Update: Managed to get a little more 3D done. Painted one of the metal fittings, modelled and unwrapped a pluggable lantern mesh and quickly duplicated the supports to give myself a better understanding of how it will all fit together.
Always looking for your comments, crits and suggestions
Completed the overhead beam texture and just started on the tileable rock. The rock texture has too many pronounced features which makes it look repetitive :< Basically finished the structure/crack shadows and highlights and will be moving onto the other details after. I originally wanted it to be a red, but struggled finding the right colour, I'll tweak levels when I finished painting the rest.
So yeah its been a while, and I thought I'd continue on with this thread with some of the work I've done over the last month, although I've been bogged down with the Christmas rush at my job, written work etc etc I managed to complete Tyson Murphy's tutorial and work on a new wood texture.
Had some progress but still quite a way to go, would appreciate any comments or criticisms, although at the moment I've got a lot of written work that needs doing, but hopefully I can show some frequent texture updates.
I've just about finished the wood texture for the beams just needs a little more tweaking, and next I've got to do another similar texture for the main overhead beam and some messy iron texture for some metal fittings on the beams.
If anyone has comments, criticisms, feedback or can show me an awesome technique they've picked up, I would greatly appreciate it.
Oh also realised I didn't post a finished shot of the minecart earlier:
It ended up being a little rushed but I learned loads from mistakes I made and the input from the community and I still plan to include it into my final project
Looking great!
You're way better than me so I can't really give any crits, I would love to know where you found that Tyson Murphy tutorial though!
Really awesome progress! I think everything is still pretty monochromatic though. I'd like to see the hue/saturation shifts pushed even more!! Keep up the hard work
Hey everyone! Apologies for the lack of activity, been up to my neck in assorted projects and had to get those done. But now I should be able to, once again, focus on this project and get myself motivated to really push this project towards completion.
@Kusken Yeah the tutorial is awesome like Dubzski said. Its really worth the money. I'd also recommend Jamin Shoulet's tutorials. Hes released a new 'bootcamp' tutorial, I've not had a chance to look at it myself but its had some great reviews and his other tutorials are amazing. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/texturebootcamp
@Rafferty_Eggleston Thanks man! ^^ I agree with you, it does look monochromatic and I'm thinking about redoing the rock wall texture completely and maybe make it more 'lumpy' and possible have jewels sticking out from the rock, just to make it more interested and less brown.
So in the past week I've just been working on my lantern texture and also some tweaks in the colour values of the rest of the scene. What I've changed is:
- Wood support and rock wall saturation
- Decreased opacity on the seams of the wood texture
I constantly work between my home computer and some (not so good) computers at college, and the colour values are always completely different (they are very desaturated and 'whitewashed' at college) so its tricky for me to get the values I'm after. I upped the contrasts at college and now looking at the scene on my home computer, it looks maybe too saturated? What do you guys think?
Heres some update pictures:
And the current lantern progression. I always struggle when approaching metal textures, and this one has been the same, hope someone can give me some pointers.:
i like everything, except for your metals. they lack hue and look extremely flat and perfect. I can't really paint textures myself, but what I always see in hand-painted metals is a lot of dark hues and bright highlights to give it that metal feel. without them it looks less like metal and more like stone.
You are lacking a ton of contrast everything looks really washed out. Here is a quick adjustment to show you how washed out things are looking. Everything looks good otherwise keep it up!
@Luge Thanks, I totally agree with you, but I do have a hard time painting metal. I think I always end up making things too bright, as I usually start with a flat dark colour and build up with brighter colours (and maybe build it up too much) I'll experiment and see if I can make them look less like stone.
@stevston Your totally right actually, I'm going to go through my textures now and increase the contrast. I'll post the results before I head off to work
@Jeff Parrott Very interesting, I've never really though about that. After work I'll start on this and see if I can make some progress
Not adjusted lantern contrast, because I'd rather finish painting the whole texture then add a contrast filter once I'm done. I quickly greyscaled the screenshot and this was the results:
Update on the lantern. Redone the metal and painted the end of the wooden post. I think I made some progress, but the metal details need to be tweaked a little more.
MOAR Contrast!!! Here is an image literally all I did was do an auto levels and then a slight desturation. Might be worth a try to quickly auto level your textures.
@Luge. Thanks! I realised where I was going wrong, by just looking at my previous work. I seemed to be focussing on making a gradient depending on lighting direction and it was just missing the overall dark hue with strong highlights, like you said .
@stevston89. Wow nice, I've never used auto levels, to be honest I'm generally inexperienced with the levels filter and barely use it. Though my results differ from yours, for me it made my texture much darker, though still pretty cool. Though I think I'll start tweaking contrasts after I finish the rest of the textures, also my walls get some very strange colours when I push the contrast too far, but I might redo the texture from scratch anyway.
