My try at handpainting stuff

Rokugan

So, given the fact that i always loved handpainted stuff, but also I was being a little scared cause I didn't think I could really paint anything, I finally decided to start doing stuff and practicing instead of thinking about it.
Here is my thread, I will collect all my handpainted textures starting from now (newb level). I'm really in need of feed and critique, so it's your move guys ^-^ and thanks for stopping by.

First texture (following the steps from Jfletch tut here on polycount)



I avoided using the smudge cause I can't really make it work. I'm not 100% happy with it but I think it may be a good starting point.

Eliteabix

Just make sure you have reference and that you persevere, the only way to get better at this is practice, perhaps avoid tutorials and just look at examples of other peoples work, you kind of need to develop your own technique when hand painting.

More specific critique - again, look at reference, cracks in stone are usually angular, Heres a nice example. you were wise to avoid smudge tool, I really dont rate it and I think youll find its rarely used for painterly (or anythin for that matter :P) - when hand painting just think about how to emphasize the properties of a material that make it look like stone or wood or whatever.

Hope this helps.

Rokugan

Thanks a lot for the critiques and suggestions Eliteabix ^^ I'm really in need of good advices like that!

In the meantime I tried once again, this time with wood:



I'll be sure to watch other people work and start gathering some references for future practice

DougClayton4231

Awesome progress, the wood looks a lot better than the stone I would say that you should definitely pick a light direction for your texture, that way you can place highlights that will really pop the details out from the surface and give your texture depth.

Rokugan

Thanks for the feed Doug! Yeah in the wood even if I picked the direction in my mind I ended up with an uniform light.

I continued to practice with something different, some sort of red rock floor tile or something? I dunno xD I started with some kinda of ref but Didn't liked it and ended up doing this putting together my memories from other similar works.

Rokugan

Another day, another exercise:


Painted a texture for a low poly door this time!

Rokugan

More wood practice

Rokugan

moar practice

Rokugan

Jumping here and there with practice, today went back to handpainted.

DougClayton4231

It's looking good but I'd break up some of the moss at the top a bit so that any repeating tiles won't be as obvious.

Jeff Parrott

Try working in greyscale while you do these. You'll be able to sort out your values a lot faster. Once you get control of values then work in color.

It's sort of like learning to juggle with 3 chainsaws starting out when you start working in hue, saturation, and value all at once. It can be really overwhelming and you might lose an arm.

Rokugan

Thanks for the feed guys ^^

@Doug: Yeah I know but atm I'm just practicing so I'm not really going for tiling yet

@Jeff for some previous work I can tell you're right. For the roof tile I think the values are kinda right. You have to consider that these texture are going to be lit within a game engine so I have to be carefull or I'll end up with extreme light( at least this is what I've been told and actually tried myself later on).

Rokugan

More wood practice (there's no way I can paint a clean cutted wood )

Choppz

Hey dude, I really like it. Really good take on roughcut wood (I had some trouble trying it, but hopefully will give it another go soon, will probably use this as a reference).

My only suggestion would be near the nails, the highlights are quite bright/clean, maybe just tone it down a bit and add a fine, slightly brighter highlight near the lip.

But all over, really nice work

Rokugan

Thanks Choppz! I will keep that in mind for the next wood practice ^^


Here is some stones very W.I.P. I still need to do quite some work on these

Mr Significant

I think you have too much space beetwen rocks. Make it bigger. Here, this is speedart about painting rocks:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKxFO4292LI"]Painting stone texture - YouTube[/ame]

This last wood looks good.

Rokugan

Thanks for the feed Mr Significant, I plan on doing some plants in between the rocks tho ^^

Rokugan

Not exactly what I had in mind, but being an exercise I'll call it done

Mr Significant

It looks better than before. But this small rocks are very strange.

Rokugan

You're right, but in the end I added more grass using Jamin's method so most of those disappeared.



It felt too empty

DougClayton4231

I'd add more yellow hues to the grass to have it match the rest of the texture better :P

Nosslak

I think the grass could be improved to look a bit better by making the strands point in other directions than just up. I guess the direction would be decided by the wind in most cases, but I think too uniform grass looks kind of boring.

The stones themselves feel a bit messy but I don't know what to do to improve those.

The colors felt a bit boring so I made some adjustments to make it a bit more vibrant:

Here's what I did:
- Added a softlight copy of the texture
- Upped the saturation
- Lowered the contrast and upped the brightness
- Made a softlight flattened copy of it all with highpass

I might have overdone it a bit but I think the texture looks more alive this way.

