First Real Try at Hand Painting Textures

spectre1130

So I'm trying to kill one bird with two stones. I already had to intergrate 2 assets into Unity for school. One being a basic model with texture maps made elsewhere, while the other basic asset has to be textured within Unity. I decided to hand paint a very basic box staircase and duplicate 3 of them to make the start of a spiral. I don't have much experience trying this as all those masking techniques needed in PS have always eluded me. I decided to knuckle down and learn some techniques using a lot of masks-as well as presentation. The other asset I think I'll do is run off of this and do a tileable texture of the same type, and try blending them on a very small terain in engine. Let me know what ya'll think. Crits and comments are always thankful.

Thanks for lookin!

spectre1130

Just Diffuse Looking at the diffuse alone makes me feel lik it needs more work maybe??

mats effect

I feel like the moss type stuff (the bright green dots) stand out too much. Try to blend it in more maybe. They also look way to rounded and uniform.

Pixelatedkiwi

It certainly looks pretty toxic! At this point its hard to for me to give you any pointers as I can't really tell what the material is supposed to be, I'm assuming its kinda alien/sci-fi?

If you're wanting to get in some good hand painted practice I would suggest starting with things that are familiar like wood, stone, various metals, plants/leaves etc. that way people can identify with it and help you develop your paint skills! Looking forward to seeing some more

Dimfist

I think you are headed in the right direction but I feel like everything is just blotted on if that makes sense. There's not a lot of contrast other then dark and light, and the biologic material looks like drops of paint almost. I did a quick paint over just to show how you can add some quick texture and contrast. Obviously you won't get really good textures unless you have some sort of reference but I think you will see what I mean.

Jet_Pilot

what is it? were you looking at any reference when making it?

Coexistence

Holy saturation, Batman!

Do test to make sure it looks good in greyscale before adding color.

Think about which areas are getting more/less light than others (exposed edges versus sheltered nooks and crannies).

Snafubar7

You have the stone shapes down, but I would cut back a bit on the green circles (mossy spots..? I actually don't know what it's called). Look at some reference and try to adapt it to your own style. Paint in a subtle gradient from the darkest part of the dividing cracks to top of the stones to push a beveled look, fake some dimension.

In terms of being stairs, and it looks like you have each step painted uniquely, you could paint in subtle horizontal AO where one step meets the next, and add edge highlights for each step.

spectre1130

Yea, I was going for a long untrodden type of stone with some "mossy/dollarweed" type growths. I was playing with a lot of masking techniques to do the diffuse, and trying to use layer blends to make that moss only look opaque at a certain brightnesses then reworking it until I got this.

I am definitely going to rework the growths, bevel the stones out more, and desaturate it all. Thanks for the tips and comments so far.

Snafubar7

Yeah man keep going! The best feeling is after you step back from a texture you've been slaving over and go "oh shit... I did that?".

spectre1130

Reworked the stones and totally redid the growths. Tried to get the colors/saturation under control but I'm not sure I've gotten that down yet. Let me know if this is better or suckier.

spectre1130

So I kinda just moved on and did some other textures. I just finished a sci-fi panel with the plan to do a few more panels/floor/supports etc and put them into a texture atlas for a modular set in Unity. I'm still kind of lost on how the units transfer from max to unity like for udk. I did my own little experiments just exporting into unity and giving the imported meshes different scales upon import. I seem to have found the proper settings for square texture pieces tranferring into unity with it's meter system-kinda sorta I guess. Anyhow, my first sci-fi panel piece. Now I'm hoping I can figure out how to do more pieces and keep the look consistent.:poly134: Crits and comments are thankful.

lotet

if your going for hand painted textures, dont use photo overlays or texture brushes.
also, try to get the big shapes down before you spatter everything with details.
your sci-fi panels looks a lot better then the stairs though

DougClayton4231

I would say that you should use less noise and grunge in your texturing, because when there is constant grunge or noise in an image, it becomes uniform and unrealistic. Watch these videos by Jamin Shoulet: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_GWVez_UHM"]Texturing Workshop with Jamin Shoulet Part 1 - YouTube[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSFKEvH6ZJA"]Texturing Workshop with Jamin Shoulet Part 2 - YouTube[/ame] They definitely helped me to learn how to hand paint textures and he's great at demonstrating techniques for producing believable textures.

spectre1130

Thanks for the pointers. I did only use photos for the rust and the metal overlay. Everything else I did myself. I wasn't going for the total hand painted texture look on this one for sure. I'll lessen the overlay probably and try to tidy it up a bit. Thanks you for those videos too Doug, I'll check em out.

spectre1130

So I watched those vids and I must say that guy is a cool teacher. He gets some pretty awesome things with just a few layers. I took some of those techniques and started working on a new sci-fi sheet. I have more layers than I want, but this base I have here will be easier for me to make more textures from, and stay consistent. I stayed with just round brushes and played with a lot of settings. It is very basic and definitely needs more work. Bolts, work on the wear a little more. I want to keep it less noisy as commented above. Well here goes. All hand painted with just 2 filters to start things off.

