Home Technical Talk

Need help with texturing!

Hiya, I'm new to Polycount and just wanted some help!

So, I've been playing this low-poly game called GunZ ( I doubt anyone knows this game:poly124:)
and recently there has been an update in the development for private servers, so now we can import our own items in-game! Now, the thing is, very few people knew how model, so one guy put up a tutorial on how to do it and well.. he told people to use reference pictures taken from google as texture. You all probably know, this caused alot of ugly and stretched textures.

So, I've been googling some stuff on how to texture, but almost all tutorials are for items with normal maps and spec and all that stuff.
Now, the game only supports diffuse maps.

I've been trying to make a few guns, which weren't that bad for the quality of this game, but swords, katanas etc are a pain in the ass for me.
Could anyone please help me with a tutorial? :)
I'd appreciate it if someone told me step by step on how to make something like this.

Thanks in advance!

Replies

  • Mr. Bean
    Welcome to Polycount :)

    Hmmm, that model seems to have hand painted textures, unless I'm mistaken. You said that most of the tutorials you've run across have spec maps and normal maps etc., while the game you're modding only supports diffuse textures (must be an old game to not even support spec maps). But why can't you follow one of those tutorials and just not do the part that shows how to make the other maps?

    For instance, I recommend you take a look at these tutorials:

    http://racer445.com/pages/tutorials/metal-crate-tutorial.php

    http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-art/how-to-hand-paint-convincing-metal-textures/

    Also, you said:
    You all probably know, this caused alot of ugly and stretched textures.
    If you are unwrapping the model you should be able to prevent most stretching, especially using the relax features. Are you new to modeling, or just texturing? Because if you're new to 3d in general, you really should be learning the basics of modeling and unwrapping.

    http://www.game-artist.net/forums/spotlight-articles/10425-tutorial-full-weapon-creation.html

    That one shows how to model and texture a gun, although it's probably too detailed for the game you're doing, but the texturing section is very useful for all purposes.
  • exercitus
    Thanks for the welcome!

    And I've seen those, but guns aren't really a problem. I've seen all those tutorials, and Racer has been skipping parts that I actually needed. In the hand-painted texture he uses AO maps, however I'm using low-poly weapons (around 1000 tri's) so it barely has details. Won't make good Ao map, I guess..

    I know how to UVmap, but so stretched textures aren't really a problem. I just really, really suck at making a texture, especially the lighting.
  • exercitus
  • renderhjs
    Offline / Send Message
    renderhjs sublime tool
    don't ask for the moon and you shall receive lots of useful answers. Sometimes more specific questions that just require a simple answer are more attractive to answer so think about others as well not just yourself when asking stuff.

    anyway:
    Render the AO pass anyway or add a turbosmooth or tesselate modifier on your model to increase the density of the mesh and get cleaner AO maps rendered. Even on low poly models they can still help a lot creating dirt shadows to hint covered and concave / convex areas (cavity).
    So instead of avoiding stuff because you think it wont look good just play around and learn from that!!
  • Mr. Bean
    I think one of the biggest keys to hand painting textures is painting the highlights and shadows. I really think that it's vital to learn how to do that. If you use Photoshop, then either A) use the dodge and burn tools, which are very powerful for painting highlights and shadows, or B) create a layer (named" shadows") above your base color layer, and choose a color slightly darker than the base color, very slightly darker, keep it subtle. Use that subtle darker color to paint the shadows. Then create another layer for the highlights (named "highlights") and choose a light gray or white to paint where the light reflects. If you're painting a texture for a hard surface model, this will be easier to know where the highlights go; they usually go on each edge.

    I really recommend you study the weapons older PS2 games, especially Call of Duty 2 and Medal of Honor Frontline. In older games like Cod2 and MOHF, the lighting wasn't calculated by the game engine, and so the texture artists had to paint in the shadows and highlights to simulate lighting. It's really helped me to study older games like those.

    There are lots of other good ways to hand paint textures. Renderhjs is right; experiment and you'll learn a lot.

    Good luck! :)
  • Racer445
    Offline / Send Message
    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    exercitus wrote: »
    In the hand-painted texture he uses AO maps, however I'm using low-poly weapons (around 1000 tri's) so it barely has details. Won't make good Ao map, I guess..

