Texture Artist Blog

capone

I currently have a blog up and running where I write up little tips and thoughts regarding game art (with a large focus on texturing in particular). Does anyone know of any other artist that does a similar thing to help me get ideas?

Any ideas yourselves as to what to include? currently I have

Education - tips and critiques on my own and others work
Flashback - a look back and critique of my old rubbish work

will add,

Career - career advise tips/discussion
Finished work - final renders
WIP work - progression of personal projects
Inspiration - Examples of great game art

blog


online portfolio

Mark Dygert

You're probably not looking for a critique of your blog design, but this is polycount so... White text on a black background = peoples eyes turn inside out. It takes a min for most peoples eyes to adjust when switching from such extreme contrast to looking at images with very subtle detail (like the examples in the Halo3 normal map post). Which is a hard thing to put fellow artists thru and a good way to make sure that people don't return.

Interesting reads, just fatiguing on the eyes.
I need to step outside and recalibrate my eyes, heh, or maybe I just need more sleep...

indian_boy

agreed about the points Vig made.

that and u seem so harsh to the Halo ppl lol!
it'll be interesting to keep reading ur blog though.

cheers

PrayingMantis

Very cool content, it is really helpful, at least for me.
The tip from vig is very cool. But many game artist seems to use those contrasted design.
Waiting for new updates

capone

Great point about the text, changed it to darker grey.

Thanks for your comments.

The bungie remark does concern me as I don't intend this blog to become one of those bitter ranting blogs. Maybe I should mention the fact that since then Bungie have made an obvious improvement with regards to their normal maps. Spec maps are still a bit too shiny though.

diminished_Self

you know my opinion adrock! i think its a very cool idea, and you have the dry humor to pull it off. keep it going!

konstruct

its a cool blog idea, I wish there was more stuff out there like this (there probably is, but its not really and easy find)

anyways just for discussion sake and going to the halo normal map discussion:

I don’t think they just slapped the super noise normal on top of the master chief normal map to be like WHEE its SOooo detailed!!!. I agree that is doesn’t look that hot, but one thing to note, is video games are still a bit in the dark ages. platforms like the 360 and ps3 are pretty hot shit, but it still aren’t able to crunch super high res textures that quickly.


I think what is happening is because the normal map is so low res, they put a detail map (fine noise/grain) that just tiles across the whole normal map surface to add a second (higher) frequency of detail. this makes the model react to light better and surfaces don’t look like they are coated in a coat of lacquer when it comes to spec. (sorta like doom 3. Agreed it doesn’t look great, but again videogames are still a bit primitive when it comes to getting a game to run at high fps so clever tech hacks are always at work. think of it as polishing a turd :P

GOW is awesome at this. all the character textures and world textures are pretty high res to start, ( I think they use 2 2048`s for the body and head)
But when put to the 360 that gets reduced a ton, and you’ll notice extreme detail map usage AAaaall over that game. What make is look so good is control over where the detail map shows and doesn’t via alpha mask-