Texturing process: Materials

Phobos

I have a few questions that have been bugging me for a while. As I progress to being or trying to become a "Game Artist". I have been making levels for a couple years now and thats all good and fine. I understand the process and the methods behind it. But as I get into the texturing side I have a few things I can't quite make up my mind about.

Typically when you are creating a texture how much do you paint and how much do you photosource? For instance I currently see the process as such; A character skin might be mostly hand painted with photosourced details. However, a tileable texture requires a reasonable amount of realism(in most cases) and detail. Hand painting such would be quite time consuming and teadious.

I think I answered my own question as I typed this out, but I will post it anyways to get some feedback and hopefully a nice discussion.

The question that brings with all up is: If you use a lot of photosourced textures instead of hand painting them does it make you any less of a "Texture Artist". Does the texture artist's real skill lie in creating believable surfaces from various resources?

Also, a little ethics question. When using public domain textures, such as mayang.com, do you shy away from this in an actual job situation or is it free game. If you've purchased the cds or the original provider allows free commercial or non-commerial use without any fee payment?

One more. When using photosourced textures/photos after editing is complete. Can you call it your own IP? Or is it partically theirs.

Ryno

For tiling textures, photos can be VERY helpful. At my last project, I was the terrain texture guy, and had to do more than a thousand of them. If I had tried to hand-paint every one of them, there would have been no possible way to complete the task.

Personally, I have used public domain source material as a basis for some of my textures. But I make sure to just use them as elements in a composite, or paint over them quite a bit. Once done, I consider these textures my own. If it's a texture from a texture collection, which needs a bit less work, I wouldn't go around saying I made it. As far as IP and rights to the image, this would depend on the licensing agreement of that texture collection.

I really prefer to just shoot my own photosource. I take my digital camera with me all over the place, and shoot lots of crazy stuff. I sometimes look a little weird as a tourist taking pictures of the sidewalk, but I really don't care, and my wife has gotten used to it. With digital, this is a really cheap option for getting exactly the source you need. Of course you could always paint stuff if you can't find what you're looking for.

With that being said, most of the time, even when you get "good" source, you still need to do a ton of work on it. If you are using photos from public domain, you will find that most of the time, the quality of them is nowhere near what you need it to be to tile properly. Light variation and strong surface detail may look cool on a photo, or even for a texture that is tiled once, but when you need that texture to be tiled five times in a row, you get terrible pattern repitition. I have found this to often be true, even if you are using one of the better texture collection CDs that are available.

So, what to do? You have to fix stuff. This may just be quickie color adjustments to make sure that the textures fit the palette that you are using for the level that you are working on. Or, it may be a brightness/contrast, levels, or curves adjustment, to make sure that all of the textures have the same depth and visual punch. You will need to do this kind of stuff for every photo texture that you use, almost without exception.

Oftentimes, you will need to go a few steps further. Your source material will usually not be perfectly what you want, and you will end up doing a lot of painting and photo-compositing to get it right. Compositing is the easier trick, but you really need to make sure that the you've got the colors, luminosity, and contrast levels being consistent between the the images that you are using.

Sometimes, you just won't be able to find what you need in photosource, or can't use photosource due to overall style direction in the game. In these cases, you just have to paint. In the cases of more stylized games, just plain old painting is just fun. I really love it. But it does take more time to do.

If you are supplementing photosource with painted elements, you have to make absolutely sure that the painted parts blend in well, and do not draw attention. Some artists will tell you that this cannot be done, but this just isn't true. You've just got to understand what makes photos look so convincing, and must replicate those aspects of the image. To me, this is actually much more difficult than just painting an entire texture from scratch, but it can, and must be done at times. This is an invaluable skill, and I highly recommend practicing doing this.

Eric Chadwick

Just had to say, you can't go wrong listening to Ryno's advice. Good stuff.

A tutorial about tiling that mentions a lot of good Photoshop tricks.
http://www.twisted-strand.com/ut_tutorials/text_tut/index.html

Phobos

So it is just as I thought.
I have no intention of simply taking a photosource and making tile and calling it a texture I made. I have been trying to paint my own. But only recently(for some reason) has it clicked that I could use public domain photos and use them as a good base. The real hurdle now is being able to paint a variety of my own.

What are some good public domain sites, other thank mayang.com. Any tutorials or articles to help improve my painting abilities?

hehe, thanks Eric. I already had that link though

Eric Chadwick

In my opinion, it doesn't matter HOW you make the textures, as long as they work well for their purpose.

Personally I don't place a value judgement on painted vs. photo-sourced, only on quality of implementation, and suitability... WoW needed painted, HL2 needed photo-src. My 2 cents of course.

For sites, did you see the reference thread?

Phobos

No I haven't checked the reference thread in a while. Thanks for the reminder

Ryno

Yeah, Eric's got it. Do whatever it takes to make them look good, using whatever method is fastest. Photosource or painting may both be the best approaches, depending on the circumstance.