Hand painting practise - crits please!
polycounter lvl 10
Figured i should start my own thread to help progress my texture painting.
Lets skip the crap and get to the textures..
Bobo's SDK for those who don't know (probably impossible not to).
First attempt (Dont have stills for these ones soz)
Maph then suggested to add more contrast in the textures, but i didn't quite understand and literally just contrasted it
so here is the 2nd attempt:
This one, although better contrasted had too much black in it and still didn't have much better value ranges...
Maph was kind enough to paint over for me:
(taken from another thread, moving my shit here to not clog it up)
"gilesruscoe: Making the cracks darker doesn't really solve anything, what you need to do for this sort of stuff is add a light influence, even if it's minor and just define your general forms better. I'm not talking about the individual stones here, but stuff like the eye sockets and how they cast shadows, zygomatic, etc...
Also, try to avoid pure black all together, nothing in real life (except for black holes) is entirely black. Go for deep semi-saturated dark colors instead.
Also, design wise, just try first with larger more stylized piece of rock and a few well placed magma lines.
What you really need to do at some point (and I've noticed this with your other low poly stuff too) is occasionally add a black and white adjustment layer over your work. And just see that the values are correct.
As long as you're not working with strong hue contrasts, value contrast is without a doubt the most important part of a good low poly texture or painting in general.
If you don't mind, I made a shitty paintover to show you what I mean. The top is yours with just a b&w adjustment layer on top of it, under that is what I did. Didn't have a lot of time, so again; forgive me for the shittyness of the paintover.
And something you need to do often, is squinting your eyes and looking at your work! If you can see the general forms you're all good; if it's a mess, it's not good."
Following his advice, here's where i'm at with the texture now:
Will be posting other stuff here, not just SDK's!
Lets skip the crap and get to the textures..
Bobo's SDK for those who don't know (probably impossible not to).
First attempt (Dont have stills for these ones soz)
Maph then suggested to add more contrast in the textures, but i didn't quite understand and literally just contrasted it
so here is the 2nd attempt:This one, although better contrasted had too much black in it and still didn't have much better value ranges...
Maph was kind enough to paint over for me:
(taken from another thread, moving my shit here to not clog it up)
"gilesruscoe: Making the cracks darker doesn't really solve anything, what you need to do for this sort of stuff is add a light influence, even if it's minor and just define your general forms better. I'm not talking about the individual stones here, but stuff like the eye sockets and how they cast shadows, zygomatic, etc...
Also, try to avoid pure black all together, nothing in real life (except for black holes) is entirely black. Go for deep semi-saturated dark colors instead.
Also, design wise, just try first with larger more stylized piece of rock and a few well placed magma lines.
What you really need to do at some point (and I've noticed this with your other low poly stuff too) is occasionally add a black and white adjustment layer over your work. And just see that the values are correct.
As long as you're not working with strong hue contrasts, value contrast is without a doubt the most important part of a good low poly texture or painting in general.
If you don't mind, I made a shitty paintover to show you what I mean. The top is yours with just a b&w adjustment layer on top of it, under that is what I did. Didn't have a lot of time, so again; forgive me for the shittyness of the paintover.
And something you need to do often, is squinting your eyes and looking at your work! If you can see the general forms you're all good; if it's a mess, it's not good.
"Following his advice, here's where i'm at with the texture now:
Will be posting other stuff here, not just SDK's!
Replies
Something like this:
@Goraaz, Are you talking about doing that to the model as a whole, or for each indivisual rock? Cheers
Edit:
Think i got what Goraaz was getting at, heres an update:
Here's an update with the larger rocks, let me know if its a step in the right direction guys:)
I hope this clears things up.
I overlayed a white gradient starting at the face which faded to dark blue, and then erased certain parts of this to give a light direction to the texture, which is pretty much whats going on with the ball drawing example... The head also has Lava strips across it, which are light sources themselves *confused*
The only short answer is: Learn to paint. Hide the layers that you have, for now, start a new layer, and with only two or three tones, lay out the shapes and major forms of your texture. THEN start working form there to knock the detail and texture within those tones. Your light areas should never get as dark as your midtone areas, your midtones should never get as dark as your darks.
In many ways you're overthinking it. The lava on the head is not going to be casting a meaningful amount of light onto the rest of the surface because it's all located in crevices. Light doesn't pass through rocks
It helps to accent the characters, and give more overall volume to the lighting.
And just for the sake tonal variances, try putting some blue/teal values in the rocks, not just a simple monochromatic black greyscale.
Take the pencil tool... put it at 5-10% opacity, and just make a few strokes where the lighting terminator line would be on each individual rock.
Shotguns been in my inspiration folder for a long time, he's got some stunning work.
I do, indeed, see how he does it, big forms/light sources first, detail later with all the intricacies etc. But knowing how something's done is only the tip of the iceberg.
"Learn to paint", thats what i'm doing, but miracles don't happen overnight, if anything, this thread is helping towards that goal
On laptop now, but when i'm back on my PC i'll have another crack at the lighting.
@ JacqueChoi, thanks for the post, Slipgates textures too, are very great, the "front to back" thing will help... does that mean i should be painting specular at an angle on the rocks at the side of his head?
