What should I study to improve (the artistic side of) my texturing ability?

bigdeku

When I look at most tutorials on texturing, the focus is mostly on technical things like unwrapping UVs, creating brush presets etc. There seems to be very little attention give to actually exploring how color and light interact and are communicated through texturing.

Are there any resources that deal with this subject matter in depth? Otherwise should I just study 2D digital painting as a base line instead? For example, CTRL paint.

The work I'm focusing on at the moment is very cartoony and has all the lighting painted onto the surface of the model, and even if its simplistic I've found there's little to know learning material specifically for 3D that talks about things like how to visually communicate dips and troughs, how to get smooth versus harsh creases effectively when painting, how to analyse and express texture. At the moment I just look at other people's textures and try to re-create them by hand but I'm still wondering if there are any tutorials that talk about the theory of digital painting outside of simply 2D rendering?

Brian "Panda" Choi

If you're handpainting textures, you're more or less looking at illustration and fine art instruction.  Their is very little difference betwen them compared to texturing for photorealism.  CTRL Paint is a good source to stick with.

I mean, even WoW generally says "There is one point light these textures are sourcing from."

JordanN

bigdeku said:

There seems to be very little attention give to actually exploring how color and light interact and are communicated through texturing. 

From a scientific perspective, lighting and texturing are separate. Texture, as I was taught in school and from various books, is merely the surface property of an object. So how bumpy, smoothe,rough it is etc. But the texture itself doesn't give you color. That comes from rays of light that bounce around in a scene, hit an object and enters our eyes.


The leaf's texture will always stay constant, in that there are visible veins, but its color changes when the lighting does. An example, the subsurface scatter effect.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Get books too mate:

https://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Realist-Painter-Gurney/dp/0740797719

Eric Chadwick

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Concept_Fundamentals#Painting_Fundamentals

http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Lighting#Resources

beccatherose

Seconded on getting the Color and Light book by Gurney. Ctrl Paint is a great source for fundamentals. It's good to do studies of other artists' work, but it's also really important to do photo studies so you can understand what those artists are trying to stylize. 
If you're looking to take a deep dive into textures, I'd recommend the Fundamentals of Light course on Schoolism. Start doing studies and posting them around Polycount or in Brushforge on Facebook.
Good luck!