If this would really go ingame, i'd also try to combine the two diffuse maps onto one sheet,
This made me re-think what I am doing, from looking at your layout I decided to re-work the design of the truss texture. It did mean redoing everything once again.
I have completely redesigned the texture to a more red-ish painted scratch style. Now all the base trusses can fit on 1 texture sheet. The details in the texture are much more clearer. If I can add a specular map or a normal map then that might improve it even more.
The mapping i started with simple box mapping and then rearranged the Parts.
As i said before, because i'm using a soft edge shader (biomekks edgeshade) for creating the beveled
looking edges with a normalmap, i had to split the UVs on every hard edge of the model.
I have not heard of splitting the UV's due to a hard edge, yet. In blender I think this maybe possible to UV's regarding smooth and flat shading with edge sharp but I have not used that function yet so I do not fully understand. Though I did not use a bevel on these truss meshes. Wouldn't adding a bevel create more geometry to the mesh? The texture I created simulates a bevelled edge with painted edges. I do not think I would need these truss parts to have a bevel. I would like to add a bevel but I think there is already too many vertices.
This update is the trusses only, the tools I am using I find irritating some what, it could be that I do not fully understand the tools such as Blender well enough to do something as large as this in a short amount of time but what ever the case is the results are going slow for me.
The new more detailed texture, I split the texture into 3 rows, the two lower rows are seamless rows they represent The outer, inner parts of the truss. the top row is miscellaneous parts and the end parts of the trusses.
Though this still could have turned out better. There is an issue in the size of the texture sheet , the texture size is 1024x1024. The problem is that I realised late, that I could move UV faces around. By keeping them pinned I can UV unwrap continuously and preserve the previously unwrapped UV's. I did and proved at first to be very helpful, though after the 20th truss it became very tedious. The problem is that the top row the miscellaneous row is now hardly used because I moved most of the faces from there onto the outer truss section. And in doing means the texture sheet is not utilised very well.
This bridge is a learning experience. The sheer size of it and trying to make everything fit, using as less UV sheets as possible is making this frustrating. There are some crazy angles and crazy knife cuts to the mesh and then linking those warped/skewed meshes to others warped/skewed meshes to line up, is not simple even with vertex/edge/face snapping. And this is only the trusses, however I do like the details on this new bridge design even more so than the HL2 episode 2 bridge model at the start of the first area.
Would a bump map of this texture be a good normal map? These trusses are created from a low polygonal mesh.
In source using specular and normal affects shadows so I do not know what to add. I guess this is a process that can be decided later on.
The trusses are still not finished though I will try and get this done but this week.
What does one think the next step should be? Start on the X type trusses?
Should I add variation to the texture I already have, have 2 types of textures slightly different, or keep it like it is?
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-I still need to complete the X type trusses- UV unwrap and Texture
-The Truss caps-UV unwrap and texture
-The bolts??
I think the trusses should be modular should be split into 4-5 different modular parts is that a good idea?
This is the bridge unfinished. X truss still needed and end caps of truss
I even split the truss texture so there is an underside on the outer truss where dirt has accumulated differently.
closer look at the details.
Inside the trusses
