old wooden church

problem

two different workflows = different visual accuracy, memory footprint, rendering cost, and production scalability under identical conditions

solution

by switching from 20 materials to 2 and reducing vram usage by ~75%, the trim sheet approach demonstrates clear production advantages in scalability and performance

handpainted vs trim sheet workflow

this project evaluates two different texturing pipelines applied to the same church asset under controlled conditions

handpainted workflow: 20 unique texture sets, base color, ao, roughness, normal, optional metallic, fully unique uvs

single trim sheet workflow: 1 shared trim atlas (2 materials in-engine), base color, ao, roughness, normal, optional metallic, trim-based / stacked uvs

while a single trim sheet introduces repetition, this limitation can be mitigated in a production environment by implementing multiple trim sheets (clean, medium wear, heavy damage) combined with vertex blending. this approach preserves performance benefits while increasing surface variation.

year

2026

timeframe

3 weeks

tools

blender, substance 3d painter, substance 3d designer, marmorset toolbag, speed trees, unreal engine, pureref, illustrator, photoshop