Home Technical Talk

::Fixing Texture Seams::

polycounter lvl 13
Offline / Send Message
CT007 polycounter lvl 13
Can I see(<- notice!) the various ways people fix texture seams(or be directed somewhere)? I'm looking for realistic/real-world examples, and want to find the best methods.

Methods I know of, in general:
1. 3D painting[mudbox/modo](clone tool or painting over with a similar image)

2. "double-UV" trick[render-to-texture](works but seems like it will take forever to fix an entire model)
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1800/completely_eliminate_texture_seams_.php

3. placing a chunk of texture halfway over both seam edges in PS, then masking the chunks out except for where the seams are(seems only to work for organic textures)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9763207@N04/3345091172/sizes/o/

4. Photoshop cloning, saving, checking model over, re-cloning, repeat...(I'm guessing this is the fastest or second fastest method, but seems very tedious as far as I can tell)




I'm not sure how to use PS to do this easily, so that's what I'm missing the most. I'm also not concerned with tiling textures.

Thx! :)

Replies

  • Mechadus
    Id be very interested to hear some professional opinions about this too....
  • LEViATHAN
    Offline / Send Message
    LEViATHAN polycounter lvl 11
    Not sure what you mean with #3, but for quickies i usually just offset half the texture vertically, copy a part of the texture, paste that over the seam and use the eraser to blend it with the rest (maybe using the clone stamp tool to remove the "obvious" spots which don't tile well). Repeat horizontally.
  • rooster
    Offline / Send Message
    rooster mod
    3d painting for the win
  • gamedev
    Offline / Send Message
    gamedev polycounter lvl 12
    Photoshop CS4's 3d paint tools are pretty easy to use as well. Export a collada file from your 3d package, import into PS, paint over the seams using clone / stamp and then save out your new color map.

    Not sure if your #2 means you're using render to texture to remove the seams or not.

    Cheers,

    Tyler
  • vik
    Offline / Send Message
    vik polycounter lvl 13
    3d painting. The other methods are pretty old school, they work, but take too much time so not very efficient in this day and age. I like Bodypaint personally (not that I use it too much)
  • Ghostscape
    Offline / Send Message
    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    I do a lot of hard surface stuff, so a lot of my visible seams are typically going to be along a straight edge.

    I just take the "left" edge of the texture, dupe it, flip it, line it up over the right side, and then use free transform (squash/stretch it so it isn't a perfect mirror) and the eraser tool.

    But usually I tend to hide my seams as much as possible. On hard-surface stuff you can hide a lot of seams along a steep angle by wearing the angle to a fairly flat color.
  • CT007
    Offline / Send Message
    CT007 polycounter lvl 13
    LEViATHAN wrote: »
    Not sure what you mean with #3, but for quickies i usually just offset half the texture vertically, copy a part of the texture, paste that over the seam and use the eraser to blend it with the rest (maybe using the clone stamp tool to remove the "obvious" spots which don't tile well). Repeat horizontally.

    I inserted a link to an image showing what I mean.

    Are you refering to a method used to fixing tiling textures?...because I'm only concerned with non-tiling textures now. :]
  • CT007
    Offline / Send Message
    CT007 polycounter lvl 13
    rooster wrote: »
    3d painting for the win

    How, exactly? Do you:
    -clone
    -paint over with an image
    -or...?
  • CT007
    Offline / Send Message
    CT007 polycounter lvl 13
    gamedev wrote: »
    Photoshop CS4's 3d paint tools are pretty easy to use as well. Export a collada file from your 3d package, import into PS, paint over the seams using clone / stamp and then save out your new color map.

    Not sure if your #2 means you're using render to texture to remove the seams or not.

    Cheers,

    Tyler

    Yes, render-to-texture[edited post].

