe at the beginning I do some quick textures to get the general vision and then I go back and forward updating textures of better quality, always keeping the same level in all the environment.
Dude watching every video on your channel taught me about the same as 3 years of University Games Art. Thanks so so so much for these tutorials. Really looking forward to future ones.
@@PolygonAcademy No problem! sorry if you covered it in the video I might have missed it, but does the initial plane have to be a specific size before you start modelling/sculpting the detail on?
Stewart Morrison not really, i usually make it 4m if i plan on the texture being a 2048 so it makes the texel density similar to modern games (512px/m)
Sir this was amazing... Any chance you could do a detailed tutorial on how you exactly you built the trim sheet or texture in Zbrush and Maya or max.. Thanks a lot
yup, I will add it to the to do list, and I will be making a bunch of trim sheets from start to finish in my course I am planning. but I will also create a vid for the free content side of things too :)
@@PolygonAcademy this is amazing content. will buy the trim and look forward to learning more. will the course have any modular content or later course?
First time I've seen one of your videos, and you've earned my subscription. I appreciate the level of detail you go into while still keeping it concise and clear.
Super cool. It looks shockingly good for the small amount of texture and mesh. Thanks for the detailed explanations throughout. A side note about UV unwrapping outside of the texture space (the "0 to 1".) Baked lighting maps in UE4 require UVs to be inside, so take it into consideration if issues pop up with lighting. It generally means having a separate UV map for the lighting, which UE4 can do automatically on request in the mesh editor window. (This comes up in lighting tutorials, often.)
James Koss yup by default on import ue4 takes your uv1 shells and puts them into a unique 0-1 for the lightmap uvs, but trim style uvs have more seams than flattened mapped ones, so a quick fix is to do an auto unwrap on uv2 in max/maya and then tell ue4 to use that.
Thank you so much Tim !! This is another art/life changing tutorial from you. You have just answered so many questions I had and that were holding me back for a looong time, and you did it in 37 minutes and 13 second: you're the best!
I would just like to say that your channel is super helpful, I love the break downs and the way your videos are laid out. I like how you give tips from an industry point of view and share your 10+ experience with us. I would like to say keep up the great work man. P.S I am in my last year at university and I can’t wait to one day achieve my goal of becoming a 3D game artist in the industry like you. I learn a lot from your videos too so thank you very much 😊.
@@PolygonAcademy no worries man, your a great guy , easy to listen to and you give great tips and advice on how to become better as a 3d artist, so thank you :)
thanks immensely for this vid, you clarified a lot of the confusion I was facing trying to understand trim sheets. The UVing aspect now makes total sense. great stuff!
My god, I didn't know anything about trim sheets until today and I just completed a 4 year honours degree in games art. It was never mentioned. But I have an art test for a job due in 2 days, and they request that you use trim sheets, and I was like, use WHAT? Thank god for this video. Hopefully I can make something presentable and I don't look like a doofus ^^;; Thank you!!!
cheers :) there are other styles of atlas textures too, like having 20 door textures on one material, or a bunch of windows or detail pieces, makes things efficient!
that's right i used both one texture and multiple assets based on that texture and also combine UV of multiple objects in one UV after attaching them and then painting, I thought they were the same, now I know they were a different method. I really need a cheat sheet or dictionary for CG art to know the difference. I think it's a problem with us self thought people. we are inventing the wheel again. thank for sharing your experience with us man . really appreciate it.
Very nice work, thank you. I would love to see how you make your trim sheets. I know you mentioned it and showed a quick timelapse of the modeling in Zbrush but I think there are a lot of missed steps that were glossed over to give the core of your topic in this video the attention it deserves. Look forward to your future videos and tutorials.
3 Prong Gaming yea i will upload a longer narrated timelapse soon :) and also i will cover this topic super in depth in the environment art course im going to create!
Creating a material in Unreal using layer masks, like adding those cracks to a unique alpha layer with height and normals (like decals), but leaving the rest flat underneath, can also accelerate your mileage quite a bit.
This was genuine gold! I have been struggling with this for the past week especially the UVing aspect and this helped clarify some of my issues, thank you!
Tim you are basically carrying out my videogame bachelors final project lol. Thank you again for this amazing tutorial and thank you for teaching us how the actual games are being done
You beat me to it! I have a list of videos I wanted to make for my RUclips channel one of which was Trim Sheets. This video is so well done I don't think I could add any more value by doing one myself. If you don't mind, I'll be forwarding my students to this tutorial and your channel in general to help support you. I understand how long it takes to make a good video so I appreciate it even more!
