Painting cartoony like tf2 textures?
polycounter lvl 11
I've googled a bit and cant find any tutorials at all and i dont even know where to start. Im looking to create textures like in TF2 or Battlefield heroes in photoshop
You guys had to have started somewhere, could ya help me out :P ?
You guys had to have started somewhere, could ya help me out :P ?
Replies
Generally, what those games did differently is painted their textures with a more painterly than illustrative style. So instead of painting details hyper-realistically or photo-sourcing, you'd want to think more about areas of color and value that suggest the important features of a surface. That red building in the screenshot is a good example.
More technically, they used half-Lambert and/or ramp shaders to render everything so that the lighting would complement that style of texturing better. If you're using 3ds Max, check out Xoliul's shader and Rollin's toon shader to get that effect in the viewport. There are tutorials around for setting it up in UDK as well, or you could import them into TF2 itself, I presume.
Aside from that, there's not really anything to it. It's just a style thing. If you're working on a texture and having trouble getting it to match that style, post it up so people can critique it.
frell, are you looking for techniques, shortcuts? Valve has entire whitepapers and presentations available online that cover their art direction and reasoning behind their art style, as well as explanations on how they went about implementing them. If you're looking for painting tutorials, there's a bunch of threads right here on polycount with excellent info and discussion (as well as wips) on handpainted textures.
RPG House - Hand painted textures
WIP - Hand Painted Texturing
WoW Cataclysm: Gilneas Building
There's tons more, too.
Fly, i was going towards more simple wood or brick like textures, and maybe some toony grass.
Lotekk, im mainly looking for where to start. For right now i mainly need something to guide me through the workflow for the first time, then i can put my own spins and styles on it.
EDIT: Just browsed through those links tekk, there was some helpful stuff in there, now i can get the courage to at least TRY to make one :P
Alright, hopped into photoshop and whipped up my first ever attempt. I was in a hurry because its getting late so i was just trying to see what brushes would help with what.
Pretty bad im aware, but im sure you guys could help with that
@DKK. you made my day with your nonsense
Also, good quote DKK xD i've used it once during a presentation.
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Has_anyone_really_been_far_even_as_decided_to_use_even_go_want_to_do_look_more_like%3F
The best way to replicate the look of TF2 textures is to look at the textures themselves. This is a texture from the capture point in Nucleus. Notice that it has large areas of flat color, but there are also subtle gradations, rough brush strokes and baked ambient occlusion.
There's more to it than that, but that's the gist of it. Take a look at the Contribute! site they set up to get more info.
Or what I would do is grab a picture of a building, then do a de saturate and see where your values are coming from. You would then see the textures are quite flat in terms of value with saturation and hue giving most of the texture definition between materials, the areas where you see a change in value are the areas which are effected by the AO bake.
Good SHARP AO, crisp textures and brighter global lighting is what you would use to enhance it.
sry guys just had to ROFLOL :poly142:
@topic:
i never created this kind of textures, but i'd start analyzing the TF textures itself.
do it by using their modkit or using the 3dripper
perhaps you would notice, that their textures are like pastel colored and also lack of high detail.
so as already mentioned, using handpainting could do the trick.
on the other hand i wont totally exclude phototextures. perhaps photos can be somehow used as a "backplate" or template for your handpainted textures.
then again it could be helpful to use "painter" or "artrage" for the textures and then only use photoshop for image processing. since a real painting programm might better catch the "handbrushed" effect.
Oh I'd love to see/read that if you can recall where it is!
crasong: LOL thanks for the clarification. Made me laugh hahah
And here's a wood-painting tut from TmHunt:
An important thing for frell to note is the reason for the style. Aside from being pretty, it serves an important purpose as well:
Thanks everyone
HAHAHAH.... oh god this is the best sentence I have ever read.
Tracy & I were going to do a TF2 map a little while back and it seemed like a majority of the detail comes from an AO bake.
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=71324
I used these, which are just slightly edited from the default hard round one.
Basic_Round_Brushes.abr - from Photoshop CS3
I also put a new page in my portfolio with a couple other textures.
@ [iWi]: cool idea. But the end result is a bit too bland I think. There's too much directionality in the lighting, you wouldn't be able to flip or rotate it on a model. And there's no woodgrain left, so it kind of looks like that plastic lumber they use for modern decks, the kind that's pressed in a mold.
its more time efficient i think is what they stated !
I sometimes use a similar method to get a base for tillable textures (wood, bark, brick) lately I've been hand painting most of my stuff anyway. If I can recreate a almost photo real look from painting, no longer do I need to fart around with the warp tool and finding the perfect photo to fart around with!
OMG thank you!
After I laid down my initial semi-random squiggles, it helped me to focus a bit more and continually think about each stroke, how it adds to the form. It also really helps me to look at a lot of reference before I start painting, to fill my brain, so I really get a good feeling for the structure of the wood grain. Hope that makes sense. :poly124:
this is wayyyyy cartoonier than TF2 stuff, btw
I guess its mainly their shader doing the work.
Deliberate visible brush strokes with hard edge brushes = also TF2
Impressionistic realism (read: not cartoon) = also TF2
- The brushes used look to be 100% opacity with next to no fuzzy edges. With the exception of certain stains & worn paint.
- Notice the inconsistencies in the gaps between the boards. Boards are not defined by thick dark perfect 15px boarders.
- Also notice the color pallet wood in TF2 is used mostly in the red base.
- See how they layer up the paint and the wood grain is mostly hinted at.
It's pretty simple, but I think it works as a nice place to start painting over.
Ambient occlusion is also very useful for the TF2 and BFH styles.
That is an old 4chan quote, give credits where its due
basically the precise filter order, so to speak
yeah I know , You're right. :poly142:
It was realy speeding exemple.
oups , I didn't take any notes of my wood "making of". There's many way to get some base of toonish texture. I've just played for fun.
It's in a eye - I mean there's NOT one rule (regulation or order to do). I think that depends also on a photosourcing.
In a fact - nothing special - just "filtering" & etc.
Nevertheless (iiiiiiiii I like this word :poly121: )
I still have the .psd file with all layers so I will look what I did = (approximately ).
http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=71324
of development, many of these 2D textures were physically painted
on canvas with watercolors and scanned to make texture maps. As
we refined the art style of the game, texture artists shifted to using
photorealistic reference images with a series of filters and digital
brush strokes applied to achieve the desired look of a physically
painted texture."
i wonder if they used any hl2 textures