I did orginally have some greens and blues in there, but they've been lost through all the repaints, i'll chuck some back in with the next repaint too. thanks.
Specular on the planes that are directly exposed to light only. EVERYTHING you see is a reflection -- specular is just the brightest of the reflections. In direct light you get the most information, including little textural highlights. As the surface recedes to shadow, you get less information.
You are not going to have a hard time conveying the surface texture, at all, so don't worry about it. Your rok looks like rock, your lava looks like lava, it looks good! So wipe that away and think about the planes, you can make it again no problem.
Did this to try and articulate what i was saying before. Obviously it's not very polished, the forms are blobby and large, you'll be able to do much better, but hopefully it communicates the idea. See how i convey lights and darks without resorting to extreme white or blacks?
Forms come first, details are their (very obedient) children.
btw, i wasnt trying to be a dick when i said 'learn to paint', i just mean that a lot of this stuff doesn't have simple fixes where you can just read a tutorial and nail it -- it's all in the basic, fundamental decisions about colors and tones.
So, i shouldn't paint the texture as indvisual rocks, i should paint planes of the forms first, then add rock cracks... go over again with additional shadowing for the rocks, and then add the finer details in the lighter part of the texture?
thanks again, some awesome advice here.
As you can see I've brightened up the front a little bit and increased the saturation. Further back of the head is darker with less saturation. The gif export killed some details or it was just me being sloppy.. Try keep the details if you can
The real takeway here is to be consistent. Establish forms with strict rules (downward facing surfaces are always this much darker than upward surfaces, wet surfaces get this bright under the light, reflections are this strong, etc) and stick to them! It's actually imo the most exciting thing about painting, just playing around with what you've got after you've laid down the foundation.
obv what i linked here wouldn't work in the case of a texture for a 3d model (except maybe the hole on the forehead, i think that would probably look just fine) but painting in 3d space lets me communicate it a lot more dramatically.
It didn't come across as that at all, it's a phrase which is thrown around a lot.
PC isn't at my house, so pics will have to wait till tomoz
Edit:
Keep going man!
Heres the lastest with further lighting and detail changes, thanks for the paint over (that little light source with arrows was very helpful)
My brains completely dried up on this one now, not sure how else to push it.
Keep on working, you're doing great!
I totaly see the ^_^ Haha, nice spot
Yea the back of the head is very *meh* looking at it now, will give it some love.
With the nostrils i was considering changing them to thin slits more to the side of the head, will see how things look..
Cheers!
I've been imagining this head on some bulky golem type creature, so im not sure how much lighting from beneth would get through in that senario, maybe just some edges getting hit with a light blue could look cool, i'll have a little play around with it and see if i can get anything nice lookin'.
I think some heavier shadows are needed in a few places, but i don't want it turning out too dark like previous attempts :P
1, Roosters underlit suggestion
2, update without under light
3, Wacked up lighting a bit as suggested by Xaltar
I like 1/2 better than 3, i think just adding in more brights gives you a plasticy, rubbery look. Stick to your guns on materials -- stone only reflects so much light, if you want more contrast you'll find it in darkening your shadow tone.
As for the underlight: It needs to follow planes too, just like the toplight! Don't cheap out and just blob it into there with a soft brush, think about what surfaces will be hit by light and paint it on them only! Some of your 'front' facing forms have the underlight on them in this latest post and it weakens the sense of mass. And don't let it get too soft and blobby, it will give your stone a plasticy look -- again, same rules as the top-lit stone. Think in terms of light and shadow, just in this case 'shadow' is where the blue light isn't hitting.
But seriuously, very good progress!
I too feel that 3 looked a little washed out, i also think the under lighting adds interest, so i guess i'll push forward with the first variation.
"Don't cheap out and just blob it into there"....BUSTED! thought i'd get away with that too
Looking to move onto a different model now i think.
Still very early stages, lots of mess
heres the flat texture if you want to take a better look, im bad at explaining things:
Didn't know that, cool!
As for the new head you're working on:
I think his lips are looking a bit too feminine, I think the shape could be a bit more squashed and maybe make the highlights less prominent. He also lacks eyebrows, but I guess you're comming to that
blocked in some colours... nothin special
Face is still very ...derp. The light source is messed up too, but i've decided to have little glowing lights around the edge of his suit to provide some underlighting anyway, so it's going to be changed around alot anyway.
Also hate the wires at the back, those will change.
Zpanzer, agree with lips/skin, i'm going to be giving him a stubble once i get the rest of the skin tones down and looking nice, also some extra wrinkles here and there (mainly around eyes/neck)
Lips are crap though, will fix.
Edit:
something like this, bad paint over:
I think you could integrate the lava into your guy more successfully, a lot of it is too hot and feels like it is on top of the rocks
i tried to make it a bit more subtle, cooled it down a little and increased the influence of the color on the rocks around it. tried to make the lava look like it was in the cracks between the rocks.
before
after
ugh. dropbox is destroying the image quality. but you can see what i'm talking about
Here's an update:
Getting so much great feedback in this thread, it's amazing!
Just goes to show we can all learn more, I always thought your low poly stuff looked pretty good.
i don't think that really counts as long as you use different layers
still just adding in random crap to the body work, havnt actually detailed anything yet, so just ignore it for now.