How do I make "simple textures" more professional looking?
interpolator
So I'm putting together a very special environment I've been working hard on the past few weeks (yay!), however, at the texturing phase, I'm very frustrated with my results.
I'm going for an artstyle that is handpainted but is still physically based. So there are no prebaked shadows in the diffuse and I'm avoiding blending photos in.
Now, what's frustrating me is I can't nail the look of simple or "less detaied" looking objects. Examples:
Even though they appear as 1 or 2 solid colors, when I try to paint them, they look very amateur. I'm also aware that added surface detail like grunge, rust and dirt can help make it more appealing, but I'm afraid of making the texture "too noisy".
I would post examples I made but they got accidentally deleted at school.
I'm going for an artstyle that is handpainted but is still physically based. So there are no prebaked shadows in the diffuse and I'm avoiding blending photos in.
Now, what's frustrating me is I can't nail the look of simple or "less detaied" looking objects. Examples:
Even though they appear as 1 or 2 solid colors, when I try to paint them, they look very amateur. I'm also aware that added surface detail like grunge, rust and dirt can help make it more appealing, but I'm afraid of making the texture "too noisy".
I would post examples I made but they got accidentally deleted at school.
Replies
I'll report back when I can better show something.
This is the artstyle I have in mind.
I also tried doing the first diffuse texture for the metal electrical socket.
I have an idea how to paint the scratches. It's the plastic sockets though that look boring. I'm going to keep thinking of ways of how to improve it.
I'm also posting this before bed. I'll have a lot more time when I wake up to try making polished paintings + textures.
In that photograph in the first post it's the lighting that adds interest to it.
Since you're studying about light and colour, I recommend this:
http://www.solitaryroad.com/c1032.html
Diffuse
Metalness
Roughness
Normals
The darker parts are glossier, metal, and dark, while the lighter parts are rougher, non-metal, and bright white.
Your textures are pretty contrasted, you should lower the strength of all of the dirt. I thought you were trying to render simple textures better? Your textures don't match the reference very well. Mess with the base colour first until you get it right, then add some light detail later.
Also your metalness map is a bit wrong depending on what you're going for. Metalness is just whether the material is metal, unless you're going for painted metal the whole map should be white. I think you meant to have your metalness map as a roughness map instead.
The sockets are suppose to be plastic and the outer case was metal.
The grunge lies on the metal casing, so I wasn't sure how to render it (because grunge itself is not suppose to be metal so I made it a different color).
I agree there's too much contrast though, I'll clean it up.
I don't know how to make the grunge show up less visible in the diffuse and the metal maps.
I want an effect like this but on metal.
I'm thinking of having the grunge match the metal's color, but that might not be physically accurate.
Okay, metalness maps are supposed to be flat black or white, no greys
For the grunge you'll want to make sure that it's completely black on the metalness map. You'll want the roughness to be really high for it and the diffuse should just be a mid-brown/grey tone.
Rougher materials catch more light so diffuse colours matter more, if you want some grunge like on the tile, bring the intensity of your diffuse grunge down.
Finally as just a critique, the texture is too noisy, the human eye is used to seeing large shapes with little attention to detail. Racer445 has an excellent tutorial that goes over a lot of these concepts:
http://oesterkilde.dk/racer445.html
So I'd remove a lot of the grunge, maybe only leave one larger patch and work on deforming the edges of it so that it's natural and blended with the metal.
Ignore that it's a little ugly, and uses "noise", "clouds", and "oil paint" filters. The point, really, is to show how the maps interact. Most of the heavy lifting is done in the roughness.
First, with metals, you need a good light environment. An HDR image works well, and can be loaded into the "ambient cubemap" area within a post-process volume in UE4, and Marmoset 2 has it on by default.
Second, be more subtle with your materials. Yours look very harsh right now. Generally, if it looks harsh as a flat texture, it'll look harsh on the model. Try to learn how the maps interact with each other.
Most subtle grunge, like your example, is just handled using the roughness map.
It was the lack of an ambient cubemap that made everything so dark. I also turned down the bloom to show the roughness better.
These are test textures.
Edit: I also did a second test. Less noise in the diffuse.