Explorer texture help

d2king10

Hey guys, I am working on this model for practice, and I don't feel the texture is really popping on the model; everything ends up looking washed out.

Here is the texture:



Here is it on the model:

http://grungemedia.com/dkseries/My_Work/Explorer/Washedout.png

Do you guys think that it is just the way I am rendering, or do you think I need to pull the darks out more, or what?

Thanks in advance

MoP

Hey,

I think you're right that it's looking washed out, and you seem to have the right idea - you definitely need some more darks in the texture to kick up the contrast. Everything at the moment is very light, even the midtones are well above "mid-level".

Also you're shading highlights to white, which is a bad idea in general. Especially for something like that bed-roll cloth, highlights wouldn't look like that at all (white highlights like you have make the surface look powdery and painted). The bed-roll should be much darker in general and have more shadowed shading to show the folds, and less highlights (since cloth isn't "shiny").

Try to get more colour into the highlights and shadows in general rather than simply moving the hue closer to white for highlights and black for shadows. Use "warm" and "cool" colours to pop things out or push them back.

You can also check for value contrast by desaturating your whole texture (CTRL+SHIFT+U in photoshop, or add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and drag the saturation to -100). Then see what parts are in general darker or lighter - I have a feeling at the moment they will all end up around the same "value" regardless of colour. Make sure that different areas have a different overall value to make the lightness contrast as well as the hue.

Hope to see more work on this, it could be good

Chunkey

Damn you beat me to it MoP!! good points there

right, a few things that will help you out methinks....

There's no real sense of volumes to the fleshy bits- look at the face for instance, there are indications of highlights and shadows but it doesn't describe the forms enough.

At the moment, the falloff for the shading is quite severe- you've got these dark shadows in many places followed by the highlights without having a mid tone. another good way of checking out what I mean is just to desaturate the texture and look at the shading.

One thing I would recommend is to take the shading off the model so that way you get a better idea of how the textures are looking on the model as usually with the lighting within the app can be different to what you'd be seeing in game because it's usually fairly harsh.



Bobo's texture work is bang on in terms of getting the shading right- it's all nice and subtle but he describes the volumes beautifly so that the texture is pushing the model and giving more detail that what the mesh could do alone.

Shiraz

Try baking out an Ambient occlusion map that way you have a great starting place to start painting. Also it does a little bit of the shading to!

Just dont forget everything MoP and Chunkey mentioned.

d2king10

Yeah, I did an AO bake at first, but then I realized I had so much stuff overlapping on the UVs that the bake came out horrible, so I just had to do it by hand.

Here is an update, I just got around to redoing the skin with ya'lls suggestions. I took a bit different approach and it seems to work better for me. I just filled the area with the lightest shade, then took the darkest and went over the shadow areas, then took the middle tone and defined and smoothed out the shades, finally going over it with the highlight again. Let me know what you guys think, if this is an improvement or not:

duxun

keep it up !!!! don't stop ... advice i have learned the hard way..

MoP

Yep this is already looking much better. You seem to have got the hang of using nicer colours for the shading. I still think you have too much white in the skin texture though.

rollin

I would suggest working in 512^2.. imo it's really difficult to hand-paint a 1024^2 and make it look good.. so maybe not the best startingpoint

but that's maybe only my opinion..

System

Nice texturing so far, like the stitching details but please desaturate them or make them very pale yellow, green stitches aren't working for me.

Other than that the major concern imo is the modelling below the waist: it looks like his legs are set too far apart. While this looks comical/stylised it doesn't match with the other almost anatomically correct modelling/texturing going on in the top half, need to find some balance here.

d2king10

Here is an older render of him full body shot:

http://grungemedia.com/dkseries/My_Work/Explorer/FlatRender02.png

http://grungemedia.com/dkseries/My_Work/Explorer/FlatRender01.png

I will look into changing the legs after I finish the textures, but I won't be able to get to this till after Christmas.

Thanks for all the posts, glad to see I am somewhat going in the right direction haha

Merry Christmas you guys

d2king10

Here is some more progress:

Got the pants, gloves, and boots done, as well as brought the legs a bit closer together. After adding a AO on top of the texture, I think it helps bring out the lighter areas of the model:





As always, let me know what you think!

Gallows

So beyond better. The range is finally where it needs to be.

ZacD

the shoulders look off. Looking pretty good now, though. stomach ribs and pecs could be cleaned up. The darker skin stones could be a bit cooler and less saturated, and the skin in general a bit more orange (just a tiny bit).

MoP

Hey, this has come along pretty well so far.

I hope you don't mind, I did a quick paintover to show what I think might improve this texture:


Here's a run-down of the stuff I did:

• Less contrast on the skin (I think the highlights were getting too white still). Tried to soften it out a bit (only got a mouse here on my laptop so I couldn't do any proper painting, sorry ).
• You could use lasso selections as guides for edges of muscle groups and paint / smudge inside the selections to get the edges really sharp and the gradients really smooth. Right now your shading is quite blotchy and irregular, it doesn't look smooth and natural like flesh should.
• I darkened down the green bed-roll and used Image -> Adjustments -> Curves to put some more warmth in the shadows rather than having it all being the same hue.
• I'm really not sure why his backpack is purple. To me it just doesn't seem like a natural colour for an explorer's backpack. Do you have any reference images of backpacks which are this colour? Instead I changed it to a more neutral earthy tone, which while it is less striking, I think it's also more natural and coherent.
• In general most of what I did was brightness/contrast/curves adjustments to try and get the whole thing into a more natural value range and put more warm or cool colours into the shadows and highlights as appropriate.

Right now most of your shading is still simply basic "lighter or darker" versions of the same hue which is not a very elegant method of shading, and tends to make things look muddy or washed out.

Sorry if the overall brightness is a bit off, I'm doing this on a laptop with a dodgy screen so I can't guarantee that this looks as good as I'd hoped

Keep it up!

d2king10

Thanks for the paint over, really helped a lot. I never thought about using the lasso + smudge, worked like a charm!

Here is the updated texture, let me know what you think:

meatle

really been enjoying this thread, been helpful to see.

Great progress, d2king10. Keep it up.
The only thing I got for ya, is that the skin still seems to light overall. Seems like it's close but might be taken down a little.

DrunkShaman

Very nice work D2King10. I havent reached this part of process in terms of 3d modeling, but whatever you've done so far is really nice!