Matthew Marquit thanks so much, love it when people enjoy the content and share it :) Definitely do your own trim texture tut as well, its always great to see different workflow and tips :)
Yea this is totally gold. I know I said thank you on the other video, but thank you again lol. I'm gonna be doing this same thing using quixel mixer, blender, and unity but it absolutely translates. Thank you!
yea software is interchangeable for sure! its more understanding the WHY and concept of how to use this technique that's important. thanks for proving my point :)
Hi! I started working with trimsheets recently and it's awesome to see what you can do when mixing them with the Unreal material node editor. I hope this videos keep coming, they are super helpful. Have a great day!
Just the video i needed. Can't wait for the others. Every other tut is kinda just "well we have this block" but a block is very different form a vase or other more complex objects....and often teh result looks like it would have been laughed out of every studio 10 years ago. Understandable but looking great is not exactly what most tuts about this topic are.
Omg that was such a useful video!! I know it’s a bit old but the knowledge in there is still so incredibly relevant (and I think will always be). Thank you sir for making this! I’m one of these aspiring environment artists who thought you had to uniquely unwrap everything and was starting to wonder how anyone could make environments at such speed lol. I was intimidated by trim sheets but man looking at this it actually is 10 times easier and faster than actually uniquely unwrapping and texturing meshes.
I can't wait for an indepth series on environments! I am trying to figure out some advanced techniques like blending designer materials, texturing buildings with tiling textures and all the techniques for texturing larger objects. It seems very hard to do with a unique unwrap and I think your series will help immensely.
15:25 about going beyond the bounds of the first UV block is really cool. It actually make a lot of sense, but I thought it would "break" something so I've never done it. Thanks for this!
Awesome as always man!!! Can't wait to watch your full AAA environment tutorial, as a self-taught environment artist your tips and videos really helps me alot. Thank you
By Far the most useful video on the channel yet (in my humble opinion). I hope you are still planning to follow up with the other two videos in this series soon. Please keep up the good work. I'm a student graduating in about a month and I had a lot of fun replicating your process here.
Very informative. I rarely ever used trims for stuff even tho when making maps in older engines out of bsps it was mostly the only way of doing it. Never thought it's so versatile for props. Thanks!
cheers, thanks for watching :) 4 way tiling textures are more common for texturing bsp, trims you need to manipulate the uvs to bend to do your bidding :D
Man, you are amazing. I've learned so much from your tutorials, it's insane. Especially right now when I am applying for an env artist at game studios, this is pure gold. Thank you!
Thank you for this one Tim! It's rare to see some trim sheet tutorial in youtube. This video can help us to learn more about trim sheet and expand our knowledge to improve our workflow. :D
I've seen trim sheets from some of the free content on the epic marketplace and was always curious how they were created, seems like something that could take time to fully understand but the end result is awesome and you explained the process very well. I had no idea you could stretch your UVs in a horizontal line to apply different parts of the texture to an asset when using a trim sheet, really cool and enlightening to some of the possibilities.
Awesome breakdown of how to use trimsheets. The only thing I think I would need more info on would be how to make sure your high detail/ornate sculpts tile seamlessly? I'm sure there are other tutorials explaining that, but a video in your style with your clear explanation would be ballerrrr! Thanks for the great video!
WeThePuppets will do! But a quick explanation would be to use wrap mode on your brushes in ZB, so when you sculpt over one edge it continues on the opposite side. You have to turn it on for each individual brush though!
Coming back to this video again and again just to get that trim workflow down pat! And looking forward to that vertex blending video you advertised! .)
revoltless i love seeing feedback like this! Very happy to hear it helped you out. Ill be sure to make more vids like this soon :) thanks for watching 👍
Thank you so much for this tutorial! I never heard of trim textures, it was eye opening. Will get on it right away and implement those in the project I’m working on now. Can’t wait for the tiling texture and vertex blending (another term I never heard) tutorial you mentioned! And I am looking forward to your in-depth environment course, it’s already on top of my wish list :) Keep up the good work, I love your channel
@@lunabeige Im going to continue to put out a ton of free content on youtube, but that in depth course will be a paid product, its going to take me several hundred hours to make haha. I will try to keep it affordable, especially in comparison to insanely over priced game art school programs :) but at the moment I am focused on making free content to grow the channel!
Link to the trims/meshes and my lighting presets: gumroad.com/polygonacademy
Bought it just now and going to reverse engineer the example pack to learn more about this. Would love to know how exactly you did the ornate pieces in that sheet. Thanks again!
@@adamplechaty thanks so much for the support! the ornate pieces were literally just using jonas ronnegards ornate brushes pack, just search for JRO tools on gumroad, and they are super useful brushes for zbrush, and then i just turned wrap mode one while using them to get it to tile properly ;) hope that helps!
