Help on hand painted thatched roof texture, please

xXm0RpH3usXx

hello fellow polycounters,

for those who dont want to read much:
cant paint! need help. how to "thatched roof" handpainted?

thx


the long version:
i am currently working on an old blizzard art test scene, just for practice. although having modded Warcraft III back in the days and adoring hand painted textures since forever, i never actually sat down and painted anything.
so it seems i have somehow taken on too much and i feel a little bit ashamed to ask such questions, but would somebody please take my hand and step me through the process?

I mean, i have 3 different color shades, i start with trying to block out bigger shapes (i want to have several layers of hay overlap each other), then start adding some broader highlights to get strands and then in the end go in with a small hard brush to make streaks. But it looks bad
Actually so bad, i dont want to show it.
(edit: ok, i rethought it and here it is, please dont throw anything at me...)



I searched google and polycount (went all entries containing the keyword "paint"), but did not find anything about thatched roofs.

The problem is to somehow get a nice shadow from one straw layer to the other, getting some nice waviness in there and in the end still have details that make it look good.

I do have an example of what i mean, but its a wow texture, and i dont think i'm allowed to upload it here?
Any help in wich ever form is very appreciated.

Also, any thoughts on a "how to PAINT dem textures" thread, maybe?

Eric Chadwick

What's true for concept paintings is also true for hand-painted texture painting... start with the large forms, get that working well, then work smaller from there.

I find it helps to limit myself to a large 100%-strength brush, when blocking in the major forms. Then go 1/2 size smaller, block in all those mid-size details. Then finally bring it down to a small brush for the fine highlights, etc. But not until all the major forms are solid! Very hard to resist, going small.

Also, get good reference photos, and look at them constantly while you work. It can help sometimes to run a Maximum filter on a photo, to help you isolate the features that are important. And/or a Surface Blur filter.

These tutes might help
http://wiki.polycount.net/TexturingTutorials#Painting_Stylistic_Textures

xXm0RpH3usXx

The wiki is my second home, thanks for the link

Yes, the concept of blocking in, then refining, goes through all of 3d, my specific problem here is though, that i dont know what to block in. i see the shapes on my sample texture. (edit: or do i? i mean, as i'm not good at this, maybe i concentrate on something totally wrong?) but i really dont know how to reproduce it.
I mean, it doesnt need a trained eye to spot highlights and shadows on my sample. i can even go in and posterize it, to get some idea for a basic layout, but when i try to reproduce it, it gets a blurry mess. (although i have my sample in photoshop on a seperate layer, right next to my painting area.) So i then go in and try to distinguish forms with highlights and shadows and then it gets noisy...

do you use a simple hard brush? or custom ones for specific tasks?

Eric Chadwick

Simple hard, although I like to squish it into an oval so it's more like a fat oil painting brush. And add a little random scaling, for a more interesting edge.

Here's the brush I used to paint the concept in this thread. Though I might have added a Texture to it, can't remember.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=115825

xXm0RpH3usXx

okay, here is another try:


i used a square brush, though, with the opacity and size set to pen pressure...
your brush gave me the idea to experiment with some basic forms and it felt quite nice to paint with that one.
thanks for the tip!

any comments on this one?

Eric Chadwick

I think the middle one looks the best. The way it ends with a darker shadow under a crsip brighter tip. The other clumps end in a darker color than the shadow, which makes them kind of muddy.

But I think you're getting too much fine detail too fast. Try working only large. No small fine brushes!

Google "impasto thatch" or "van gogh hay" ...

xXm0RpH3usXx

so here is a new attempt. i blocked out the base, starting with a dark broad brush, then defining the shadow/light parts, thus narrowing down the broad dark strokes. then i went in with small brushes, mainly a dark one, to give a little contrast and make it strainy.
in the end i erased the bottom a bit and put a drop shadow on it.

i think its way too nnoisy and the brush strokes stand out way too much.



also, i nonticed, i find it very hard to reproduce the exact same pattern for the next row, if i dont copy it, but start to make the next row after the first is done.
so would you reccomend making each row by itself or everything at once? because, if latter, i had real problems with the drop shadow. either it vanished behind all of the strokes or it was way too harsh like in the first example.

also, really thanks for taking your time

Eric Chadwick

Definitely improving!

