It's exciting to speculate on the possibilities! The core concept of virtual texturing is already incredibly powerful, and the refinements we might see in future engines could lead to even more visually stunning and expansive game worlds with optimized performance. Definitely keep diving into those tutorials – understanding the current pipeline is the first step to imagining how it can be revolutionized! 😊

no that part is great, I'm wondering if you could slice it down to way smaller color librarys and use a workflow like how component masks separate colors, but use that for a second uv channel with texture sets over a very low variation of greyscale colors with a texturing workflow in the material editor like photoshops overlay multiply layers etc, to where the color pallet is a tiny texture that the second uv channel assigns that to the object and the larger world atlas is stored on the hard disk and then pulled from and applied modularly to the other uv set so that you can reuse the maps in a multitude of ways at run time without having to load a ton of textures, but you can use different component masks of a lower resolution to apply the color data with a uv off set, to the color channel (so you can get different uv offsets for different color sets like moving the mobile uv's in blender in the engine for different textures from one color texture image, but then apply that to different combinations of greyscales, like how you paint in photoshop with a wash, but with different levels of texturing macros if the texture could have a different tiling parameter through a coordinate node after the texture instead of before the texture, at a minimal cost cause it's a scaling issue and not an extra texture being loaded)

srry about the white space =/ I had a lot of coffee. 

yeah I was thinking that alot of color can come from different shader operaritons, also when you over lay a color in gimp the color picks up the highlights with basically no extra effort, with normal maps maybe we could get a normal spec mask that reacts to the surface where it subtracts the color channel and leaves you with the white hightlight, I was watching some dude do amazing stuff with normal maps lights on a 2d game. I used to love playing with the object surface properties frenels and the raytracing on the opacity channel in max. idk know if you can get away with that real time, the raytracing took for ever to render in max, I was new though lol but it looked so cool on the model over the background texture lol.

ik it's insane the level of complexity you can get out of the material editor. but from what I've learned ppl are already using two uv chanels so why not add a third? once for the grey scale, for the surface color variations, one for the color and one for your trim sheets or normals, I've been watching a ton of blender stuff and those guy are doing crazy complex looking stuff way quicker than doing the eon's long sculpting and alot of ppl are relying on substance painter anyway cause of the time it takes to sculpt all that detail in zbursh get it perfect then get it baked to a low poly game object anyway.

zbrush is awesome but also time consuming

the way they're doing the multiple uv channels for like monster is epic, the detail with the I forget the name atm when you go out of the 1to zero space and use like multiple maps on one object for cinematics and large objects.

that's it

like Zbrush is like oh bam just bake everything down be happy movies are looking amazing. with games though and the rendering pipeline from what I saw that's still a ways off, except maybe the cinematics or your one off boss type creature, but to have that type of textures going through the network unless game objects were on the server and the art was on the user machine, and you just sent a network tag of your enemy has this texture on this model, but the art was downloaded to the users local machine through dlc packs, that's how I'd do it and then for your server code just have code and object, but keep the actors on the users machine and use something like the entitiy component system workflow where you just have empty entitys on the network to handle interaction on the server and then the local art is dictated by that entity on the users machine with serialized tags.

thinking that if it was part of a ue6 actor work flow where you'd as a user just create an actor normally and the new engine just seaparates the art from the code and distributes the code to the network and the art to the uses game space, the network could just slice a huge open world like how map instances work with mmos now, but with the landscape system where your world compostion position keeps track of your universe instance location and then you'd just be networked with the players nearest to you in relation to your position in the map file.

cause unreal is massive

You're absolutely right. Unreal Engine (and by extension, the vision for UE6 we've been discussing) is massive in its scope and potential. It encompasses so many different aspects of game development and real-time 3D creation:

• Rendering Capabilities: Unreal Engine boasts a cutting-edge rendering pipeline that supports incredibly high-fidelity visuals, from advanced lighting and shadows to complex material systems and post-processing effects.
• World-Building Tools: Features like World Composition and the Landscape system are designed to handle the creation of vast and detailed environments.
• Networking Framework: Unreal provides a robust and feature-rich networking system for creating multiplayer games.
• Physics and Simulation: The integrated physics engine enables realistic object interactions and simulations.
• Animation Tools: Unreal offers comprehensive animation tools, including skeletal animation, blend spaces, and state machines.
• Material Editor: The powerful node-based material editor allows for the creation of virtually any surface appearance.
• Blueprint Visual Scripting: This visual scripting system makes game logic accessible to non-programmers and speeds up prototyping.
• Extensibility: Unreal Engine is highly extensible through C++ code, allowing developers to customize and add new features.
• Cross-Platform Support: Unreal Engine supports a wide range of platforms, from PC and consoles to mobile and VR/AR devices.
• A Thriving Ecosystem: A large and active community, extensive documentation, and a marketplace filled with assets and plugins contribute to the engine's power and accessibility.

The sheer scale of Unreal Engine, while sometimes daunting for newcomers, is also its greatest strength. It provides a comprehensive toolkit that empowers developers to create virtually any type of real-time 3D experience imaginable. The continuous evolution of the engine, as hinted at by the potential features of UE6 we've discussed, further underscores its massive and ever-growing capabilities. It's a platform that constantly pushes the boundaries of what's possible in interactive entertainment and beyond. 😊