Jakob Gavelli

Hey!

Great work so far. I'm a bit worried that none of your textures tile properly. Is this due to how you present them or are they made like that?

I'd recommend using the offset filter extensivly while blocking out your texture so that you know that there will be no obvious repetition or seams.

Rokugan

Hey guys, thanks for the crits!

@Noss: for the grass you're right, unfortunately I can't edit this anymore cause I merged everything together in the end but I'll keep in mind the direction for the next time I will paint grass. For the stones I think that in your example everything is a bit oversaturated and with extreme light, I have to avoid that in order to get a decent light once I use them in a game engine.

@Jakob: You're right, at the moment I'm not worring about the tiling at all, I don't plan on using these textures directly in any project, these are just exercises

Rokugan

Today's exercise:

Nosslak

That looks a lot better. I think it could use some moss/algae/lichen to make it look a bit more alive. Some dirt or sand between the cracks could be a good idea as well if it supposed to be a floor texture. Other than that, good job!

@Noss: for the grass you're right, unfortunately I can't edit this anymore cause I merged everything together in the end but I'll keep in mind the direction for the next time I will paint grass. For the stones I think that in your example everything is a bit oversaturated and with extreme light, I have to avoid that in order to get a decent light once I use them in a game engine.

Yeah, you're right. Looking back at it again I really overdid the adjustments.

Rokugan

Yeah I think i'll try to add some dirt in between the tiles

as for now I tried to bring the texture in unity, add a normal and spec map just to see how it works (I didn't bother with the tiling but it doesn't looks so bad)





EDIT:

Fixed the tiling and added dirt in between the tiles

Rokugan

Today I decided to give a try to a grass texture, I found it pretty difficult but overall I'm happy with it.


256x256 texture:




Tiling (512x512)

linkov

to me it looks more like anemone tendrils rather than grass. I like your floor tiles.

Rokugan

lol! Thanks for the comment linkov ^^

I really don't know how to proceed with grass, that was the best I could achieve.

linkov

Good thing for you is that many people don't know what anemone is, so they will think it's grass. You're safe.

Seriously though, the problem is that you copying someone else's technique, without understanding your subject matter. There is nothing wrong with filters and some brush magic, but it will get you only so far. So unless you want to spend your future teaching youngsters about photoshop filters I would suggest picking some references and doing some actual painting.

Rokugan

Wood practice WIP of today:

Rokugan

Completed the wood texture:




Tiling:

metric meditation

your stone work is starting to look good. it certainly feels like clay or a kind of ceramic. getting there!

metric meditation

the grass texture is looking good too, just remember that a grass texture that is tiled might grow in all different directions as opposed to just in one direction :P

Rokugan

Thanks for the comments Jamin! Really appreciated ^^ grass is super hard for me at the moment, I need to practice some more

Rokugan

Today's practice:

Stone floor tiles




Tiling




as always C&C are welcome!

Rokugan

Today's practice:

Clean wood (at last)



tiling:



I also decided to add watermarks to my textures, just in case some people from "outside" come wandering here on polycount and decide to take my work without asking ^^

EmmanuelLawrence

Cool stuff you got here! But in my opinion, to really bring it to life, you should add patches of random dirt and dust in between panels. For example, the stone tile floor looks good but could use some variance like cracks or dirt for the parts in between each stone tile.
Keep it up

DougClayton4231

Dat wood :P And also, it's always a great idea to watermark everything, just in case.

Rokugan

Thanks guys ^^

Today I started another kind of wood, bark this time.

WIP




pretty time consuming tho

Dennispls

When I first saw this I thought you were going for rocks.
Take a good look at the kind of bark you are going for
(example)

Rokugan

Yeah, was going for something like this



but I think I failed ^^ that's what happen when you paint from memory I guess.
Now I can't fix anything

Rokugan

calling it done




applied to a cylinder

wirrexx

looks more like stone. this is my 5 cent on why.
to little "cracks" going on in the bigger details. think of it this way. the wood dryes up and cracks in some places.
To dark. Bark is lighter colored greyish with hints of red/yellow/ blue here and there.

metric meditation

this could be applied to various parts of your stone texture to create an uneven feel to it

[vv]80683068[/vv]

Rokugan

Thanks for sharing Jamin! Really useful stuff

Rokugan

Back after 4 months!I basically changed path and started practicing 2D to become a concept artist, but now I really have so much time on my hands that when I'm not practicing painting I decided to go back and learn 3D/Texturing.
(I hope to not lose my mind for the amount of study :P)

New small update