So a couple months ago I felt the great urge to shoot things, moving things, things that shoot back. Realizing that this was an activity best done virtually, I re-loaded Borderlands 2 and gave it another play-through.
Now, usually, I try to leave my artists eye behind when I'm playing for fun. Yet, as I was cavorting about I found myself "dissecting" the textures and thinking about how to do them procedurally. Could I get that "cartoony" look?
Only one way to find out....
On the left are Gearbox's textures, followed by 3 random versions of my procedural interpretations.
and yes I know how to use a color picker
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I know how the guys at gearbox make these textures and the final pass is an "inking" pass. There is a plugin called "toon it" for photoshop that can get things off to a good start, but I think if you really want to get the full effect there is simply no way to do this 100 percent procedural. You can try and you can get close, but it will never looked as polished as the real deal. That's how I feel about it at least.
Making painterly looking stuff is damn hard procedurally... Though I have heard some studios using SD and still getting a painterly style.
edit: also even if you get 60% to the look with randomization and variations it is still really awesome if the rest of the 40% work can be done in photoshop. Just saying. Sometimes I end up doing masks in SD since I already have a preset for some masks based on normals, AO, and curvature... than I get 80% of the way in and than just modify in Photoshop to get the rest of the way.
Keep testing on!
ok, so Google+ blows, I want Picasa back.
any recommendations for image sharing?
Gearbox is upper left.
How did you make those details like ducttape and info label?
Did you paint them in substance by hand?
the tape is just warped rectangles that I then normal map so I can generate an edge mask.
the shipping label is just mores squares, and the fragile/this end up stamp was made with disks, triangles and squares.
takes more time to do it like this, but it lets you do all kinds of cool stuff, and it takes up less disk space/bandwidth during download.
Keep it up!