10 Texture Techniques
polycounter lvl 11
CGSociety just put out a little article with 10 texturing techniques.
Probably not new for a lot, but I certainly learned a couple things.
http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4678
Probably not new for a lot, but I certainly learned a couple things.
http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4678
Replies
Using Layer Masks extensively is something a lot of people don't do, but I think it's becoming more and more popular as people realise how powerful and flexible they are.
One thing I didn't like about his techniques, was advocating using Levels blending layers for creating specular maps. It works in some cases for a quick and generic specular, but a lot of the time you won't get the colours and values you need simply by using an adjustment layer.
Layer masks can be nice, but they can also lead to big file sizes as someone might fill the entire canvas and mask out a tiny part do that a few dozen times and your psd starts to bloat... =/ so like anything use them wisely.
but at the same time i find that using layer masks a lot makes you use less layers, since you can always go back into the mask to adjust or paint something rather than adding another layer.
Usually I don't tend to worry too much about PSD file size
My guess is that the image was flipped horizontally for the purposes of fitting the composition in that header. Notice the lettering is the correct way around in the actual tutorials
Nice post!
:thumbup:
Using a Group for every set of 3-4 layers which need to share a mask seems a bit overkill.
I'm not saying the masks themselves cause data issues a few hundred gray scale masks wouldn't impact the PSD's size that much. But what they are masking out is still stored in the PSD, even if it extends past the canvas cut off lines.
Example: http://www.vigville.com/forum_images/ExsevisExcess.jpg
If I'm only going to use the label, I don't need to store the huge image. This particular example goes from 3.02mb to 122.5k when I crop the big image to the canvas size 128x128. I still have a generous area around my mask to work with the size is more manageable.
Now imagine doing that a few dozen times. You're up to 50-80megs. Or imagine doing it just a handful of times on larger textures. If you're using the PSD in 3dsmax or Maya it can cause slow down issues also. The less photo collaging you do, the less chances you have of creating a bloated PSD.
Plus it's annoying if you've got Snapping turned on, and you have a layer which extends 5-10 pixels over your document bounds ... dragging other layers around sometimes snaps to that layer instead of the bounds, which is really annoying, so I tend to just crop the document every now and then out of habit
It took me a few seconds of puzzling out what on earth selecting all and then cropping would do (other than nothing) but once I worked it out, my god what a great tip this is.
Besides, when I go back to edit that texture, or want to make a similar texture, it's always nice to have a PSD with everything separated into easy to deal with layers/groups.
What does it do???
[edit] never mind, I get it now.
You've got them lined up, and adjusted, but you're only using 1024x1024 out of the middle of that. That whole 3000x2000 image is still part of the photoshop file, even if most of it hangs off the edges where you don't see it.
That's great when you're still working and tweaking stuff, but once you've got some things nailed down, you can select all, and crop, and lose all that extranious data that you didn't really need anyway.