Hand-painted texturing tecniques from 2000s?

armagon

I'm recently working on a nostalgic project, making homage to the classic games of early 00s. I'm trying to mimic the look, but i can't get it right. My textures always end up looking like Torchlight or WOW. A few examples of what i have in mind:

armagon

Managed to find a nice tutorial here: http://poopinmymouth.com/tutorials/character-tutorial.html

More, please?

jStins

I think what you're seeing is less a hand painted style / technique and more the results of the technical limitations of the time. I'd guess the art direction was aiming for realism in the texturing and shading, but low texture resolutions resulted in some exaggerated shapes and details. Probably some light information painted into the diffuse as well.

I would start by building the base colors / material layers, add some photo sourced details, paint in lighting and work at a lowish resolution (<512).

 

Steppenwolf

Highlights and shadows like this often were achieved by using dodge and burn techniques in Photoshop. You can find more of these old tutorials on pinterest still. Just search for weapon texturing tutorials.

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, that's a good one. Lots of old stuff around, harder to find nowadays though.

http://quakewiki.net/archives/skindom.planetquake.gamespy.com/FEATURES/flesh/index.shtml
http://quakewiki.net/archives/skindom.planetquake.gamespy.com/FEATURES/shading/index.shtml
http://quakewiki.net/archives/skindom.planetquake.gamespy.com/FEATURES/head/index.shtml
http://quakewiki.net/archives/skindom.planetquake.gamespy.com/FEATURES/metaltut/index.shtml
http://www.bobotheseal.com/extras.htm
http://www.pioroberson.com/images/minitut_metal.jpg
http://www.horribledeath.com/tut-hardlight.htm
http://www.michaeldashow.com/tips_texturepainting.html

armagon

Thanks a lot guys! Really really useful.