Hey I did a super quick paintover. I'm not the best at hand painted stuff but there were some areas I noticed that could be improved.
Be mindful of your light source. The gash in your metal made it look like it was coming from below (same with some of your wood highlights) which may be the case, but generally hand painted textures have the light source from top down.
Hmm appears these replies didn't pop-up in my email inbox... Really sorry about the slow reply, I just came on to post an update, when I saw these.
@stevston yeah I'll need to sit down, once I've finished painting the whole thing to just get the right contrast for the scene. I still need practice at painting in contrast without it looking terrible.
@Stockwell Yep, auto levels for some reason created that effect. Like I said I need to get more familiar with using levels.
@Bartalon Very nice paintover. One of the huge problems I have when handpainting is: should I be painting the texture as if the environment lighting was affecting the mesh?
For example this piece is a support for a lantern (my light source) the lantern is below it, so I paint as if the light was coming from below. But should I be doing this? It leads to a lot of problems for me when painting ( I much prefer the top/down lighting )
Also I think I haven't got enough texture space to get that awesome crispness you achieve in your paintover. This is due part to my poor foresight with having to tweak the UV layout throughout painting, I've ended up wasting a lot of space. The below is my diffuse, its 1024x1024, the shell with the dark diamonds is the area you did the paintover. Lesson learnt I guess..
Anyway update screenshot, the lantern is not as great as I would like, and would love some suggestions
Managed to finish the candle and do some colour tweaks. Going to start the crate today and try to make it a simple 6 faced cubed and try to paint in the depth for thetrim of the crate.
I've seen some people use 1024x512 texture files. Can these sort of proportions be used inside an engine? I've always been told it has to have square proportions i.e 1024x1024
Anyway update picture, I think I'll leave the lantern at this. Comparing initial mesh to end mesh.
Hey man, I'm glad you're still chipping away at this!
I like the before and after changes of the latest post(in shape), of course I think the metal could use further banging up but it also depends on what you're wanting to do. Once you get it in a scene with lights it could give you a good feel if it's working out the way you intended.
As an initial critique, I think the metal and wood could be greatly benefited from other colour tones. Currently it's quite monochrome, when you could easily push the materials with just a few extra colours.
Wood is warm and organic, Metal is cold and sharp. (I've attached some WoW textures as sort of examples, I have)
Oh and I believe a 512x1024 is just fine, at least in my experience. As long as you're using the 2's rule. I think you know this but I'll say it again, I would paint at a bigger scale and then when it's time to export you can use the full res or make it smaller as needed.
I am currently learning this style of textures as well. I watched all of the Jamin Shoulet tutorials and they helped so much. Does anyone know of any other tutorials about hand painting textures? I have been searching many sites like google and found some but nothing like Jamins. Thanks!
Hey thanks for stopping by! Yeah the lantern is far from perfect and I was going to add more damages and such to the lantern, but my time-frame for my project hand in is slowly getting closer and I'm wanting to try and get some more meshes out. I'm quite worried about getting all of this in an engine and making it look right, because that is something I've never properly done before.
For the mono-chromatic feedback, yep this is by far my weakest point I think. Its just whenever I attempt to add more/different colours it never looks right. I don't have any previous art experience and I think my colour theory is terrible, I just hope its something I can pickup. Though I do add faint blue/oranges to metals, but its nothing really that noticeable.. I think its something I really need to try and nail down..
Also thanks for the reference pictures! Not seen those before and they look pretty awesome, I've been working on a crate texture and been trying to do the wood planks differently than I did before with the minecart, so I'll use that reference when working with this (screenshot below with current progress). Again, thanks for useful feedback!
Hey! Yeah Jamin has been a great help to me as well, be sure to check out the bootcamp one if you have not already. Another good tutorial I have done was Tyson Murphy's handpainted weapon tutorial. It takes you through step by step of how to model from concept, unwrap UVs and paint different types of materials. I've learnt a lot not just about painting but also things to do with UV/geometry. (https://www.3dmotive.com/f101801)
I find tutorials very useful, but also I really recommend getting a thread started on Polycount, no matter what level of experience you have. I made this one when I started painting my minecart because I was just stuck. I didn't know to progress so I decided to ask for help on Polycount and if you look back through this thread, you'll see the amount of help I recieved. If I didn't make this thread I know for a fact I would still be stuck in the mud in terms of progress. So yeah, make a thread
And... Update photo. Started a crate texture yesterday. Originally I was going to do it similar to the minecart plank style, but then this morning I decided I'll try something different. So you can see the top plank, I have started to add a thick grain pattern. Currently it doesn't look great and I'm just working on it and slowly improving on it. Would love it if someone had some pointers
Took a fresh stab at the planks. Tried something else, just done one plank minus scratches and features. I think I'll continue with this darker wood. It doesn't really blend into the scene (I don't think) but I kinda more started feeling as doing this project as an exercise to get better at painting rather than trying to make a portfolio piece (if that makes sense?).
