I'm currently working on a game asset and I'm not sure how many pixels I should assign for the margin property of the bake tool in Blender. I'd like to have a better idea beforehand to properly assess how to efficiently manage my UV islands.
The final texture will be 2048x4096 (it's for a sword to be added to the game TESIV Oblivion and later into TESV Skyrim). I may reduce the size (to 1024x2048) for release and I would like my margins to account for MIP mapping to avoid unwanted seams.
I've loaded my model into UE4 and used the MIP mapping controls in the texture node properties to preview different levels and no seams were visible with a 32px margin in a 2048x4096 test version with diffuse and normal maps applied to the test material. I'm not sure how MIP mapping varies from that to the Gamebryo engine Oblivion runs on, but I've not noticed any seams while viewing the sword in-game at different distances. The normal map doesn't look as good in Oblivion as it does in UE4 though (using the same .DDS file).
I'm thinking about using 64px just to be on the safe side since I don't yet know how it looks in Skyrim. What do you think, is it too much? Am I overthinking this? I just want to know if there's a general value that works best.
Thank you for your time.
