All these textures are definitely amazing, but it's only in 1 style. i don't really know how to explain this, but they don't look like something that wouldn't fit in lets say, games like BF3, Crysis 2/3 or other engines that try to create a realistic scenery.
These textures look kinda "cartoonish". This is not bad at all, I personally like the style, but if someone like me, who wants utmost realism in his games, wanted to buy a "realistic texture pack" for lets say, rocks, or soil, I couldn't come to you guys as from what i've seen your artist dont practise stuff like that.
Example, form my own work. A game called stalker utilises nothing but bump maps to make the textures stand out a bit, so i retextured the whole game using real-life photo's:
Old Texture:
New Texture by me:
You know what I mean? If you look at the last one there's a clear difference in "style" when it comes to this texture and the ones you guys post. And forgive the blurryness, it's a low quality sized down .jpg. The original is 2k x 2k.
First of all, NICE texture! I really like it. Second of all, for our style choice, we had to pick something that represented the values we had as artists. Obviously, it's not possible for us to hit every possible art style (even though I would LOVE to hit more of them), so we tried to go with one that was somewhere in the middle that had a bit more of style to it, but ultimately could still pass for textures in a game going for stylized realism (Skyrim, CS, etc).
There's sort of a spot we aim for when creating them that is just south of Uncharted, and just north of Crysis in the style department. That seems to be what a lot of people were looking for, especially with Brick and rock type textures.
I really wish we had the resources to hit some more styles right now, it would make life a lot easier for us. In hindsight, I would have done things a bit differently - The style is definitely one of them.
Thanks for your compliments, I'll seriously consider what you're saying though, because that is an important question. In the future I plan to hit some more realistic styles.
I edited my last post to include Mattias Van Camp in the contributing artist list. Sorry I forgot about you Mattias!
Thanks for the answer, it does make sense yeah. Somewhere in my mind I thought you guys were like a studio-sized development team working on textures whenever they could! :P Well I'm looking forward to the rest of the work. Keep it all up, looks stunning.
You made me want to focus more on my texturing skills, i am not that good in this field (i have done like 4 diffuses, 1 spec map since i started). Keep up the great work!
@Lephenix practice makes perfect man. The best tips I can give you for texturing is that you should be mindful that your textures provide context to a scene. You can see that material separation, different materials, and contextual indicators are three big components of all of our materials.
Material Separation: Important because it makes a texture very engaging to look at. Engagement is the big thing we go for, there are a lot of ways to engage someone, but something like having a strong specular map which clearly defines separate materials is the first, easiest and biggest way to make a texture start to appeal to the eye.
Contextual Indicators are things like the Lichen on the rocks, vines on bricks, cigarette butts on a pavement, dirt between cracks on a brick. These little details not only make your texture more interesting, but they make it fun to look at. A viewer will look at it and be drawn in by the little details. They might not realize it, but those type of things make a texture really fun to look at. I like to call these little things "stories". Always be looking to tell a story with your work, texture or otherwise. It's our job to provide context to a scene, and little stories make things a lot more appealing. Next time you look at a brick wall take it in, look at the little cracks, random drill holes, weird things people have carved in it, leftover caulking, a rogue nail that someone forgot to remove. Those are the little stories we're looking for here!
Those are just some big tips - nail those and your textures will start to look a hell of a lot better!
I really like the GameTexture's concept in general...so many games have a similar "enough" style that we, as an industry, shouldn't have to recreate the wheel every time for many of the kinds of textures you guys provide..all that saved time could be spent on refining the actual differentiating aspects of the project.
Thanks you Seaseme. I am trying one of your co-workers' tutorial from 3d motive (Damian Lazarsky), and i love it, i learned a lot of things already, and i'm only at part 8 out of 18. And with all the things i'll learn, i'll try to improve my GNK Power droid's texture (thread in my signature). Keep up the great work guys! You are an inspiration for me .
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All these textures are definitely amazing, but it's only in 1 style. i don't really know how to explain this, but they don't look like something that wouldn't fit in lets say, games like BF3, Crysis 2/3 or other engines that try to create a realistic scenery.
These textures look kinda "cartoonish". This is not bad at all, I personally like the style, but if someone like me, who wants utmost realism in his games, wanted to buy a "realistic texture pack" for lets say, rocks, or soil, I couldn't come to you guys as from what i've seen your artist dont practise stuff like that.
Example, form my own work. A game called stalker utilises nothing but bump maps to make the textures stand out a bit, so i retextured the whole game using real-life photo's:
Old Texture:
New Texture by me:
You know what I mean? If you look at the last one there's a clear difference in "style" when it comes to this texture and the ones you guys post. And forgive the blurryness, it's a low quality sized down .jpg. The original is 2k x 2k.
Cheers, looking forward to an answer
There's sort of a spot we aim for when creating them that is just south of Uncharted, and just north of Crysis in the style department. That seems to be what a lot of people were looking for, especially with Brick and rock type textures.
I really wish we had the resources to hit some more styles right now, it would make life a lot easier for us. In hindsight, I would have done things a bit differently - The style is definitely one of them.
Thanks for your compliments, I'll seriously consider what you're saying though, because that is an important question. In the future I plan to hit some more realistic styles.
I edited my last post to include Mattias Van Camp in the contributing artist list. Sorry I forgot about you Mattias!
Thanks for the answer, it does make sense yeah. Somewhere in my mind I thought you guys were like a studio-sized development team working on textures whenever they could! :P Well I'm looking forward to the rest of the work. Keep it all up, looks stunning.
And same to you, thanks for the compliment
@Lephenix practice makes perfect man. The best tips I can give you for texturing is that you should be mindful that your textures provide context to a scene. You can see that material separation, different materials, and contextual indicators are three big components of all of our materials.
Material Separation: Important because it makes a texture very engaging to look at. Engagement is the big thing we go for, there are a lot of ways to engage someone, but something like having a strong specular map which clearly defines separate materials is the first, easiest and biggest way to make a texture start to appeal to the eye.
Contextual Indicators are things like the Lichen on the rocks, vines on bricks, cigarette butts on a pavement, dirt between cracks on a brick. These little details not only make your texture more interesting, but they make it fun to look at. A viewer will look at it and be drawn in by the little details. They might not realize it, but those type of things make a texture really fun to look at. I like to call these little things "stories". Always be looking to tell a story with your work, texture or otherwise. It's our job to provide context to a scene, and little stories make things a lot more appealing. Next time you look at a brick wall take it in, look at the little cracks, random drill holes, weird things people have carved in it, leftover caulking, a rogue nail that someone forgot to remove. Those are the little stories we're looking for here!
Those are just some big tips - nail those and your textures will start to look a hell of a lot better!
Anyway, keep up the good work!