Snafubar7

I've had Jamin for two courses at AAU and it's insane how much everyone improves in his classes. At first all our stuff looked similar, but once we all understood his technique more we ran with it and developed our own styles from it.

Hand painting can be a slow process, sometimes there's no instantly gratifying part of it. You might think "oh my god this is terrible" for about an hour, then you walk away for a bit. You come back and it's "oh shit... not bad." That's a great feeling.

That floor panel texture (if I'm right on that) is a big improvement. keep going.

DougClayton4231

That's a huge improvement! Keep it up :P

spectre1130

Thanks ya'll. I'll try and finish this floor panel today and move on to some wall units. Keep the comments and encouragement coming! Now if only I could wrap my head around Zbrush...I am doing horribly in my class for that program. I can't seem to make that transition from traditional modeling in max.

Nefarius24

Exactly what Snafubar7 said! I was working on a hand painted plant texture, as I walked away from it and kept coming back to it, I ended up liking the outcome! I'll post a thread of stuff soon! But yeah those videos are a great help Spectre!

spectre1130

Okay so I tidied up some of the edges a bit and added some screws/holes etc. I did add a little metal overlay very lightly just to give it some overall scratchy wear, plus some warning stripes or what have you. Did I go too far again? Let me know thanks.

spectre1130

Just kind of wrapped up another floor piece. Now time to move on to some wall/corner/ceiling units. I need to start figuring out my meshes and stuff too going into Unity. I should start that before my next texture to start organizing my scale.

JoshVanZuylen

Just so you know. Baking the lighting into your texture is not always the best idea. From the art style you are using sofar I would say Let the normal map work out the high lights.

spectre1130

I hear ya Josh. I truthfully was trying to stay away from normal maps period on this project. However, now that I've brought the two assets into Unity and got the scale proper I think, the highlights are now looking like they are gonna be a problem as far as realism. I probably won't even have a directional light like I have in this screenshot but the highs are not believable. My end goal is just a maze level as per my project reqs., and we need a bunch of scripting/physics/music/triggers etc. so I was trying to save myself some time-not to mention there was a time that NMaps didn't exist and we still loved the games.

Anyhow, here is my first grab of the two floor pieces. I see now how to better model more pieces to be able to make the meandering hallways I'll need to complete this. This is just the diffuse maps for now and the middle intersection has a slight bevel on the outer corner pieces. By the way, the textures look pretty good from afar, but look blurry and not so good up close. I did tweak the import settings for the texture in Unity, but they still look pretty muddy up close. Could this be that I made 1024 textures and then scaled them to 512 when I dragged them onto the atlas I'm using?? Should I instead save a smaller version by resizing down in PS for a better result?

Screengrab:

DougClayton4231

Unity usually has fun trying to make you think that there's something wrong with your textures, so I wouldn't worry about that as much. I would definitely scale the textures down properly in Photoshop before placing them into a texture atlas as well. Also, if you're looking for a great way to create normal maps, I would invest in nDo2. It's a lifesaver and it will speed up your workflow dramatically

Snader

No, what he's thinking is correct. If you're working with built-in lighting, it needs to either be neutral (highlights on all corners) or all needs to face the same way (you can highlight the top and shade the bottom of a horizontal tiling thingy).

So indeed. The strong highlights don't work for your floor, but they could be used fairly well for a wall. In general, pretending that there's just a giant light from the top will work well for some 'directional' lighting. Other than that you will have to work with AO, which means that things in crevisces or are recessed are darker and those 'in the open' or prodtruding are lighter.

spectre1130

Okay so very small update. Reworked my existing textures and added another smaller transition floor piece. I made it really plain as where these are I will be adding support arches/doors so the outer area will be covered. Added normal and spec maps to the atlas as well. I wish there was a way to tone down a normal map in Unity once it has been added to the mat. Is there??? They look a little to bold on areas even though I did not go bonkers on the settings when making them in Crazybump.

Today I need to work on some particle effects (project req.) for the maze map which will consist of steam rising from some select floor grates. Also, I want to make a triggered particle effect for the doors when they open as the doors will be triggered to open/close. So I def. need to figure out the arch/door piece today as well.:\

spectre1130

Steam rises from the grates...yay! Need a lil more tweaking and time to get on the doors/arches.

Self-backpatting screenshot:

spectre1130

Newest updates. Getting the modular stuff down a little. I think I finally am figuring out how to do more complex shapes and still keep them sqaure/power of 2 on the atlas to make my modeling easier. I need more variety. Anyhow, here is the first wall/ceiling segments done. I got the trial version of Ndo2 for these so now I'm thinking I'll have to redo the floor pieces 'cause they look like crap in comparison for sure. Okay, I need "some" sleep.

DougClayton4231

Really big improvements

spectre1130

Thanks Doug. I'll be buying the freelance version of NDo2 as soon as I can afford it. Making normals from scratch like that is totally bad-a$$!

Ranko

Put more gradients into your base colors, it will really help make your shapes read better.

spectre1130

@Ranko- You saying add some more cloud filters or something with some more color on the different areas???