Looking better than your old stuff by far, but its still a little muddy. on the belly you could add some gray spots where the brown paint has chipped off or at least make it more apparent that its battleworn. get in there with a 1 pixel brush and do some damage man. You are getting better everytime. good luck.
Thx 3DGuy! Yes the belly was a bottleneck, first tried to do a DH style gore gut but it just looked stupid with the rest of the model. I got too dark too again, but really trying to stay off the black and caffeine.
You shadows are way too dark for my taste, but other than that it looks pretty good. Also face looks like theres too much black used for shadows, and theres spots that go TOTALLY black which isnt good unless its for a game with dark lighting.
If you ahve problems with your textures being too dark (which you do) try starting with a much lighter base, and then painting in the darks. I always go to bright, so I start with darks and work in the lights. Also don't just add large soft light spots like on his belly and crotch, they just looke like the brown has been rubbed away, and not like lighting.
Hey Frosty! Haven't seen you around much. Good to see some new textures from you.
Like others have said, I think you've got too much black going on. In many areas where you've put in more detail you surround it with black, sorta isolating it from the rest, and doesn't fit in with the lighting in the areas around it. For example, the two large screws on the chest. The brown parts around them are fairly light, but there's a black circle surrounding each screw. Everything seems to have a thick black outline to it.
The shading on this looks a lot smoother and not as messy as some of your older textures.
I'm not sure if you've already adjusted for this, but I remember that UT auto resizes the textures to I think use for LOD and lower graphics settings. If you don't paint outside of the UV layout then you could end up with black seams all over the model (which happened on one texture I was working on).
I think there are too many plain areas , so it not looking that interesting on the whole. I tend to work out little designs in pencil, then test it out quick on the skin and see if it works.
The face needs a lot of work. I suggest you try that as a seperate entity and perhaps concentrate on getting the body spot on. metal technique is coming along, but looks a bit scruffy somehow.
keep working frosty, I am sure you can get this looking nice
Ely - Hey thanks mate, going for the light n easy style next.
Poop - Thanks for the pointers, going back to rethink this one.
SoccermanMike - Greetings! I think where I lost it I was using a very light brush at 20 for the darker areas, but hadto ruin it by raising the contrast and brightness cos I thought it was too flat. As far as the black lines I also think I blew it by oversharpening up and it reemphasized the lines too much.
Ruz - Thanks Ruz I did the face fairly quick, actually only spent a bit of time and going to redo the beard so it looks more real, the unwrap and seam across the cheekbones is tough. Prolly through some funky glasses of mine on him since the eyes and the detail of them don't show up.
The black and yellow chevrons are a littel monochrome. Perhaps if you created another layer and painted in some random splats of yellow and black over the existing parts you would get more variation. This would make it look like a few layers of paint.
Some of the lines/edges are very soft - on a new layer use the line tool to define the harder edges, then play with the opacity -even something as low as 5-10% will just get it that definitaion.
THe brown is just a little dull - a simple trick would be to take a metal photo and overlay it at a few % strength. That will bring in some variation of tones and a few subtle colours.
It los like on a few parts you jsut couldn't be bothered with the detail - liek the lower legs. Keep the level of detail more consistant over the texture
Hehehehe. Been holed up in my freezer, at study of hundreds of pics of Polycount artists, textures, models and industrial textures.
The black and yellow chevrons are a littel monochrome.
Gonna try that Rick, I notice how weak they look in the game, should be stronger.
Some of the lines/edges are very soft - on a new layer use the line tool to define the harder edges, then play with the opacity -even something as low as 5-10% will just get it that definitaion.
I was trying to emulate some of Dave King and DH metal styles and textures.
Trying is the key word.
The brown is just a little dull - a simple trick would be to take a metal photo and overlay it at a few % strength. That will bring in some variation of tones and a few subtle colours.
Thanks for that tip too, I have dozens of metal textures to pick from.
Keep the level of detail more consistant over the texture
Boring colors too - gonna try red or blue as a main scheme.
