I just finished up a project for uni this week that used a texture and UV workflow I've never used before. My teacher said they used this kind of workflow for most of the vehicles in Avatar: The Game which he worked on.
The exercise consisted on creating futuristic/industrial type models that would use one tileable 1024 texture. This means that the map has different elements that are tiled horizontally or vertically or even tiled in stacks, depending on what you want.
It was a great learning experience and I wanted share the results with everyone and so that you could understand the workflow as well. It's rendered in 3DS Max with the Xoliul shader (btw, this was my first big model in 3DS Max, before 3DS, I was using Maya):
Final Result:
[Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_ship_3-4.jpg]
[Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_ship_side.jpg]
[Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_ship_back.jpg]
The same texture can be used for different models:
[Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_column.jpg]
[Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_reactor.jpg]
The texture maps with tileable elements horizontally with specific details on bottom of map:
[Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_maps.png]
As you can imagine, with this technique, UVs and their placement is definitely the longest part and aren't what you're used to, they're placed everywhere and can be stacked since the texture is tiled:
[Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_UVs.jpg]
As a whole, I proceeded the following way for this workflow:
- Modeled the ship model
- Created the tileable texture normal map (high-poly bakes on a plane can be used, I elected to do everything by hand with CrazyBump and PS given what my details were)
- Unwrap the UVs of ship according to tileable normal map to see any issues with it and change as needed
- Model other objects and unwrap according to texture again
- Once the normal map seems sound, create the diffuse, spec and gloss maps.
- Bring any adjustments to UVs after all the maps are applied, issues you didn't see with the normal map can show up
- Since you now have everything, you can even cut in additional details in the geometry and create interesting combinations with the maps to make some places less uniform and such
Wokflow pros/cons:
+ Texture resolution holds up really well given the tileable elements, something big like this unwrapped normally wouldn't have as much resolution, even in a 2048 map.
+ UVs can be done after the texture map has been created and can be moved around anytime and create interesting combinations. It is a very modular way of working
+ Texture maps can be re-used for other objects
- AO or high-poly version of the whole model can't be baked given how UVs are placed
- this type of workflow can only work on specific type of objects, something with too many specific details can't really be done
- a good amount of planning has to be done for how the texture will be arranged and an appropriated model has to be chosen
Long post! So yeah, I would love to get everyone's feedback and my model and textures before I post it up on my portfolio. Also, has anyone ever used this workflow before? What do you think of it? I haven't gotten around to checking the Fountain tutorial on Eat3D, but now that I think about it, is it a similar workflow?
P.S.
Shoutout to PhilipK! Your brick texture tutorial helped me lots to get a nice variation with the metal plating 
.