Have you done any tutorials on how to make the water shown in that level? Mine never really looks as nice as that even with a fresnal. Or even made any on Gumroad that we can purchase to use? Water has always been my weak spot.
I have no idea how many hours of my life I have spent looking for EXACTLY this information!!! THANK YOU!!!! Why is this so seldom touched on in tutorials when it's so important?!?!?!
Effete Denizen haha i have no idea you are not the first to say this, and it blows my mind it’s not being taught more 🙃
@@PolygonAcademy At my college and again at uni you had to show your UVs, anything outside the 0/1 area and you'd fail =/ They insisted everything HAD to be inside the area.
Are you making any more modular kit tutorials? I feel like I've shed several years of ingrained bad advice!
Man, I'm confounded. I begged instructors to discuss this kind of stuff during classes earlier this year and they just glossed past it. It's equal parts essential and useful as hell! Thanks so much dude
thanks so much! I constantly keep hearing instructors are not teaching this technique which is appalling/mindblowing to me haha. glad the video helped!
What was really confusing for me back when I started working with games and engines, was the MAJOR difference between a trim / atlas texture and a lightmap texture. The short version, which I came to understand the hard way is - trim/atlas textures CAN have UV islands overlapped, lightmap textures CANNOT.
In your 3D modelling program, you should have TWO sets of textures - on channel 1 (which will be channel 0 in UE4) you have your UV islands mapped according to your texture, overlapping or not, and on channel 2 (which will be channel 1 in UE4), you have your UV islands spread across the whole texture (0,1 space) with some gap between the different islands (people recommend 3px, I can't say for sure, because I seem to always have problems regardless of how much px gap I leave). They MUST NOT overlap, or otherwise you'll get visual artifacts after baking.
Another thing I learned the hard way - if you manual unfold, all the sharp edges in your model (edges > 45°) should have seems.
Jason Voor yea exactly, multiple uv channels is the way to go, you can reuse the second uv set for unique grime masks, tiling detail normal maps etc as well :)
I also wanted to mention this because when I started modelling last year I begun to use this workflow first but then I had the lighting issues in UE4 because of overlapping UVs. I don't understand why this possible issue isn't broached in this video as it seems to be very important when using this workflow. Beginners need to be teached about the pros and the cons of using this technique.
Manollo Bango nowdays unreal should automatically make a clean uv2 for your lightmaps on import, but i know what you mean, so many people asked about this that its gonna be the entire subject of my next video ;)
@@PolygonAcademy
Okay, nice to hear. Like I said before, last year I had issues within UE4 because of overlapping UVs and I didn't touch the engine since then because I focused more into modelling instead. However, I don't think that all your viewers are using UE4 but Unity and I don't know how the latter does handle this.
@@manollobango I believe you can create the Second UV channel well in advance in your modeling software, rather than relying on the automated process of some engine. This way you are the one that's driving the result of how the lightmap Uvs are distributed, depending on the size of the Lightmap you choose. Also I believe most of the people in the Game Industry or learning the game pipeline, will eventually know about the need to create a separate UV channel for the same.
Notable Time-stamps:
0:00 - Introduction
3:31 - Within Unreal / explanation & example of trim textures
6:15 - Within Substance Painter / explanation & example of trim textures
6:59 - 3ds Max & Zbrush geometry creation for trim sheet (Sped-up)
7:36 - Further explanation of trim textures
12:24 - How the unwrap affects trim textures (Circular Floor)
19:25 - Modeling tips for trim textures (Pillar & Curved Wall)
27:02 - Using trim textures on small objects (Pottery)
31:36 - Balancing high and low detail within trim textures
33:10 - More examples of professional trim texture usage
35:43 - Conclusion / Wrap-up
Gold, man, GOLD! Well done.
thanks dude! that means a lot coming from you, love your channel :)
it's all mortar and concrete, there was no gold. Vases were brass
almost 20 years in game industry as a 2D/3D enviro artist. I went from this type of trim texturing to unique UVs and now I'm getting back again. It's nice to refresh memory :-)
Great tutorial btw. Keep up great work! ;-)
berca76 thanks! Yea its just a great tool thats relevant from the ps1 days all the way till now haha. Thanks for watching
Ohhh yes man, this content is like pure gold!!
Art of Dani Baena thanks dude! I think the real winner this week is you though homie! Congrats on the job 🔥🔥🔥
Believe it or not, without your article about motivation I don't know If I would've been able to finish the project I was working on at the time. I kind of needed that fresh dose of reality right on my face hahaha so big thanks for that!!
@@DanyGates0693 Congrats on the job mate, I also accepted a job a week ago, starting as a junior 3d artist!!