Seen how weak the legs were in the game and 3d view, need to add more logo's too.
Remove black from your colour swatch
It is officially gone.
THANKS RICK! One hec of a crit, I finally got my upl to read my utx right and loaded him at home on my 9800 pro ati card and I was so disappointed. I really blew it with the dark schemes and I can't go back and fix it cos adjusting the contrast does not work like I thought. Had I just not increased the contrast and darkness by 20% it might have worked. Oh well back to the drawing board. At least I know the layout now. Will prolly do just a new skin altogether and another one of the female models.
See you guys in about 3 months then, thanks again.
Use the colour selector to select the dark areas (Select/Colour Range)
Use the slider to make sure you get a good chunk of the dark areas, and add more to the selection using the eyedropper + tool.
then feather your selection by a few pixels
Then use the levels tool to push some brightness into those dark areas.
.....
Or perhaps, create a new layer, fill it with light gray, and set this to a soft light mode - it might bring your brightness up a little. This will liekly remove some colour, so duplicate the original layer and set it to colour. Play with opacity.
Those are just theories, I havn't got photoshop on my mac to test them them.
Thanks Rick I think I saved it. I found, thank goodness for my old senile brain, I found a few backups of it as I progressed and had not overdarkened it.
So I am going to fix the armor, perhaps replace the dull brown w/ red and redo those yellow warning logo's stronger and fix those screws Soccerman brought up. Thanks again.
Here is an update on my textures, I am anal retentive I guess just can't stop messing with this skin. Like the words of Rick S. a skin is never done, at one point you just stop working on it.
Quick screenshots at work, sorry for the details, 64 meg card. Will try to get some in games this weekend off ATI9800, if I am not roped into too many Hubby duties again. UGH!
Looks really nice. The original shots aren't working for me so I can't compare so see what was changed, but whatever you did it looks pretty good. The only suggestions I can think of right now would be to add some shading to the orange part on his calf cause it's looking a little flat at the moment, change the light gray metal on his foot to make it the same coloring on the rest of the metal to make it fit together more, and possibly add some more coloring in the head. Some nice work there.
Thanks guys again. * Sorry for such a poor presentation. * Hopefully I will get some game shots up. My pc is all fucted on me, last night I got error loading UT2003. Perhaps some maps or something I unzipped last week.
Gonna try and use the bot viewer mutator I got from Ralf @ skincity.
Anyways I am finally back to fun skinning, like the good old days, but hopefully more eyepleasing than then.
Replies
http://www.geocities.com/frostysfreezer/shot.jpg
Looking better than your old stuff by far, but its still a little muddy. on the belly you could add some gray spots where the brown paint has chipped off or at least make it more apparent that its battleworn. get in there with a 1 pixel brush and do some damage man. You are getting better everytime. good luck.
Should have put a big logo on the back shoulder pad too.
If you ahve problems with your textures being too dark (which you do) try starting with a much lighter base, and then painting in the darks. I always go to bright, so I start with darks and work in the lights. Also don't just add large soft light spots like on his belly and crotch, they just looke like the brown has been rubbed away, and not like lighting.
Like others have said, I think you've got too much black going on. In many areas where you've put in more detail you surround it with black, sorta isolating it from the rest, and doesn't fit in with the lighting in the areas around it. For example, the two large screws on the chest. The brown parts around them are fairly light, but there's a black circle surrounding each screw. Everything seems to have a thick black outline to it.
The shading on this looks a lot smoother and not as messy as some of your older textures.
I'm not sure if you've already adjusted for this, but I remember that UT auto resizes the textures to I think use for LOD and lower graphics settings. If you don't paint outside of the UV layout then you could end up with black seams all over the model (which happened on one texture I was working on).
The face needs a lot of work. I suggest you try that as a seperate entity and perhaps concentrate on getting the body spot on. metal technique is coming along, but looks a bit scruffy somehow.
keep working frosty, I am sure you can get this looking nice
Poop - Thanks for the pointers, going back to rethink this one.