EDIT: Hmmm looking at it with fresh eyes this morning. The ends of the plank doesn't look right. Too bevelled. I'll post an update later
Its about finished. I wanted to make separate UV space for some writing on one side of the crate. I had played around and found a cool way to do the writing. But yeah its somewhat complete.
Fits in a bit better with the scene. Was mostly painting dark, because I've never painted a dark wood texture before. Just trying out new things, but thanks for the pointer Its a quick fix. Going to try a fabric texture for a sack, hopefully post an update later on it
So I was just trying and testing UDK, lights and lightmaps. And I've encountered this problem
You can see on the left the harsh shadows and further along, the very bright area in relatively the same position. The lights are point lights coming from inside the lantern, and I've added a lightmass importance volume to the level.
Haha thanks Fenyce ^^ Actually there is a nail there, but for some reason maya displays things weirdly when they have an alpha applied and you can't see it. But hopefully it'll be fixed when I put it in the engine.
There it is. It depends on the angle viewed. Thanks for the advice though
I have the same problem, Put everything on viewport 2.0. Open the option box, in performance you'll see "Transparency algorith" Select depth peeling and max the transparency quality to the maximum, you won't be having that problem anymore :>
Progressing nicely. I think the paper messages could use some extra geo to curl the paper. Like it was rolled up. Or at least add fold details or something. No note place up in a mine would be pristine.
Made a quick fix, thanks stevston I'm having trouble with viewport 2.0. When I try and enable it, I get an error message saying my graphics card does not support it. I have a Nvidea GTX 680, is this card too old for 2.0?
This might be the last update post for the next 2-3 weeks because I've been asked to help work on a small commercial project for a company, which is really exciting and somewhat scary. I'll be doing some hand-painted meshes and hopefully I'll be allowed to post some of them here
Replies
Always looking for your comments, crits and suggestions
Thanks for stopping by
Completed the overhead beam texture and just started on the tileable rock. The rock texture has too many pronounced features which makes it look repetitive :< Basically finished the structure/crack shadows and highlights and will be moving onto the other details after. I originally wanted it to be a red, but struggled finding the right colour, I'll tweak levels when I finished painting the rest.
Looking great!
You're way better than me so I can't really give any crits, I would love to know where you found that Tyson Murphy tutorial though!
@Kusken Yeah the tutorial is awesome like Dubzski said. Its really worth the money. I'd also recommend Jamin Shoulet's tutorials. Hes released a new 'bootcamp' tutorial, I've not had a chance to look at it myself but its had some great reviews and his other tutorials are amazing. https://vimeo.com/ondemand/texturebootcamp
@Rafferty_Eggleston Thanks man! ^^ I agree with you, it does look monochromatic and I'm thinking about redoing the rock wall texture completely and maybe make it more 'lumpy' and possible have jewels sticking out from the rock, just to make it more interested and less brown.
So in the past week I've just been working on my lantern texture and also some tweaks in the colour values of the rest of the scene. What I've changed is:
- Wood support and rock wall saturation
- Decreased opacity on the seams of the wood texture
I constantly work between my home computer and some (not so good) computers at college, and the colour values are always completely different (they are very desaturated and 'whitewashed' at college) so its tricky for me to get the values I'm after. I upped the contrasts at college and now looking at the scene on my home computer, it looks maybe too saturated? What do you guys think?
Heres some update pictures:
And the current lantern progression. I always struggle when approaching metal textures, and this one has been the same, hope someone can give me some pointers.:
http://blog.environmentartist.com/?p=1127
@stevston Your totally right actually, I'm going to go through my textures now and increase the contrast. I'll post the results before I head off to work
@Jeff Parrott Very interesting, I've never really though about that. After work I'll start on this and see if I can make some progress
Not adjusted lantern contrast, because I'd rather finish painting the whole texture then add a contrast filter once I'm done. I quickly greyscaled the screenshot and this was the results:
@Luge. Thanks! I realised where I was going wrong, by just looking at my previous work. I seemed to be focussing on making a gradient depending on lighting direction and it was just missing the overall dark hue with strong highlights, like you said
@stevston89. Wow nice, I've never used auto levels, to be honest I'm generally inexperienced with the levels filter and barely use it. Though my results differ from yours, for me it made my texture much darker, though still pretty cool. Though I think I'll start tweaking contrasts after I finish the rest of the textures, also my walls get some very strange colours when I push the contrast too far, but I might redo the texture from scratch anyway.
Be mindful of your light source. The gash in your metal made it look like it was coming from below (same with some of your wood highlights) which may be the case, but generally hand painted textures have the light source from top down.
