Why do Skyrim texture authors never bother to smooth out their seams?

[donnerwetter]

 

 

 

 

I have a couple of mods that regularly require me editing different body textures and without fail both the diffuse and normal maps always have hideously obvious UV seams left over from the baking process.

 

Why not take 15 minutes in Blender to smooth them out with the smear brush? You're already making an 8k texture with a butthole so detailed you can count every wrinkle on it so you clearly expect people to look at it in very close detail- why leave these blemishes in?

[Guest]

From my own experience with textures sometimes you spend so long on it that you just want to get it over with, especially if you have multiple textures to do. It's also possible errors get overlook that you don't catch the first time. I find taking a break and coming back with a fresh mind helps to catch them because you're not so focused on creating the textures, which is why I always double-check to make sure everything looks decent before I think of putting it up for others to see. Another possible reason could be that the creators only focus on specific parts of the textures, i.e detailed genitals, nipples, etc, that they might not even be looking for seams or care all that much.

 

Also it could just be laziness. That's a possibility.

[nilead]

 Obvious is a curious term.

Once you've been staring on something long enough as you work on it - you develop conditional "blindness". So glaringly obvious things for 3rd partybecome perfectly normal to you. When i started fiddling with 3d modeling, ive done a couple of test renders and shown to mates asking for their take. One said - well, all well and good, but why is that thing levitating?

 It was a piece of ambience intentionally made to look cast iron, heavy, bulky, imposing. At a certain point ive hidden its pedestal for one reason or the other, and never remembered to reenable it. Ive rendered it for quite a while and send for "proofwatching" while being perfectly fine with the picture, it just looked normal to me.

 I still havent found a solution. Taking a break. And not hour or two - more like a week to unload the whole project from your head is one way, but its obviously time intensive. And the only other option is to show it to someone who will bother to look into it and tell you where you've screwd up.

 Its not like author "cant be bothered" - most modders do it as a hobby, they like what they are doing. Its just a very peculiar trick of perception that is actually rather hard to overcome.

[Andy14]

On 8/2/2022 at 12:55 AM, donnerwetter said:

 

 

 

 

I have a couple of mods that regularly require me editing different body textures and without fail both the diffuse and normal maps always have hideously obvious UV seams left over from the baking process.

 

Why not take 15 minutes in Blender to smooth them out with the smear brush? You're already making an 8k texture with a butthole so detailed you can count every wrinkle on it so you clearly expect people to look at it in very close detail- why leave these blemishes in?

If enough margin is used when baking the textures, the texture does not need to be edited.
The main reason for seams is usually not the texture, but the fact that the normals and tangents have a different angle at the mesh edges. As a result, the texture is rendered incorrectly, which visually causes the seam.