That's fantastic! Let's go for it! thanks
For someone who's just getting started in asset creation / texturing, I'm very glad that I came across your channel. Your videos are really insightful! Thanks, man! 😊👌🏾💯
My totally unrelated question remains but here it goes: Bro, were you a professional fighter? 😊
I am very glad that you listen to your community, you are the best teacher I ever had.
I wish you the best possible luck in your life and career because you deserve it.
Thank you again.
thanks so much, that is an insanely motivating comment :)
God damn, finally someone that is explaining clearly how you make and use those trim sheets. I never found anyone really taking the time to explain that correctly before, what a shame really. Thank you so much for what you do, its really cool, i'm gonna help support you in return for that, you just made yourself a fan!
Walkion wow thanks so much for the awesome feedback, glad to serve up that hot fresh cg content for you :) appreciate the support 🔥🔥
I'm a hobbyist character artist who usually uses procedural textures for everything. This is mindblowing, there's _so_ many uses for this!
Yea! You could easily use this to build weapons and armor for characters. Thanks for watching :)
@@PolygonAcademy Yeah! Even clothing patterns and details on mechs could be done this way!
So much of this video was answering questions I've had for months but could never even figure out how to ask to begin with. Thanks so much for this video!
You’re welcome :) thanks for taking the time to watch!
I have only recently heard about the concept of Trim Sheets and this is mind blowing. I am very much self taught and do the whole beginner thing of unique unwrapping everything I do, sometimes sharing a UV map across several things that may not need too much detail. This will be a game changer. I can't wait to play with that.
awesome glad it helped! i have a 4 part tutorial on creating and uv'ing trim sheets on my channel if you havent seen it. I am also self taught so love to hear others going down that route as well! pays off in the end if you stick with it :) thanks for watching
wow this is what i was wondering all the time" how do those big buildings have such a high texel density?" this video explained it perfectly!
I have started learning environment art the last few weeks. I appreciate you explaining the reason and theory behind why its such an important skill to have. I haven't worked in the industry so memory constraints aren't an issue on my small personal projects. I will definitely learn more about trim sheets! Thanks you for sharing!
a huge preesh for you, man, i've struggled with this stuff by myself a lot, but yours tutorial explains and shows a lot in a simple and understandable way. thank you. i'd give my kidney for our teachers explained this stuff to us as you did.
hahah thanks! keep your kidney, cause there is more to come :)
15 people still don't understand trim sheets - This is an amazing video, thank you so much for taking your time out to do this video for everyone, keep up the good work Tim! looking forward to more videos.
cheers! thanks for the kind words, got 4 more trim related videos dropping this week!
I think you don't realize how valuable these lessons are. Thank you so much!
Gabriel Garga thanks for the great feedback, makes me happy to know you are enjoying the vids :)
This is the first time I've really understood what trim sheets are and how to use them, thanks for making these videos!!
you're welcome, big trim sheet 4 part series coming out this week as well showing more techniques.
It's like Jesus talking to disciples! You're the man!
hhahaha shhhh it'll go to my head! thanks for watching :)
I had the exact same feeling
Edit: god of UV sent him for our blessing.
I would like to take a moment and thank you for how helpful your tutorials have been. Thank you and good health to you sir. 👍
I couldn't wrap (no pun intended) my head around trims for so long, but within just 37 minutes I actually get it now! Incredible, thank you so much :)
Okay so basically:
- Trim sheets are perfect for environment art.
- Not knowing trim sheets, is one of the reasons why people cant progress in environment art and it feels like huge amount of work, its just that the workflow is wrong, adds up work, make ppl lazy, postpone or actually start watching videos like this.
- Trim sheets allow reuse, and the main focus are the actual textures, so the fun part is actually doing the trim sheet texturing AND texturing the model, while usual workflow, has the fun in only substance. Thats how i feel at least.
Correct me if Im wrong anywhere, if not I quite start to really get it and it feels "right".
Thanks for this!
yea you are right, a lot of it hinges on creating interesting textures and then being super creative with your meshes and UVs. those destiny vehicles are insane examples of someone mastering the technique to the point where its very invisible unless you really study them. the biggest gain is the project momentum, using a couple trims and tiling textures, you could tackle a huge medieval city modular kit and get something really impressive in the same time that someone spends doing a highpoly gun or tank and baking it down to a single asset.
@@PolygonAcademy ohh that is actually crazy, also it didnt cross even my mind that destiny was tiled on vehicles, it kinda feels like closer to the industry level, optmisation. Again, my appreciation sharing such hard to find information
As someone who's self taught through youtube tutorials over the last year, seeing the UV layout at 16:38 blew my mind a little bit, the sky just opened up before my eyes LOL! Thank you so much for all of your tutorials, they're so helpful!