I'm not a top handpainted skills guy, I'm just OK. But the way I handle it is to work all the areas equally... do all the broad strokes at the same time, then the mid-detail strokes all across the piece, waiting until the end to add the small strokes.

This gif shows kind of how I approach it.



Try this... do just the rough blockout, and post that. No detailing. Let's see what you start from.

xXm0RpH3usXx

hah, when i wanted to save the image, i found that i already had saved it to my reference folder sometime else :P
reexaminating it i found that your initial brush was way smaller than mine, though.

so here is my current blockout:

Eric Chadwick

OK, so first things first. Do you have a reference image for what painterly style you're shooting for? And do you have reference for real-world thatch? Post both of these. Then we can start to break it down.

xXm0RpH3usXx

okay, so here is my current test environment:



and this would be a (crappy) real life resemblence: (you might want to zoom out a little)

Eric Chadwick

I don't have the time to go into a step by step. Maybe someone else can chime in?

But basically, you should start out with more subtle variations of color for your strokes. Notice how their thatch texture is very bright for the vast body of it. It's only darker at the start and end of each thatch layer.

Sample the light and dark colors from the middle of the thatch run, and try to paint that.

Also it can help to isolate your test case. Don't worry about layering multiple "tiles" of thatch. Just try painting the middle of one chunk of thatch, no shadowing from the above or down onto the below. As if it was just a single broom.

Get that looking good, then worry about layering it. It will take time and effort. It won't come overnight. The Blizzard artist who created that was a painter with a good amount of practice under their belt.

Be patient, it will come with diligent effort.

xXm0RpH3usXx

i can totally understand, that you cannot run me through this all day long
thank you so much for taking the time.

i will try again until it looks decent!

one last question though:
am i directly restricted from painting fromdark to light? and, if i want to stay in one brush size for the blockout phase, how am i going to be able to get smaller shadow lines? by painting over with a lighter color again?

Eric Chadwick

There are no limits™

haha. The method is totally up to you. Working dark to light is often easier.

I don't understand the last two questions though. Blockout is by definition blocky, although you can add some fine lines if you want.

From the wiki

xXm0RpH3usXx

i hope this makes it a bit more clear:


also, on the second example in the second stage, the most left stroke is also varying in broadness very much.
so, i paint one broad brush stroke of dark there and then paint over with a lighter color again? if i then want to reintroduce some of the finer darker lines, when i overpainted them by accident, i need to change my brush size, dont i?

ah i dont know, i'm sry for noobing around

i think i have a plan and i will try some stuff out before annoying you anymore

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, you can use different brush sizes whenever you like. Though I found it helped me to limit myself to broader strokes when blocking in the form. It forced me to pay attention to the large forms, and not get wrapped up in the smaller shapes, until I was ready to go there. Dunno if that makes sense.

You will frequently go over the same area with light and dark shades, until the forms start to gel.

xXm0RpH3usXx

makes perfect sense

another try:
http://speedy.sh/H9hcV/haytest05.gif

where could i upload an animated gif to actually show it in the forum, without people needing to download it?

Eric Chadwick

imgur.com is pretty good.

Eric Chadwick

The fifth frame or so of that gif, you added a bunch of fine lines. It looks like a brush made of a bunch of dots. This is not how Blizzard made their texture. Each line is there for a reason. I suspect each blade of hay was painted individually. At least it looks that way. They look deliberate. Your multi-line strokes are not deliberate, you are spraying lines all over.

You're getting closer! Keep going...

xXm0RpH3usXx

its 4:40 in the morning, havent slept yet, so i will spare my comment if i like it or not until tomorrow. minds keep doing tricks to themselves this much into the night...

Eric Chadwick

Much better!

One thing I find that helps when trying to match a style, is to try to replicate exactly the reference material. So try to paint an exact copy of the Blizzard texture.

Some art schools advocate this for learning more about a master painter's technique. I've done it, and it helped me.

xXm0RpH3usXx

i tried what you suggestedm but after 10 minutes of painting my reference was covered with new color
so i lost a little track somewhere in the middle, but got the straws to look longer, less interveined (only the upper left corner is "done") through that.

i will keep trying!

ivanzu

Right now it looks like some awesome fur texture,break the roof a bit using shadows because that roof is made of layers.