    So, would you paint out the seams per-layer, or only after you've painted all the details in? Is painting per-layer even possible, without needing to save out every layer as a texture?
  • Jet_Pilot
    Offline / Send Message
    Jet_Pilot polycounter lvl 10
    Add a pipe to cover the seam! :-)

    I do a lot of things.. the method i choose is on a case by case bases. But whatever gets the job done. there is no right or wrong
  • CT007
    Offline / Send Message
    CT007 polycounter lvl 13
    Ghostscape wrote: »
    I do a lot of hard surface stuff, so a lot of my visible seams are typically going to be along a straight edge.

    I just take the "left" edge of the texture, dupe it, flip it, line it up over the right side, and then use free transform (squash/stretch it so it isn't a perfect mirror) and the eraser tool.

    But usually I tend to hide my seams as much as possible. On hard-surface stuff you can hide a lot of seams along a steep angle by wearing the angle to a fairly flat color.

    Most of my models are hard surface as well.

    Could you show examples of this method for the visual learner? :]
  • CT007
    Offline / Send Message
    CT007 polycounter lvl 13
    Jet_Pilot wrote: »
    Add a pipe to cover the seam! :-)

    I do a lot of things.. the method i choose is on a case by case bases. But whatever gets the job done. there is no right or wrong

    Could you share these methods? Examples? :thumbup:
  • renderhjs
    Offline / Send Message
    renderhjs sublime tool
    I had an idea for my UV/texture script collection
    http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=60553&page=4
    that would swap-render from uv channel to uv channel without much loss to things like this. Texture painting might be nice and all but peformance in most of them is piece of shit and sometimes even they cant maneuver well into spots you need to reach (hard to reach corners, giant scale differences,...).
    The links are nice inspirations on how to simplify the steps with maxscript. Anyway otion 2 still has its right use imo.

    as for the last 2 its always a good choise to straighten shell edges that loop on a axis so that not only fixing it in 2d phtoshop alone by hand is easy but also the texels have the same orientation and by that already avoid seams to begin with.
  • pior
    Offline / Send Message
    pior grand marshal polycounter
    If you place your seams where the materials connect together IRL you won't have to paint over them at all!
    Easy.
    Also remember you can always move UVs around to compensate for texture issues - not just the other way around only.
  • ChaosEidolon
    Offline / Send Message
    ChaosEidolon polycounter lvl 17
    If youre working "next gen" and getting most of your detail information from your high rez zbrush model (by doing an AO bake) then seams are less of an issue. You can do your color procedurally, and texture overlays will take care of surface detail...you may have to clean these a little by just making sure there aren't obvious details, spots/scratches that are getting cut off on the seam.

    For the final pass, yeah Bodypaint, or some other 3d painting is the way to go. It's pretty much the only thing I use BP for...I find it a little clunky for full on texture painting.

    Pretty soon CS4 will likely be the status quo for seam cleanup though.
  • Jesster
    Offline / Send Message
    Jesster polycounter lvl 17
    I like using zBrush's zApplink to do my seam cleanup.
  • vik
    Offline / Send Message
    vik polycounter lvl 13
    Is it just me or Zapplink likes to blur your textures a bit?
  • Justin Meisse
    Offline / Send Message
    Justin Meisse polycounter lvl 18
    Just recently starting using Bodypaint, it's a magical program, the only disadvantage I've seen with it so far is it doesn't like your PSD to have adjustment layers or paths
  • Bokaja
    Offline / Send Message
    Bokaja polycounter lvl 16
    CS4 is clearly the way to go on this subject I think - extremely easy approach. Load your obj and diffuse texture, use clone stamp or other to fix seams, save out and voila :D Done!

    Kick ass!
  • Mark Dygert
    I don't do a lot of texture seam fixes now but when I did, PeterK's 2nd UV channel + RTT trick did the job fine. I haven't tried out CS4's 3D paint tools to paint out seams. I played around with it a bit and wasn't all that impressed. The lighting mostly fustrated me.
  • mLichy
    I just use Mudbox now
  • NAIMA
    Offline / Send Message
    NAIMA polycounter lvl 14
    gamedev wrote: »
    Photoshop CS4's 3d paint tools are pretty easy to use as well. Export a collada file from your 3d package, import into PS, paint over the seams using clone / stamp and then save out your new color map.