100% the same over here lol
cheers, the assets are up on my gumroad if you wanna bring them into your 3d software and slide around the uvs with the texture applied, should help fill in the picture more. Link in the description if you are interested.
This is probably the best trim sheet video I have ever seen
Icedriver thanks!
As i was finding things out with this video, I was actually starting to get annoyed that this wasn't taught to me earlier, went through an entire degree this wasn't even hinted at. So thank you, like a lot a lot, cause i feel this is a huge step to allowing me to make really good looking assets through tilling (and now trim maps, because thats a thing), rather than just accepting something that looks "fine" cause the tilling wasn't working with the geometry i needed
So thank you!
luke mcintyre blows my mind this wasnt taught to you! When you combo trims and tiling you can create almost anything haha
I've been waiting for someone to make a useful in-depth tutorial on trim sheets for awhile now. This is a game changer, thank you so much Tim!
awesome, glad to hear you enjoyed it! you are super welcome!
Finally we have a channel like this on youtube
ABowlOfAwesome thanks for watching :)
Lol, a couple of days ago I had a work interview and they asked me about trim sheets and I was like "yeah, I know what those are... but DO I REALLY know what those are?"
This in-deep explanation comes perfectly timed for me, thanks a lot man!
Super side note, but I always had problems sculpting cracks on stone in zbrush, could you show us which techniques you use for that? like just the basics will be more than enough for me.
@@juanmilanese sure, but spoiler alert...its all an alpha pack I just slapped on quickly hahha. search for plaster damange zbrush alphas, I am pretty sure it was a free pack.
I just started in the game industry... Man you just save my life, doing 100 assets per week was a real pain until i saw this video. Thank you very much!
Dude you are the best,
Please don't stop your recording,
a big hand for you.
thanks :) I will have some new videos soon
I seriously love you. At first I was kinda "afraid" I might miss out on some awesome hacks because I use Maya and not Max, but as you've mentioned, by the time you explained UVs I didn't even realize this wasn't Maya at first because it was all so clear in itself, thank you!! :D
(honestly, everyone struggling with this, just watch an up-to-date Maya UV Tool Tutorial, there are so many profound ones out there, then you just immediately know what's the Maya counterpart of what he's doing and where to find it)
SO comprehensive and helpful!
Thank you Tim, this is actually one of the best free tutorials out there for trim sheets. I like your process of breaking down the info and your workflow. I was hoping that maybe you could post at some point a sped up timelapse of this process, just for anyone who maybe wants to check it in detail, not even any commentary is needed. Again, thank you very much! Cheers!!!
George Lykoudis yup im planning on it, was on vacation last week but will be back pumping out vids soon, and that will be one of them ;)
This is the first time I've seen one of your videos, so figured I should comment. Your videos are definitely at a professional level, yet they come across as friendly and informal. You communicate like a normal guy that's trying to teach his friends how to do something, and it works very well. Well done!
cheers dude! that was the goal so glad it comes across like that :) thanks for stopping by and watching!
With this tut on Dec 22' I started remodel thinking of unwrapping and creating models from simple trim sheet. 1 texture gives many, many variations of a mesh.
And for method of this tut, it's nothing extra, no digress, just essentials in a pill, easy to follow. More such vids.
I use this technique every day in my job as an environment artist. You explained it very well Tim, thanks a lot for your videos!
Yea, I would say it's pretty much the backbone of ~80% of environment work haha
@@PolygonAcademy And since the extra amount of geometry is not a problem nowadays as the amount of memory of textures it's really worth it. Another thing I usually do is group if I can the metals in a texture and no metals in another texture. So I can skip the metallic texture and achieve PBR with only 2 textures (Base Color in RGB and Roughness in alpha in one texture and Normal in the other texture). This way you save a very large amount of texture memory.
@@danielcortijos1037 hell eya, good tip. plus then you can quickly tune your different surface materials in unreal with material instances with very little effort/masking/going back to substance.
@@PolygonAcademy Yeah, I always try to follow a workflow non destructive so I can go back and forward any time. Substance it's very good for that. I always try to keep all the environment at the same level of quality so maybe at the beginning I do some quick textures to get the general vision and then I go back and forward updating textures of better quality, always keeping the same level in all the environment.
This is real gold! I rarely see some tut talking about trim sheet. Your tut really helped a lot! Please do more like this!
Polygon thanks for the feedback, more to come ;)
Its amazing what you can do with a trim sheet, lovely work mate!
