Any tips or tutorial on a spaceship hull texture?

BI0H0G

As the title says, i'm working on a spaceship and i don't think the hull is good
do you guys can give me some tips or tutorial. here is what i have problems whit

the Gaps from the panels.
the machinery like pipes and exhaust port.
panels.
the type of metal.

here is a link to see the ship texture
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120563&highlight=spaceship

Eric Chadwick

Some of these might help you.
http://wiki.polycount.com/TexturingTutorials

Don't use the same tiling texture across the whole surface. The details should follow the curves of your ship. Closely study some reference material, for example:

BI0H0G

thanks here are some techniques i use to make the hull



which one do you guys think is the best

Eric Chadwick

These are fine, but are not important. The panels and gaps need to look like they have a purpose, like they make sense where they are placed. Line up these details with the major shapes on your hull, and create a design out of them.

BI0H0G

so some thing like this,

Eric Chadwick

Better!

Now grunge it up and add more details. Some examples to give you an idea.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48285
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=99754

Hard Surface Texture Painting by Stefan Morrell

Mark Dygert

This might be helpful?
http://www.code-artists.de/pattern.html

Vailias

Holy cow. Thanks mark. That is gonna be super useful for all kinds of things.

fearian

BI0H0G wrote: »

so some thing like this,

basically, yes. Although I can see two problems with this:

firstly, you have made panel seams the follow the ship, but will need to change the ones you already have, which is the root problem. The panelling you have already looks random and 'projected' onto the ship rather than a part of it.

secondly, the new panel gaps are really thick, which messes with the scale. How big is this ship? how big does that make those gaps?


As a final tip, I would suggest trying to make panels seem functional but subtle. Their form should be used to clarify the shape of the ship and the curve of the hull, but you could also use colour variation on large panels to focus the eye around the ship. Think of them as having purpose instead of just greebling!

BI0H0G

here is a re-work on the main hull

artquest

I think the fundamental issue here is design, not so much texturing. Texturing will fall into place once you get the design worked out. I think your ship is pretty cool, it just needs to make a bit more sense. If it's a spaceship, why does it have those tiny stabilizing fins on the rear section? The ship design doesn't look like it's really made to fly in atmosphere and if it did I'm not sure how much the fins would help in directing its path. Anywho if you add things that sorta look like they add function to the ship it'll start to look better. Once you have that it's a matter of getting some smaller panels in place and adding some grunge.


Here's a paintover to give you some ideas, it's kinda based on details from the Prometheus image posted earlier in this thread along with some star trek style nacels added to the fins:

BI0H0G

cool thanks for that but right now i looking for something from homeworld, i been using from reference the art work of chris foss and peter elson

artquest

BI0H0G wrote: »

cool thanks for that but right now i looking for something from homeworld, i been using from reference the art work of chris foss and peter elson

How you solve the design problems doesn't matter as much as if you solve them. You can apply this to any style, the point of the paintover was to show that the visual interest is created by design and if you want the texture to look great you need to do some design work, and probably add more geometry to the model.

Even in this picture from peter elson all of the same things apply. Just give it a try :P

BI0H0G

alright i see, yea i forgot to mention that this is for a game that i'm helping design
i guess the reason i dint add more geometry is to be safe since the client told me to look more like homeworld 2 frigates so yea there design are similar like the fins of the ship. but after reading yea you are right the design has to make sense.

a few thing the cylindrical part of were the antenna is draw is where the turrets are going,so i'll start re-working the design to make it look functional.