Well I've always had a love for hand painted textures but never had a real go at it myself. So, how am I doing?
Here's my first work in progress, its a 2048 x 2048 4-way tiling wood texture (Exciting I know.) Painted in Krita with its awesome Wrap mode enabled. I'm not sure about my value range, I've tried to keep it muted and central, Is this a good practise? Also I've added some color variation to it make it less muddy, I notice a lot of hand painted texture use a fairly mono palette, is there a reason for this?
I'm also keeping high lights separate; as I'd like to generate a normal and specular map from the base once its finished.
Replies
Where's your reference?
What look are you aiming to use this texture for?
I'm not sure if it's just me but when I reference a texture as being muddy I don't mean relate it to the color, more the shapes. Your forms in your texture doesn't seem muddy, the shapes are pretty easily readable.
Color ranges depend on each piece in how it relates to the rest of the scene. So if you're noticing a lot of low contrast tiling wood textures for the floors... It's probably because people don't want you to focus on the ground.
Overall I think this is a pretty nice simple piece of tiling wood texture. Personally I think a little more contrast could help push the depth of the wood planks and maybe not have such a large gap in between each. Add some nails or rope or something to elude to how this floor( assuming it's a floor ) is put together.
I think that you could very up your details too. It seems like they are all too similar in frequency,size, and values.
And in response to your question about mono palettes I think most tiling textures stick with one colour to avoid making the repetition too obvious. I always add too much colour in different spots and end up dialling it down because of this anyway.
The question is what kind of style handpainted textures your really referring to when you say "love for handpainted textures". Name a game and take a good look at how they keep it from starting to look realistic. Ussually a lot of small detail is left out and everything is heavily stylished and enlarged to make it much more appealing to the eye.
I think one mistake you are making here is that you are keeping a very close look at your wood. If this would be a wooden floor in a game of some sorts you'll probably see it from a couple of meters (if not more). Check how your texture is tiling from a distance and if you are getting that look you love so much.
@Boozebeard - Thanks man
More planks in your sheet will also allow you to cut of planks horizontally so it starts looking more like a floor, this will also help to add some slight value/color variations to entire planks which will break up the monotony.
Depending on what you do with this texture you may want to consider adding a story to it.
Obviously this only works if you're just trying to practice your materials. It's a way of making a boring study way more interesting. Do you have plans to create a full scene yet?
I started painting out a tiling roof texture today between shifts so I might put a scene together with the textures I'm working on. I'll get back to the wood texture on monday after I finish working the weekend and incorporate these fantastic crits I'm getting from you guys.