Dude watching every video on your channel taught me about the same as 3 years of University Games Art. Thanks so so so much for these tutorials. Really looking forward to future ones.
sheeeeeit! thanks for the love! glad they helped you out :)
@@PolygonAcademy No problem! sorry if you covered it in the video I might have missed it, but does the initial plane have to be a specific size before you start modelling/sculpting the detail on?
Stewart Morrison not really, i usually make it 4m if i plan on the texture being a 2048 so it makes the texel density similar to modern games (512px/m)
Sir this was amazing...
Any chance you could do a detailed tutorial on how you exactly you built the trim sheet or texture in Zbrush and Maya or max..
Thanks a lot
yup, I will add it to the to do list, and I will be making a bunch of trim sheets from start to finish in my course I am planning. but I will also create a vid for the free content side of things too :)
@@PolygonAcademy this is amazing content. will buy the trim and look forward to learning more. will the course have any modular content or later course?
aphixe yea the course will have a bunch of modular kit construction for sure
Happy to see a number of new and great videos, Tim! Can't wait to get involved again.
Dean Stevens glad to be back at it! Thanks for tuning in again!
this is completely GOLD! it made everything click for me, thanks!
Thank you for your time and this tutorial. My utmost gratitude to you!
21:56 So simple but yet sometimes stuff like this eludes your mind, totally forgot I can do this😅
Missing these awesome tutorials. Hope you find the time to come up with more of such stuff.
First time I've seen one of your videos, and you've earned my subscription. I appreciate the level of detail you go into while still keeping it concise and clear.
thanks! I appreciate it :)
Really looking forward to an in depth Environment Art series.
SoraNashimi yea its gonna be fun to make, summer 2019 hopefully!
im only ten minutes in but this is already more helpful than most classes ive paid for. great video!
awesome! that really means a lot to me, thanks for watching :)
Super cool. It looks shockingly good for the small amount of texture and mesh. Thanks for the detailed explanations throughout.
A side note about UV unwrapping outside of the texture space (the "0 to 1".) Baked lighting maps in UE4 require UVs to be inside, so take it into consideration if issues pop up with lighting. It generally means having a separate UV map for the lighting, which UE4 can do automatically on request in the mesh editor window. (This comes up in lighting tutorials, often.)
James Koss yup by default on import ue4 takes your uv1 shells and puts them into a unique 0-1 for the lightmap uvs, but trim style uvs have more seams than flattened mapped ones, so a quick fix is to do an auto unwrap on uv2 in max/maya and then tell ue4 to use that.
Thank you so much Tim !! This is another art/life changing tutorial from you. You have just answered so many questions I had and that were holding me back for a looong time, and you did it in 37 minutes and 13 second: you're the best!
Charlotte MacKie happy to hear that :)
I'm so happy I found your channel. As a 3d student just getting into environment art I can't wait for the Environment Art series.
thats what I like to hear! glad you are able to get some tips outta the video :) thanks for watching and taking the time to comment
I would just like to say that your channel is super helpful, I love the break downs and the way your videos are laid out. I like how you give tips from an industry point of view and share your 10+ experience with us. I would like to say keep up the great work man.
P.S I am in my last year at university and I can’t wait to one day achieve my goal of becoming a 3D game artist in the industry like you. I learn a lot from your videos too so thank you very much 😊.
wow thanks so much! I am happy to hear the vids have been so helpful to you, it's a great feeling :) thanks for watching
@@PolygonAcademy no worries man, your a great guy , easy to listen to and you give great tips and advice on how to become better as a 3d artist, so thank you :)
thanks immensely for this vid, you clarified a lot of the confusion I was facing trying to understand trim sheets. The UVing aspect now makes total sense. great stuff!
FU_Films awesome to hear! Yea the uv/texture use part was confusing to me for so long
My god, I didn't know anything about trim sheets until today and I just completed a 4 year honours degree in games art. It was never mentioned. But I have an art test for a job due in 2 days, and they request that you use trim sheets, and I was like, use WHAT? Thank god for this video. Hopefully I can make something presentable and I don't look like a doofus ^^;; Thank you!!!
Awesome! Glad this came in handy! I have a more in depth 4 part series on my channel as well. Good luck on the art test 💪
I used and called this technique "Atlas Texture Sheet" .now I know what I was doing . thnx man, useful as always
cheers :) there are other styles of atlas textures too, like having 20 door textures on one material, or a bunch of windows or detail pieces, makes things efficient!
that's right i used both one texture and multiple assets based on that texture and also combine UV of multiple objects in one UV after attaching them and then painting, I thought they were the same, now I know they were a different method. I really need a cheat sheet or dictionary for CG art to know the difference. I think it's a problem with us self thought people. we are inventing the wheel again. thank for sharing your experience with us man . really appreciate it.
