Tips for tree limb textures

keres

I want to paint vegetation so badly! i can model it good enough, but when it comes to texturing them, i'm totally lost. So about a year ago, i bought a fairly nice digicam for help on this. I tried to snap a few tree limb textures with all kinds of techniques, but they all turned out crappy. I am thinking the only solution to my problems is if i can hand paint a tree limb texture, so therefor i've came here for advice on this. anyone give me pointers? i've got a fair background in hand painting textures, but they were mostly crete/metal/carpet textures and not anything nature-based.

thanks guys
-tom

renderhjs

post what you have so far , anything else is wasting time

Eric Chadwick

For tips, check out the texture pack that creationtwentytwo linked to here. They have a decent painterly feel.

If you're into photosource, this mask-extraction tool looks neat.

keres

renderhjs, i haven't made anything for a while that i can show because i haven't attempted this in a while. a few weeks ago i tried making some, but became frustrated that i couldn't. i am now needing advice and a good technique before i start back up.

EricChadwick, i'm looking at handpainting photoreal tree limb textures in photoshop. i would rather not buy textures or models, as i won't be able to redistribute them if i included them in a game i make. I also have no good source for getting pictures of tree limbs. I mean, there's cgtextures, but everyone has access to that

edit: i also downloaded a couple plugins. i'll try these, but i prefer to model/texture them by hand...

Eric Chadwick

If you're going for a photo-real look, nothing beats photos. It's not a good use of a developer's time to have someone paint photo-realistic, unless it's something they can't get photos of. Still, photo textures do need editing.

I meant look at that set to get ideas, not to use directly. If you're going for a painterly look, nothing beats painting them yourself.

keres

If you swear by photosource, then have i missed something? i've tried taking pictures of flattened leaves in my garage on an overcast day & on a piece of red cardboard. turned out awful. i tried hanging it up in the air on a dark night, which worked _decent_ as far as getting the mask, but the image was too washed out.

Do you have a technique for doing this? what camera do you recommend?

LlamaJuice

for leaves strangely enough the overcast day thing is the opposite of what I want usually haha. I usually will try to find the leaf/branch I want and then hold it up against the clear blue sky. Try to be completely in shade though so that you don't get weird highlights on your subject.

keres

what kind of camera are you using?

Eric Chadwick

I've tried all those methods, always ended up with halos in the RGB or bad edges in the Alpha.

My tips to take photos for texturing:
1. The subject should be in shadow or during an overcast day or at dawn/dusk, to avoid directional lighting & specular/reflection in the color texture. A must.
2. Use a camera with the largest sensor and decent lens. A SLR makes cleaner clearer sharper photos than any compact camera. Though I have been able to take good textures with a compact.
3. Use the lowest ISO my camera has, for the least grain. A must.
4. Use a tripod if the shutter speed is 1/100 or less, to avoid the hand-held blurries. Can use something stable nearby if no tripod, like a car roof or a rock.
5. Use an uncompressed file format like RAW or TIFF, to avoid compression artifacts. Though sometimes I've used least-compressed JPG too.
6. If I need to isolate an alpha channel later, position myself such that there are similar colors behind the object. Unless I have excellent chromakeying software, I won't be able to filter out the bloom that bleeds from the bkg into my subject. If it's a branch with leaves, take the shot against the rest of the tree, or against the grass, whatever color is the most similar. Then hand-paint the alpha, it goes quicker than I thought at first, and gives much better results.

More texture-photo tips... CGTextures: 10 Texture Photography Tips

Also, just found this excellent alpha-keyer, Topaz Remask, might be worth the price if you're doing a lot of alphas.