Textures and hand painting and lighting questions

tsulodia

Hi guys. I am trying to get better at texturing models but it is so incredibly hard to do so. Some of these questions may not be related to 3d at all but I have a few questions that I could hope be answered.

1. Do game artists usually paint in the values for the texture of the models?
I am guessing that when they do so it is because they have a polygon budget and they try to paint values to make the illusion of depth? In that case, are there any other scenarios when you want to paint the values into the texture?

2. Should I just paint in the base color (saturated/unsaturated NOT brightness) and leave the shadows to the render?

3. How exactly do you guys paint things that have a lot of edges? These things seem to take days just to draw in the edges. Just power on through?

EDIT 4. What does specular map change in the color of an area? (in terms of saturation/brightness)

AtticusMars

1) If by value you mean lighting information then: If you're using normal maps you should be painting in as little lighting information into your diffuse as possible. If you are not using normal maps, you can go ahead and paint it in.

2) If you are using dynamic cast shadows in your game then cast shadows should be left to the engine or at the very least painted in VERY rarely.

Form shadows can usually be painted in. When painting in form shadows for games where you have dynamic lighting it is important to keep the differences subtle in areas where the engine will be shading the form, otherwise you can end up with your painted lighting fighting the engine lighting which is usually bad.

3) Painting over bakes can reduce the time it takes for complex textures, or at the very least shift part of the workload to sculpting instead of painting to make the work less monotonous. Otherwise copy and paste + cleanup works great for repetitive stuff.

4) wat?