Eric Chadwick

Oh, I didn't mean do a paintover of the Blizzard texture, if that's what you did. I meant attempt to do a side-by-side reproduction of it... your texture on the left and Blizzard's on the right. So they are 1-to-1 in size and composition. This kind of task may seem really tedious and unintuitive, but doing an exact repro really is a great way to study and improve. It helps you focus exactly on the source reference, and helps you improve your draughting (and seeing!) skills.

xXm0RpH3usXx

oh yeah, i did that, eric, as you can see in post #11
i took it as background additionally, though.
i may just be too dumb to see the obvious pattern i am missing?!

i even sampled the colours from it, may blizz forgive me!


ivanzu, thanks for the kind comments, but fur is just, well... strokes, istn it?!
what do you mean by shadows? the horizontal ones for the layers, or within the strands? (like vertically)

Eric Chadwick

I don't think you're dumb. Painting is hard, no matter how you measure it. Personally I still have a long way to go in that dept. Like anything else, it just takes deliberate practice. Sampling colors is cool, it's all cool for learning.

I think #11 didn't go far enough, on the left it's not a studied copy of the Blizzard texture. Try to take it all the way. An exact duplicate, except made with your strokes.

xXm0RpH3usXx

dear jessica was so uber kind to make a paintover for me.
she pointed out some stuff and although i dont think i'm there yet, this is definatly a good improvement on my first try :P
things i want to change in the next iteration are that the individual strands became pretty blurry (although the sharpen in the end helped a little, i feelsthey are pretty blurry in their overall shape), i dont like the endings of the straw, looks way to splotchy and i want to introduce some more color variation.

so i will skip my version i painted yesterday and show the one from today:

xXm0RpH3usXx

bump with the tenth try:



i'm thinking of noodles somehow

Eric Chadwick

This has come a long way! Yeah it looks like pasta, but that's mostly the even round ends. Thatch is like broken grass stems, rough.

Googling "thatch ends"
http://i00.i.aliimg.com/photo/v0/451978018/natural_laguna_thatch_grass_panel_w_fire.jpg

Kurt Russell Fan Club

There's something that you had back in #20 that you've lost in the most recent paints. They focus a lot on the detail but lose the right look when seen at a distance.

You want to have that kind of bundled look with clusters of hay piled over other clusters, then when you zoom in you see the individual hay overlapping.

xXm0RpH3usXx

@ eric: i'm thinking, which end would be the one i need to paint? the back one? i mean, when you stack these piles up you want a clean upper end, so the lower end would be the curlier one, right?

also: http://www.hiss-reet.de/images/reetprodukte/reetgewebe/vergleich/hrg-hrge_1_big.jpg
I had something like this in mind when i painted... I see why i should not go this way though (now)

@ Kurt Russell Fan Club: thanks for your comment, i will take it into consideration. I felt however that the clumping as it was made it look like fur (as someone commented earlier, too). So I tried to revert from that. I think that pushing the contrasts in my initial color blockout stage would help with that. And maybe some drop shadows. I'll try again, when i come back home tonight!

Sage

the trick is to suggest it looks like hay,or whatever it is you are trying to suggest. So nail down how the big forms work together first instead of thinking how many strands of hay the roof has. You started to do the in your last texture. The material wouldn't be round like branches or tubes but more flat, like say wood chips. At least it would appear that way. Right now in your textures what sells it as tubes is that in the shadow area you gave the strands cylindrical highlights. You would not see that information in real life, so don't paint it.

xXm0RpH3usXx

hey folks, thanks for the comments, i wanted to reply faster, but i had to go to work again.
but only until thursday, as i got, out of the blue, my lay off announced.
so, i finished this last try. i am still not satisfied, but i think i will start texturing my house now. i need to get further on with my portfolio...

i think of maybe making a few bundles and then project them onto the roof?!

so here you go:

Eric Chadwick

Oh man, that's horrible news. However, I'm sure you'll land something new and exciting! The texture is coming along well, good job!