playing with environment textures and normal maps

Sage

Here is a little something I'm working on. I made the wall texture first and it shows. I like the floor texture a lot better. The floor texture was made with height maps and normal map filter and the wall texture had sections modeled. I'm not too sure on the best way to show this for feedback. I'm planning on making a dungeon cell. Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Alex

Steve Schulze

Adding some more lighting would help. You can't actually tell that theres a normal map on either texture at this point.

Texture wise you're off to a good start. The stone texture is looking good but it looks more like a wall texture than a floor - Its very rough and lumpy which isn't something you'd generally expect to see on a surface that was designed for people to walk on it, even if its hasn't been used in a long, long time. The big crack network in the middle stands out a fair bit when the texture is tiled. You might want to make it a little more subtle to cut down on the patterning effect.

The wall texture is a little ambiguous. What's the greenish material?

cholden

What size are these textures? They look small. I'd go with nothing less than 1024, and scale down for final if you need.

The bricks looks like two photos (a brick with a cracked stone overlay). Both of which have noticeable tiling, so when put together, you've got some really nasty tiling issues. Focus on making a clean brick, with subtle cracks to enhance them. Cracks wouldn't be contiguous through multiple bricks, they stay within each brick. This makes your overlay obvious.

The other texture looks like an ok start, but overall, both of these may be too small.

Sage

Thanks for the feedback. The textures were made at 512 x 512. For the rock texture I'm going for something that is more broken slaps kind of put together in a messy organic fashion than say a brick wall. The brick was overlayed over the stone pattern I made and ended liking the result. I should probably just go with recreating a real scene rather than make something up. I'm just experimenting at the moment.

Jackablade the greenish metal thing is the result of several metal and rock overlays and some pattern I thought was cool the the begining but ended being something I'm not really sure of now.

Cholden I see what you mean about the brick and the cracks. I'll probably play around with that or just sit my but down and design some stone floor pattern so it doesn't look hal arsed.

Keep em comming. Thanks.

Alex

Steve Schulze

So if your overlayed rock and metal texture meant to represent something specific? Its generally a good idea to have a specific purpose for a texture rather than just "this looks cool". If its just decorative, you have to wonder whether it would actually exist in a jail cell - It's unlikely aesthetics are a big part of dungeon design.

adam

Can you just show the texture flats and not have them on a black background? Thanks.

Sage

Sure thing Adam, here are the textures.

Joao Sapiro

i cant really understand what is metal and stone in the first one, and the lightning information on it is a tad confusing. the last one, the normal map is too grainy, and the overlays are confusing.

JordanW

one thing i noticed on the first one that you may want to do differently is tailor the way you present the detail more to how normal maps work, so specifically with the V metal pieces you really dont see much surface in the normal map that isnt directly facing the view, which means since there's very little green and red you wont see much lighting on the surface even when the light is above it or beside it. What i recommend is giving the sides of your metals a bit of a slant so that the bottom (the part further from view) is larger that the top (the surface facing the camera), this should help the pieces show up. Basically a normal map just stores angle information, so the more angles, the more work it's doing.

Sage

Thanks for the feedback. I started to work on the dungeon environment. I set up some lights and fake ligting fx. I was wondering if 3D engines were able to use ambient lights. There are not textures yet in the scene. I'm going to try and recreate this scene in doom 3. It's still very wip and I'm just playing around with the lighting. There will be a pit with fire with prisoners hangingnear the ledge. The idea behind it is that they are slowing being cooked. Let me know what you think.




Alex

Ryno

I'm not a big fan of the brick floor, actually. The bricks look good, but the overlay of the large cracks/irregularities is just too jarring and tiley. It's like a cross between some nicely designed/architectural bricks with a cracked mud. It just doesn't look like a logical combination. The cracks look huge, and don't seem to affect the bricks underneath them. If something were to crack the bricks like that, there should be substantial wear on the bricks near them, they will be depressed inward most likely, and be picking up a lot of grunge.

My main issue is just with the cracks tiling horribly. This is a really common issue with environmental stuff. Strong elements may look good in a texture, but when it is repeated 5 or 50 times, it looks ridiculously tiley, especially if it is supposed to be a random/organic element such as cracks.

SHEPEIRO

yeah id agree with the tileeness, get rid or break up the big cracks

SHEPEIRO

oops and they are way too dark at mo