How would you go about texturing flowers?

Lucaus

Anyone got any tips on how to texture flower petals? I tried giving them a velvety texture but it looks wrong and there aren't a lot of high quality close up imagines that i found. The few petals i managed to extract from images were difficult to work with when trying to transform them to 40 different petals while giving them variety. 
I want them to look fairly realistic and high res, not sure how to go about doing it. And help is appreciated 👍

Obscura

Why not to use scanned petals?
https://quixel.com/megascans/home?search=petal

Lucaus

Obscura said:

Why not to use scanned petals?
https://quixel.com/megascans/home?search=petal

That's all good but what if i want to make a type of flower that is not scanned, should i just take the scanned ones and just tweak them?
I'm just trying to find a good workflow for making all types of flowers in high res and the selection there is a bit limited.

Obscura

That works. You can also use other resources (other websites) if megascans doesn't have something that you need. Scanning your own is also definitely an option. Its not even hard.

https://www.textures.com/search?q=petal

https://store.substance3d.com/blog/your-smartphone-material-scanner

Obscura

You can use those photos as reference if you don't want to use scans straight. Copy what you see on the photo.

Lucaus

Wow that scan setup looks crazy.
Maybe I'm going about it the wrong way, I'll try making the petals geo based on the scanned textures, kinda like special hair cards. I think that might be a more efficient way of doing it rather than making the petal geo first then fit the texture in it.

Yerus

Perhaps you could start modeling from the image texture positioned behind also. 

Lucaus

okay, so I did a test today and this is what I came up with.

I got an atlas scan and used the alpha from it to extract the geometry in Maya using "convert > texture to geometry"




what is nice about this is that the UVs are ready, unless I want to optimize I guess.



and now if I plug in the textures in marmoset everything looks good.







and now all I have to figure out is how to quickly remesh the geometry so I can work with it without losing the UVs.





maybe there is a way to transfer the UVs back. I can't seem to be able to that using the transfer attributes tool, my guess is that it needs to be the exact geometry. any ideas?

Obscura

Looking good. Is this supposed to be a game asset? Because then you should use lower poly geo. Mostly planes or just a little bit more than that and rely on alpha cutout shader. I don't get what you are trying to say with the transfer attributes thing. At this point, if this is just a portfolio piece or non game asset, your current geo is fine and you should just arrange them to form a flower. Those are actually some neat looking petals in marmoset. If you want to bent them a little bit, and have the lp geo, use a plane for each petal, that has one edge in the middle. or 2. and add a slight bending.

Obscura

Ok I think now I get it. You figured they are kinda highpoly so you auto reduced them which led to lost uvs. I'm afraid there is no better way than manually cutting out the lp geometries.

Lucaus

Obscura said:

Looking good. Is this supposed to be a game asset? Because then you should use lower poly geo. Mostly planes or just a little bit more than that and rely on alpha cutout shader. I don't get what you are trying to say with the transfer attributes thing. At this point, if this is just a portfolio piece or non game asset, your current geo is fine and you should just arrange them to form a flower. Those are actually some neat looking petals in marmoset. If you want to bent them a little bit, and have the lp geo, use a plane for each petal, that has one edge in the middle. or 2. and add a slight bending.

You are absolutely right. I don't know what I was thinking. 
I don't need to extract the geometry, I don't know why I'm over complicating it 














this actually turned out pretty great. 
thank you for the help it's really appreciated.

Obscura

Yep. Thats it.

Lucaus

Obscura said:

Yep. Thats it.

thanks a lot man you saved me a lot of time haha

Lucaus

I just wanted to share this since I finally got time to finish it. it's a bit rough from the bottom but was fun to make

Obscura

Make sure to add subsurface scattering. A lot. Also, the lighting is very uniform and there are no highlights so currently the asset is not showing its full quality. Lighting can make or break art. Good job with the asset itself. It turned out nicely.

Lucaus

Obscura said:

Make sure to add subsurface scattering. A lot. Also, the lighting is very uniform and there are no highlights so currently the asset is not showing its full quality. Lighting can make or break art. Good job with the asset itself. It turned out nicely.

there's is sss but its very low, I don't like how it washes out the details. I like using it for hair to get rid of some hard shadows but for this I like the shadows. 
I changed the lighting, specular values, and sss. still doesn't look that great IMO 🤷‍♂️



I know my presentation skills are not that great. I just need to work on it. I appreciate all the feedback though.

Obscura

Better.Add some color grading too, to make the colors pop more. Also a little bit of bloom never hurts.

Lucaus

man this is way better 🤣
I can tweak this forever 

Obscura

Very nice!

Lucaus

thank you so much! dude, you are awesome