Creating Textures in zBrush & Photoshop vs Hand painting them

Jonas3oo0

Hey guys,

My dream is to create my own game with impressing environment which uses stylized/hand painted textures, cool animations and camera movement and a complex combat system.

So I asked myself where should I start and I think the best is to learn modeling/sculpting and texturing first and later I can learn animation and creating the game in the GameEngine.

I love hand painted/stylized textures and I really want to create my own. I´m really impressed by Fanny Vergne´s work (1.) and I would love to create textures with this style. Even though I searched a lot in the Internet I’m still a bit helpless about where to start. I think there are two general ways to create these stylized assets:

1. Modeling a Low Poly Object and then just paint on it. But when I want to create a whole level, wouldn’t it take way too long? I have hand painted a little Pillar and it already took me a while, I can´t even think about painting the texture for example a big cliff. And I think the result won’t be as good as with the 2nd way.

2. Sculpt a high Poly Object with many details, bake normal-, ao-, hinghtmaps and then somehow create a diffuse from that in Photoshop which I later put onto the low Poly Object. I think for big objects this will take less time then way 1 and the result will be better. I have read Fanny Vergne´s part in the vertex magazine(2.). She said she composes it in Photoshop to create the base texture to paint over but I don’t know what she does exactly in Photoshop to compose it. I would really appreciate if someone could explain the basic thing what she does so I can search for tutorials. Another Problem is, I don’t have zBrush, I downloaded the student version of mudbox to try out sculpting. When I’m sure that this is the right way, I will buy zBrush later but is mudbox fine when I want to start with basic tiling textures?

Can I create textures like them from Fanny with both ways? I think way 2. Is the better way for me but I would like to hear your Opinion about these 2 ways.
I would really appreciate your help!

1. http://fafart.blogspot.de/p/wow.html
2. https://de.pinterest.com/pin/314266880221115009/

Fenyce

It highly depends on what you're most comfortable with. I'd say try out both ways. You can even mix them, like doing some textures this and some the over way, just make sure that the results look somewhat similar. (Like same amount of details and so on)

And for big structures like a cliff take tilable textures and vertex painting into consideration.

Beside that... The program doesn't matter much. Sure some have better/simpler ways to do certain things, but in the end it might not a big difference.

For the 2. way PS part, it's just about layer settings and then doing a paintover. (Like chosing a base color, overlaying some of the bakes, and so on and then paint in more light/details/shadows/colorvariaton/whatever)

Jonas3oo0

Thanks for your help!


I decided to start by doing a simple texture with the 2. Way.

I have sculpted some simple Stones with some details on a Plane in Mudbox. After that I have set up a Plane with UVs for the Low Poly Object and baked a normal-, an ambient occlusion- and a heightmap.

But now I need these renders which Fanny Vergne did in zBrush. I don´t know if it’s possible to do them in mudbox.

Does anyone know advice?

< ASH >

I bumped into this old thread but coincidence.
Talking about the ZBrush renders + Photoshop layering you can have a look at the following tutorials to better understand  the process:

- Bardford Smith - ZBrush Tiling Textures in 2.5D: Parts 4-6: http://bradfolio.com/tutorials/zbrush-tiling-textures-2d-4-6/
- Tobias Koepp - Stylized Dungeon: Volume 3, chapters 4 / 5 / 6:  http://3dmotive.com/series/stylized-dungeon-in-maya.html
- Fanny Vergne - Blizzcon texturing process; https://www.artstation.com/artwork/OOxbg

I hope these helps those that want to understand this process a little bit better.