What is the best way to choose a texture for a 3D object or environment?

Mood board: With the mood board, the artist can determine the style of art, the colours, the mix, blends, patterns and level of details that would be featured in his texture usage. It is inconsistent to have a scene combining textures of 3D realism and cartoon stylized brushes. It takes some level of professionalism to effectively combine these two styles.

Making sure your textures are not just high in resolution but seamless is essential. Most times people add textures that dont fit to a model and forget to fit it in. If your textures are seamless you may not need to fit it onto your model when you have a good uv mapped model

This is a very "open" question, because the answer can change a lot depending of the project. But in general I think you can start by what media the project focus on. -Is it a Movie or Commercial Add for video, is it a hi res model, is it a game ready asset for a AAA console/PC game or its for a mobile game ? Whats the engine/platform/Render requirements ? - whats the type of material and how do I blend it ? - will it need only the color texture, or will it need other channels, like: Alpha, Normal, AO, Emissive, SSS etc - Understand the overhaul feeling of the scene, the texture must match with the ambient - Choose the visual Style, realistic, cartoon, technical, etc.

In my experience, it all depends on application. Big high-resolution textures are the staple of vfx and animation workflows as they guarantee maximum visual fidelity regardless of the distance from the camera and the resolution of the final render. Realtime workflows also require high quality textures, but their file sizes have to be optimized for performance since VRAM is precious real estate.

When selecting a 3D texture you must first identify the purpose of the 3D and consider these questions. 1) Is your model for conceptual design purposes only 2) Is it an engineered Assembly for a production 3) How many objects are in your 3D model 4) How is your mesh built - is it one texture mapping around your entire set of triangles, or is it like a 6 sided cube where each side has its own texture 5) The size of the texture needs to be considered - usually larger textures have tend to have better quality but worse performance as the number of objects in a model grows 6) Depending on the orientation of a texture, you have to rotate it 90 or 180 degrees 7) Does your texture need to be seamless? 8) Consider machines of target audience

It is always a trade-off choosing between optical aesthetics and functionality. A texture with high resolution gives room for the most details possible as there will be lot more pixels to paint on. However, this advantage comes with a burden on the storage and the processing speed of the texture. So the trade-off is to always go for the optimal. The most detailed texture possible with the least storage demand.

A balanced way in general to manage texture resolution is to have in the foreground (focused) textures with detail and good resolution but in the background low resolution textures, this way we can save processing and RAM to have more detail in what is really important to our history

In most cases, playtesting will solve this. Watch the render preview or play the game as is. Start with lower resolutions, then slowly increase them until you honestly can't tell a difference of detail between the next and previous jump in resolution. For background pieces in renders etc., if it's 100 pixels of the shot for a few seconds, and 256x256px texturing looks the same as 1024x1024px, 256 is just fine. You are in a constant fight for processing power, even with modern game/rendering engines, so take whatever ground you can get.

Mapping image texture on 3D surface is an alternative for actually creating those objects seen in the image texture and wrapping them around the 3D surface. - UV mapping (unwrapping): is used to place image to take the shape, form and curve of a 3D surface. (Example; the texture around a coca-cola can). - Normal mapping: can be used to imitate the perception of depth between blue-red. As purple shows the midian depth. -Displacement Mapping: It uses the gradient shade of grey from black to white to push out vertices from a 3D surface. Where 50% black means median point. -Procedural mapping: uses pre made mathematical and size & depth adjustable textures like; voronoi, Musgrave, noise, cloud, checker, wood, wave.

Choosing right mapping method hinges on artistic goals. UV Mapping: Essential for precise texture placement, translating 3D models onto 2D surfaces through unwrapping. Normal Mapping: Enhances details without geometric complexity, ideal for intricate visuals without performance trade-offs. Procedural Texturing: Uses math functions for dynamic textures, great for controlled randomness in artistic designs. Displacement Maps: Influences 3D model geometry using grayscale, excellent for nuanced surface details and controlled distortions. In essence, UV for precision, normal mapping for detail without complexity, procedural texturing for dynamic results, and displacement maps for controlled geometry.

The applied textures can be tested and seen if they respond to light as desired. The metallic, opaque or rough surface can be tweaked until the desired light response is attained here.

The first things to consider are physical material attributes. To make a model appear more wet/reflective, decrease the roughness power/saturation. For example, if the scene is rainy/wet, and your model has a high roughness, the model will stick out and break the integration and realism of the scene. To make a model appear more metallic/shiny, increase the roughness value/saturation. If the details of the normal map are not prevalent enough for the lighting, increase the power of the normal map, or adjust the lighting to highlight the details. If the textures still don't give the desired look or result, consider adding more lighting to the scene itself to highlight the model.

There are modern exceptions to very well-established past rules. For the longest time, even considering having 1 billion polygons in a real-time game engine environment, was a fairy tale. With the advent of Unreal Engine 5, that has all changed. With the power of Nanite and Lumen, it is now completely feasible to view billions of polygons in real-time. Secondly, though some view it as a negatively impactful technology, AI is changing the atmosphere of creativity and technology almost daily. For example, instantly creating fully PBR materials from a single prompt is now not only possible, but efficient. In short, the world of 3D graphics is ever changing, so keeping yourself educated and up to date is worth its weight in gold.