@@Stoidat haha yea the terminology is overwhelming lol thanks for watching and commenting :)
Very nice work, thank you. I would love to see how you make your trim sheets. I know you mentioned it and showed a quick timelapse of the modeling in Zbrush but I think there are a lot of missed steps that were glossed over to give the core of your topic in this video the attention it deserves. Look forward to your future videos and tutorials.
3 Prong Gaming yea i will upload a longer narrated timelapse soon :) and also i will cover this topic super in depth in the environment art course im going to create!
Here Here
Creating a material in Unreal using layer masks, like adding those cracks to a unique alpha layer with height and normals (like decals), but leaving the rest flat underneath, can also accelerate your mileage quite a bit.
Absolutely amazing explanation, understood it better than any lecture in class. Thankyou So much
you're welcome mr stark ;)
This was genuine gold! I have been struggling with this for the past week especially the UVing aspect and this helped clarify some of my issues, thank you!
Alexander Pinto Lobo glad it helped!
Thanks for taking the time to do those Tim. It helps a whole lot !!
Alexandre Venne happy to hear it :) thanks for watching
Tim you are basically carrying out my videogame bachelors final project lol. Thank you again for this amazing tutorial and thank you for teaching us how the actual games are being done
Alex Toesk haha thanks for watching, glad to hear its helping you out!
You beat me to it! I have a list of videos I wanted to make for my RUclips channel one of which was Trim Sheets. This video is so well done I don't think I could add any more value by doing one myself. If you don't mind, I'll be forwarding my students to this tutorial and your channel in general to help support you. I understand how long it takes to make a good video so I appreciate it even more!
Matthew Marquit thanks so much, love it when people enjoy the content and share it :) Definitely do your own trim texture tut as well, its always great to see different workflow and tips :)
Yea this is totally gold. I know I said thank you on the other video, but thank you again lol. I'm gonna be doing this same thing using quixel mixer, blender, and unity but it absolutely translates. Thank you!
yea software is interchangeable for sure! its more understanding the WHY and concept of how to use this technique that's important. thanks for proving my point :)
Hi! I started working with trimsheets recently and it's awesome to see what you can do when mixing them with the Unreal material node editor.
I hope this videos keep coming, they are super helpful.
Have a great day!
José Luna yea unreals materials are super powerful, happy to hear the tutorial was useful :)
I find it really hard to find good videos about UV's and this type of stuff. Finally found a good one!
thanks so much, people seem to be really enjoying this one! happy it is so helpful :)
Thanks for the tutorial. Your explanations are crystal clear and you're so helpful.
schouffy cheers :) you’re welcome 👍
I created my first trim sheet with this tutorial! Thank you so much! This is an amazing tool!
This was so helpful! I'm just learning trim sheets - thank you so much for all the explanation, detail, and ideas!
"Think out of the box!" Bravo!
Great presentation. Always happy to see when these things are presented with clarity and insight ... need more from you.
Just the video i needed. Can't wait for the others. Every other tut is kinda just "well we have this block" but a block is very different form a vase or other more complex objects....and often teh result looks like it would have been laughed out of every studio 10 years ago. Understandable but looking great is not exactly what most tuts about this topic are.
happy to hear it helped you out :)
Omg that was such a useful video!! I know it’s a bit old but the knowledge in there is still so incredibly relevant (and I think will always be). Thank you sir for making this! I’m one of these aspiring environment artists who thought you had to uniquely unwrap everything and was starting to wonder how anyone could make environments at such speed lol. I was intimidated by trim sheets but man looking at this it actually is 10 times easier and faster than actually uniquely unwrapping and texturing meshes.
I can't wait for an indepth series on environments! I am trying to figure out some advanced techniques like blending designer materials, texturing buildings with tiling textures and all the techniques for texturing larger objects. It seems very hard to do with a unique unwrap and I think your series will help immensely.
15:25 about going beyond the bounds of the first UV block is really cool. It actually make a lot of sense, but I thought it would "break" something so I've never done it. Thanks for this!
i struggled with that concept when i first started as well! once you learn about it, its like the hadcuffs come off haha.
OUTSTANDING SERIES OF DEMOS, THANKS!
thanks so much :)
Awesome as always man!!!
Can't wait to watch your full AAA environment tutorial, as a self-taught environment artist your tips and videos really helps me alot.
Thank you
Mr_SniPeR cheers, appreciate the love! Thanks for taking the time to watch :)
By Far the most useful video on the channel yet (in my humble opinion). I hope you are still planning to follow up with the other two videos in this series soon. Please keep up the good work. I'm a student graduating in about a month and I had a lot of fun replicating your process here.
yup, will definitely have tuts on the other 2 subjects in the future.