SoccermanMike - Greetings! I think where I lost it I was using a very light brush at 20 for the darker areas, but hadto ruin it by raising the contrast and brightness cos I thought it was too flat. As far as the black lines I also think I blew it by oversharpening up and it reemphasized the lines too much.
Ruz - Thanks Ruz I did the face fairly quick, actually only spent a bit of time and going to redo the beard so it looks more real, the unwrap and seam across the cheekbones is tough. Prolly through some funky glasses of mine on him since the eyes and the detail of them don't show up.
Thank you everyone.
A few pointer thats might help in your next one.
The black and yellow chevrons are a littel monochrome. Perhaps if you created another layer and painted in some random splats of yellow and black over the existing parts you would get more variation. This would make it look like a few layers of paint.
Some of the lines/edges are very soft - on a new layer use the line tool to define the harder edges, then play with the opacity -even something as low as 5-10% will just get it that definitaion.
THe brown is just a little dull - a simple trick would be to take a metal photo and overlay it at a few % strength. That will bring in some variation of tones and a few subtle colours.
It los like on a few parts you jsut couldn't be bothered with the detail - liek the lower legs. Keep the level of detail more consistant over the texture
Remove black from your colour swatch
Definatley your best work.
Hehehehe. Been holed up in my freezer, at study of hundreds of pics of Polycount artists, textures, models and industrial textures.
The black and yellow chevrons are a littel monochrome.
Gonna try that Rick, I notice how weak they look in the game, should be stronger.
Some of the lines/edges are very soft - on a new layer use the line tool to define the harder edges, then play with the opacity -even something as low as 5-10% will just get it that definitaion.
I was trying to emulate some of Dave King and DH metal styles and textures.
Trying is the key word.
The brown is just a little dull - a simple trick would be to take a metal photo and overlay it at a few % strength. That will bring in some variation of tones and a few subtle colours.
Thanks for that tip too, I have dozens of metal textures to pick from.
Keep the level of detail more consistant over the texture
Boring colors too - gonna try red or blue as a main scheme.
Seen how weak the legs were in the game and 3d view, need to add more logo's too.
Remove black from your colour swatch
It is officially gone.
THANKS RICK! One hec of a crit, I finally got my upl to read my utx right and loaded him at home on my 9800 pro ati card and I was so disappointed. I really blew it with the dark schemes and I can't go back and fix it cos adjusting the contrast does not work like I thought. Had I just not increased the contrast and darkness by 20% it might have worked. Oh well back to the drawing board. At least I know the layout now. Will prolly do just a new skin altogether and another one of the female models.
See you guys in about 3 months then, thanks again.
Glenn
This MIGHT work, in theory, to fix it.
Use the colour selector to select the dark areas (Select/Colour Range)
Use the slider to make sure you get a good chunk of the dark areas, and add more to the selection using the eyedropper + tool.
then feather your selection by a few pixels
Then use the levels tool to push some brightness into those dark areas.
.....
Or perhaps, create a new layer, fill it with light gray, and set this to a soft light mode - it might bring your brightness up a little. This will liekly remove some colour, so duplicate the original layer and set it to colour. Play with opacity.
Those are just theories, I havn't got photoshop on my mac to test them them.
So I am going to fix the armor, perhaps replace the dull brown w/ red and redo those yellow warning logo's stronger and fix those screws Soccerman brought up. Thanks again.
Here is an update on my textures, I am anal retentive I guess just can't stop messing with this skin. Like the words of Rick S. a skin is never done, at one point you just stop working on it.
Quick screenshots at work, sorry for the details, 64 meg card. Will try to get some in games this weekend off ATI9800, if I am not roped into too many Hubby duties again. UGH!
Gonna try and use the bot viewer mutator I got from Ralf @ skincity.
Anyways I am finally back to fun skinning, like the good old days, but hopefully more eyepleasing than then.