    Not sure if your #2 means you're using render to texture to remove the seams or not.

    Cheers,

    Tyler
    I tried that but it says my videocard not works with PS cs4 , I dont understand why since I have a gtx 295 wich is pretty new ....
  • EarthQuake
    i think more important than fixing texture seams, is knowing how to avoid them in the first place. For the most part this just comes down to simple planing.

    1. Use natrual seam lines from your HP to create your lowpoly uv seams. If there is a material separation in high, trace that line in your low and create your uv seam there.

    2. Never put seams right in the middle of some important detail, always try to hide them on the bottoms of things and in the area farthest away from where the player will view the asset most.

    3. Never do all sorts of detail in your texture on seam lines, if you follow the above steps this should be pretty easy.

    If you can do all of this, you will rarely need to use external apps to "fix" your seams. Really, just don't create seams in the first place! =D

    This may be a bit different for character art than hard surface stuff, but most should be at least somewhat applicable.
  • mLichy
    But... if you need to have seams to fix stretching or want to use more of your UV space or what have you, and you have Mudbox, use that ;)
  • Reverenddevil
    Offline / Send Message
    Reverenddevil polycounter lvl 9
    I am with Earthquake, take some time to plan where you want your seams and model/sculpt accordingly.
  • NAIMA
    Offline / Send Message
    NAIMA polycounter lvl 14
    Sorry if I intrude the thread but someone can tell me how to make work this Photoshop feature 3d ? I have cs4 the most complete edition , I have this feature but it tells me I cant use couse of my videocard , but my videocard is a gtx 295 , one of the most powerfull on market , hows possible that dont work?

    in alternative is there any other tool that makes me work with the photoshop tools , like lazo , clone stamp tool etc directly on a model?
  • Bokaja
    Offline / Send Message
    Bokaja polycounter lvl 16
    mLichy: Maybe you can set up a tutorial thread showing how you use Mudbox in that process? Always interesting to see different approaches :)
  • Bokaja
    Offline / Send Message
    Bokaja polycounter lvl 16
    Srry Naima dont know - CS4 is complaining about my 9800 GTX card as well - as for now I just run it with hardware turned off - not that bad performance in 10.000 tri obj models.
  • beartraps
    Offline / Send Message
    beartraps polycounter lvl 8
    The biggest issue with hard surface seams for me is when painting damage/ chipped off paint on the edges of stuff. Since UVs at sharp angle need to be split apart for baking normal maps from high polys, it creates problems when trying to line up corner damage, like this for example:
    diffuse.jpg
    Picture1-35.png

    What would be ideal would be painting in damage to corners directly on the 3d object using masks in photoshop instead of using clone stamp.. can u do this in CS4 or other apps? if so could someone write up a little tut on how to do it?
  • achmedthesnake
    Offline / Send Message
    achmedthesnake polycounter lvl 17
    mLichy - i;ve found that mubox's paint layers function is fine for blockig out colors, but when oyu go into opacity's and blending - the texture goes all weird and rainbowy i.e.
    where normally blue meets yellow should equal green, it goes multicolor like someone's 'ps sharpened' it too much...

    meh maybe i need my eyes fixed
  • Bokaja
    Offline / Send Message
    Bokaja polycounter lvl 16
    Beartraps this is what got me going with CS4 at the time - a simple intro:
    part 1
    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBxGoJkjxGw[/ame]
    part2
    [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4NyvG9ZgWM&amp;feature=related[/ame]

    Yes I believe you can paint in dirt/wearing on those edges where your seams are - directly on the 3d model. Load your OBJ model and apply your diffusemap. When youre done painting save out the map (call it "_seamfix" or somethin). This map is then updated with all your added paintwork along the edges. Works for me :)
Sign In or Register to comment.