Hand Painted Textures WIP

Vii

Hi everyone,

I've been developing a game idea I had recently, working on both the code and art, everything's moving along nicely until I came to the conclusion to get the look I want the textures will need to be hand painted. Something I've never done, I'm just a rigger/generalist. So today I jumped into photoshop and gave it a go and here's what I came up with...

For my first attempt I'm not unhappy with it but I'd love some critique/feedback on how to improve.

The models here are for a modular low poly house kit.

Yelle

I quite like the look, but from what I see you may want to add darker outlines for the wooden planks. They currently blend into each other.

jddg5wa

There seem a to be a lot of crack in the wood and the texture just looks like one color. Really like that glass, or fabric, texture. Nice start!

Vii

Cheers, will fix up that wood! On second thought, might remake the wood and do a better job

Ah that's glass with the lights on inside, definitely not fabric

Vii

I edited my first post with a picture of the character for the game. He will have changeable armor etc so hasn't been modelled in. I'm not really sure how to texture his skin, if I even really do that.

Vii

Took me an hour or so. Quite happy with it, feedback is welcome!

CarlK3D

A few of my thoughts on the Tiling Wood Texture:
- The Tiling looks good, not much repetition and the ends of the Wood
- Your Crevices are almost Black find your darkest Brown in the Cuts of the Wood and make that a tint darker
- There are key points when you Tile that are going to stand out alot. Ideally you don't want anything to be noticeable so make it subtle
- This brings me to my last point. Your are lots of cuts in the wood most of which go all the way though when you Tile its going to start looking like noise from a distance. I'd Remove about 1/2 the Cuts

Nope this helps!

Vii

CarlK3D wrote: »

A few of my thoughts on the Tiling Wood Texture:
- The Tiling looks good, not much repetition and the ends of the Wood
- Your Crevices are almost Black find your darkest Brown in the Cuts of the Wood and make that a tint darker
- There are key points when you Tile that are going to stand out alot. Ideally you don't want anything to be noticeable so make it subtle
- This brings me to my last point. Your are lots of cuts in the wood most of which go all the way though when you Tile its going to start looking like noise from a distance. I'd Remove about 1/2 the Cuts

Nope this helps!

Hey,

Cheers for the feedback. For clarification, you're talking about the recent post of wood right? Not the one in the original post? Regardless there's things I will need to change, which is unfortunate because I just finished applying it to the 3D model.

Anyway, for now, here's how it's looking - it is a huge improvement.

CarlK3D

Yeah It does look better, to doubt
You have some UV Seems, I assume you've mapped each face separate

Heres a 2 minute paintover if what I think you should aim for


I also painted over 1 Block with more subtle cracks, Just an Option to consider

Torch

Your character has got some weird topology on the torso area, also the head geo could be down rezzed quite a bit. If you're going for the hand painted look, would be better to do flat shading on your model, I usually increase the incandescence of the material in Maya to full so no lighting effects it.

Vii

CarlK3D wrote: »

Yeah It does look better, to doubt
You have some UV Seems, I assume you've mapped each face separate

Heres a 2 minute paintover if what I think you should aim for


I also painted over 1 Block with more subtle cracks, Just an Option to consider

Hey, they aren't UV seams, I just haven't cleaned up the corners yet Thanks for the paint over, I'll make some modifications! Funny enough, if I turn off the AO it matches your paint over mostly bad AO!

@Torch - Weird topology? Do you mean that extra loop where the rib is? That's actually an old image & it's been removed, it was left over from modelling and I didn't notice it until I took that screenshot :P The character's face isn't awfully high res, you're right to say I could remove a couple of loops but it wouldn't account for much and I want the face to have the detail it currently has so actually halving the count or similar wouldn't look right. He is currently, hair/eyes/etc included, 2406 faces



Btw imgur doesn't seem the right place to host my images, anyone got a better suggestion?

Vii

Approximately 10% off-topic, but for this style of game what type of shader (I'm using Unity) should I be using? I was going to use bumped diffuse (diffuse with normal maps), or simply diffuse without normal maps, but, with you mentioning plugging it into incandescence and ignoring lighting, I was thinking of possibilities...

My normal maps will be subtle, performance-wise it might be preferable not to have them at all.

Bartalon

To piggyback on what Torch said: be sure you turn off your viewport lighting if you are testing out hand-painted textures. The artificial shadows that Maya generates are not accurate to game engine lighting and also get in the way of seeing the quality of your texture work.

Your character's beard could probably do without a lot of that detail. Each piece appears to have some edge loops that don't contribute to the shape.

Btw imgur doesn't seem the right place to host my images, anyone got a better suggestion?

I use Blogger to host all my images. I haven't had any issues.

CarlK3D

If your hand painting I suggest no Normal Maps. They wont blend well with your Style. With this style you should remain painting in your Highlights & Shadows to fake the Normal Map.

I use Imgur works best for me, Fast & no one ever see's them because people only see the Images with Ratings.

As everyone else has said turn off Maya's default lighting, if you havent/ dont know where to do that go to Lighting/ Use No Lights, If its black and not rendering anything go to Shading/ Flat Shade All

As for the Shader with Unity. A Simple Diffuse Only Will do OR A Mobile Shader such as Mobile/ Unity (Supports Lightmap) so you can bake your Light from Unity onto your Models. You could also create your own using Strumpy Shader (Very Simple Visual Scripting Add-on Then you can pick and choose what you want (Diffuse, Alpha Transparency, Illumin & Anything Else I cant think of right now)

Vii

Thanks so much guys! I'll take your feedback onboard and keep trucking along. Cheers for the lighting in Maya viewport tip too!

Turning off the lights really just shows the lack of detail his body has, not too sure what detail to put there? Should I add some highlights to his chest, muscles, etc. and shadow beneath them? I don't know how to texture a character for this style yet. He wont look so plain with armor on, but yeah.

I've been doing my 3D Painting in 3D Coat, textures in photoshop then projection/modifications in coat.. any tools I should look at as an alternative or might be useful?

Vii

An update with flat lighting:

Vii

Made what is intended to be a mansion from the pieces. It's not exactly complete, just a "preview". Here's a screenshot featuring my sphere/cylinder character for prototypes :P

Vii

Warped Tree texture

Vii

Working on the Character, still need to paint out seams

Vii

Made a new character. He will replace the one in previous post, wasn't happy with him. Wanted better proportions.

drysider

Proportions and textures are looking much nicer and more refined, but his hands are pretty wonky looking, they're just looking like segmented cylinders atm. His fingers are far too long and I can imagine will look strange when rigged and posed. A more defined low poly hand like this would look way better. It gives you the same level of detail and posability without chewing up tris and looks great to boot.



My other big critique would be that you're shading the textures with very muddy and desaturated colours. They don't match your environment textures at all which are bright and pretty saturated. If you're doing a diffuse only, hand painted character, you want the textures to really pop so they can stand out without heavy lighting and shaders.