Hell Yeah Tim, been waiting for this! Thanks! and keep it up!
Callum Thomas cheers dude! I know a ton of you guys were waiting on this one ;)
Love all of your videos,Happy to see more!!!Really helps a LOOOOOOOTTTTTT!and many thanks for making those super quality content.
Very informative. I rarely ever used trims for stuff even tho when making maps in older engines out of bsps it was mostly the only way of doing it.
Never thought it's so versatile for props. Thanks!
cheers, thanks for watching :) 4 way tiling textures are more common for texturing bsp, trims you need to manipulate the uvs to bend to do your bidding :D
Man, you are amazing. I've learned so much from your tutorials, it's insane. Especially right now when I am applying for an env artist at game studios, this is pure gold. Thank you!
you're welcome bud! glad it helps :D
Thanks man, you unloaded your years of experience here and it was extremely interesting and helpful. Thanks.
cheers! i love hearing comments like this, glad it was useful :)
Thank you for this one Tim! It's rare to see some trim sheet tutorial in youtube. This video can help us to learn more about trim sheet and expand our knowledge to improve our workflow. :D
Reymond Briones you’re welcome, the environment art niche in general is pretty under represented on youtube :)
Amazing tutorial man. Been following you since your Artstation challenge. Love more content like this.
Anthony R cheers! I really appreciate it :) thanks!
I've seen trim sheets from some of the free content on the epic marketplace and was always curious how they were created, seems like something that could take time to fully understand but the end result is awesome and you explained the process very well. I had no idea you could stretch your UVs in a horizontal line to apply different parts of the texture to an asset when using a trim sheet, really cool and enlightening to some of the possibilities.
Myth_UE4 haha yup, squash and stretch uvs all over! I consistently abuse my uvs haha ;)
Awesome breakdown of how to use trimsheets. The only thing I think I would need more info on would be how to make sure your high detail/ornate sculpts tile seamlessly? I'm sure there are other tutorials explaining that, but a video in your style with your clear explanation would be ballerrrr! Thanks for the great video!
WeThePuppets will do! But a quick explanation would be to use wrap mode on your brushes in ZB, so when you sculpt over one edge it continues on the opposite side. You have to turn it on for each individual brush though!
Yes you legend been waiting for ages to learn this
Coming back to this video again and again just to get that trim workflow down pat! And looking forward to that vertex blending video you advertised! .)
dope! yea will be covering tiling textures and vert blending soon!
thank you so much, this was amazing!! suddenly i'm less afraid of environment art, i'd love more videos like this on quick tricks - thanks!
revoltless i love seeing feedback like this! Very happy to hear it helped you out. Ill be sure to make more vids like this soon :) thanks for watching 👍
Thanks for the Lesson! Great knowledge for us!
Nicolas Hernan Hoyos Rodriguez you’re welcome :)
You just showed me the light. Thank you so much, it's so incredible it's almost MENTAL 😮😮😮
it's so simple and brilliant. Thank you very much for the lesson. I watch it and understand how it would be possible to do with my large-sized assets.
These videos are rediculously useful.
thanks :) happy to hear they are helping people out!
Learned something new, so trimsheets are the spritesheets for 3D/textures ^^ (y) Well done!
Thank you so much for this tutorial! I never heard of trim textures, it was eye opening. Will get on it right away and implement those in the project I’m working on now. Can’t wait for the tiling texture and vertex blending (another term I never heard) tutorial you mentioned! And I am looking forward to your in-depth environment course, it’s already on top of my wish list :) Keep up the good work, I love your channel
Miranda van Elst thanks so much! I will try to get those topics out soon, i know there is a lot of interest :) thanks for watching
@@PolygonAcademy Will you release your in-depth environment course for free on youtube? That would be awesome!!
@@lunabeige Im going to continue to put out a ton of free content on youtube, but that in depth course will be a paid product, its going to take me several hundred hours to make haha. I will try to keep it affordable, especially in comparison to insanely over priced game art school programs :) but at the moment I am focused on making free content to grow the channel!
Dude, your production quality is incredible! I am loving following your videos, man! Cheers!
Fernando Lacerda thanks! It takes a while to make a vid but glad everyone enjoys them :)
Thanks for putting these tutorials together, they are extremely helpful, and have a lot of eye opening tips throughout! Keep up the awesomeness :)
thanks man, I am a huge fan of your work :) always smashing that like button on artstation each time you post haha.
Awesome tutorials mate - been watching a few of yours today and really enjoy your content and the way in which you present it.
cheers! thanks so much, happy to hear that :D
Insanely useful stuff my man! Clear, concise & to the point I love it!
Ronald Kyle Butler cheers! I appreciate the love, thanks for watching dude!