@stevston yeah I'll need to sit down, once I've finished painting the whole thing to just get the right contrast for the scene. I still need practice at painting in contrast without it looking terrible.
@Stockwell Yep, auto levels for some reason created that effect. Like I said I need to get more familiar with using levels.
@Bartalon Very nice paintover. One of the huge problems I have when handpainting is: should I be painting the texture as if the environment lighting was affecting the mesh?
For example this piece is a support for a lantern (my light source) the lantern is below it, so I paint as if the light was coming from below. But should I be doing this? It leads to a lot of problems for me when painting ( I much prefer the top/down lighting )
Also I think I haven't got enough texture space to get that awesome crispness you achieve in your paintover. This is due part to my poor foresight with having to tweak the UV layout throughout painting, I've ended up wasting a lot of space. The below is my diffuse, its 1024x1024, the shell with the dark diamonds is the area you did the paintover. Lesson learnt I guess..
Anyway update screenshot, the lantern is not as great as I would like, and would love some suggestions
Final damages on uprights and top of lantern. Then after the candle and I'm moving on from this mesh and onto the crate
I've seen some people use 1024x512 texture files. Can these sort of proportions be used inside an engine? I've always been told it has to have square proportions i.e 1024x1024
Anyway update picture, I think I'll leave the lantern at this. Comparing initial mesh to end mesh.
I like the before and after changes of the latest post(in shape), of course I think the metal could use further banging up but it also depends on what you're wanting to do. Once you get it in a scene with lights it could give you a good feel if it's working out the way you intended.
As an initial critique, I think the metal and wood could be greatly benefited from other colour tones. Currently it's quite monochrome, when you could easily push the materials with just a few extra colours.
Wood is warm and organic, Metal is cold and sharp. (I've attached some WoW textures as sort of examples, I have)
Oh and I believe a 512x1024 is just fine, at least in my experience. As long as you're using the 2's rule. I think you know this but I'll say it again, I would paint at a bigger scale and then when it's time to export you can use the full res or make it smaller as needed.
Keep it up, looking forward to future posts!
Hey thanks for stopping by!
For the mono-chromatic feedback, yep this is by far my weakest point I think. Its just whenever I attempt to add more/different colours it never looks right. I don't have any previous art experience and I think my colour theory is terrible, I just hope its something I can pickup. Though I do add faint blue/oranges to metals, but its nothing really that noticeable.. I think its something I really need to try and nail down..
Also thanks for the reference pictures! Not seen those before and they look pretty awesome, I've been working on a crate texture and been trying to do the wood planks differently than I did before with the minecart, so I'll use that reference when working with this (screenshot below with current progress). Again, thanks for useful feedback!
@Bmikes
Hey! Yeah Jamin has been a great help to me as well, be sure to check out the bootcamp one if you have not already. Another good tutorial I have done was Tyson Murphy's handpainted weapon tutorial. It takes you through step by step of how to model from concept, unwrap UVs and paint different types of materials. I've learnt a lot not just about painting but also things to do with UV/geometry. (https://www.3dmotive.com/f101801)
I find tutorials very useful, but also I really recommend getting a thread started on Polycount, no matter what level of experience you have. I made this one when I started painting my minecart because I was just stuck. I didn't know to progress so I decided to ask for help on Polycount and if you look back through this thread, you'll see the amount of help I recieved. If I didn't make this thread I know for a fact I would still be stuck in the mud in terms of progress. So yeah, make a thread
And... Update photo. Started a crate texture yesterday. Originally I was going to do it similar to the minecart plank style, but then this morning I decided I'll try something different. So you can see the top plank, I have started to add a thick grain pattern. Currently it doesn't look great and I'm just working on it and slowly improving on it. Would love it if someone had some pointers
EDIT: Hmmm looking at it with fresh eyes this morning. The ends of the plank doesn't look right. Too bevelled. I'll post an update later
EDIT EDIT:
Check this:
Fits in a bit better with the scene. Was mostly painting dark, because I've never painted a dark wood texture before. Just trying out new things, but thanks for the pointer
I'll bring you to justice one day! You hear me!?!
Also I've created a cave-in at the end tunnel
And 2 more posters
You can see on the left the harsh shadows and further along, the very bright area in relatively the same position. The lights are point lights coming from inside the lantern, and I've added a lightmass importance volume to the level.
Any help would be really appreciated.
EDIT: Fixed it ^^ Problem with the light map.
There it is. It depends on the angle viewed. Thanks for the advice though
Made a quick fix, thanks stevston
This might be the last update post for the next 2-3 weeks because I've been asked to help work on a small commercial project for a company, which is really exciting and somewhat scary. I'll be doing some hand-painted meshes and hopefully I'll be allowed to post some of them here
I am not quite sure where the light is coming from.