    I just really, really suck at making a texture, especially the lighting.

    Those tutorials aren't totally helpful on old stuff. AO isn't necessary if you're doing handheld things, only when you get to source/hl2 spec stuff does it become useful.

    When doing low poly stuffs, pick a global light source and stick with it; inconsistency is the worst! For metal I find good old dodge and burn on flat gray fine when lighting most things. Subtle gradients can add visual interest as well, just don't overdo it. Don't forget that you need to define glossiness in the lighting yourself too. I highly recommend you read and study things related to traditional art since most of the skills apply. This is a decent start: http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm

    Since you have limited texture space you want skip the grunge overlays and let lighting and color sell your metal materials. Color color color! Blue sky points up, brown ground points down. Ambient color is so very important to keep your metal from looking bland, along with subtle pixely sharp grunge. Too much grunge will just blur your texture and you will start to lose your definition and sharpness.

    Here's an example of color used in some guns I did, including the original colors.

    colors.jpg
  • Ghostscape
    Offline / Send Message
    Ghostscape polycounter lvl 13
    Anyone know of a mirror for the old st.burst.cc tutorials? Both it and sourceblog.org are long-fucking gone and they covered a lot of the basics for how to do this stuff.

    racer those low poly guns are awesome :)
  • Mr. Bean
    Speak of the devil :P

    You painted those textures? They look amazing...

    Question: what exactly is ambient color?

    And could I see a larger texture flat of the far left pistol? :poly122:
  • cryrid
    Offline / Send Message
    cryrid interpolator
    Question: what exactly is ambient color?
    The light it would be getting from the sky/atmosphere and the ground (light bounces, so the object would be picking up light from more than just direct light sources).
    You can see a similar blue/brown being used in this tutorial:
    http://www.moddb.com/tutorials/texturing-the-scar-l-rifle
  • Racer445
    Offline / Send Message
    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    Mr. Bean, that's the actual texture size that it was painted on.
    cryrid wrote: »

    The CS modding community is how I learned diffuse lighting, Pete and others were sort of my mentors. It was the first thing I learned and it helped me immensely when learning this fancy next gen stuff, as many of the skills transfer over. Sometimes with textures I think people try to run (normal and spec maps, focusing on speed) before they can walk (learning how materials act in real life and what looks good in 3D) which is probably why so many people just take a "metal base" and slap overlays on it until it "looks good."
    Ghostscape wrote: »
    Anyone know of a mirror for the old st.burst.cc tutorials? Both it and sourceblog.org are long-fucking gone and they covered a lot of the basics for how to do this stuff.

    I want to see if I can grab a copy of the st.burst.cc site from Enin and mirror it on my site. Truly some great info there from the real old folks.
  • exercitus
    Wow, that tutorial helped alot on the lighting. Thanks :D
    Great weapons btw ;P

    And how would I get started, I've seen your tutorial on creating base metal. Does that apply on everything, including diffuse-only textures?
  • Racer445
    Offline / Send Message
    Racer445 polycounter lvl 12
    Personally for diffuse only weapons I don't use a metal base, instead I light on flat gray with dodge and burn then add various grunge layers on top. Metal is smooth thus grungy bases don't help, especially on low texture sizes.
  • Calabi
    Offline / Send Message
    Calabi polycounter lvl 12
    How do you know how to paint the shading and lighting on the defuse textures?

    I guess you look at lots of references?
  • Saiainoshi
    Offline / Send Message
    Saiainoshi polycounter lvl 9
    You could always try to bake the lighting onto the material. You'll have to fudge with it a bit to get exactly what you want. For the rendering and highlighting side of it, use the dodge and burn tool. It's pretty easy to pull off that chrome/metal type look with the right amount of love.
  • cryrid
    Offline / Send Message
    cryrid interpolator
    How do you know how to paint the shading and lighting on the defuse textures?
    That's where the traditional painting skills comes into play.
    http://itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
  • roosterMAP
    Offline / Send Message
    roosterMAP polycounter lvl 14
    u could take a look at my texturing tut.

    http://vimeo.com/11100774
  • haiddasalami
    Offline / Send Message
    haiddasalami polycounter lvl 14
    roosterMAP wrote: »
    u could take a look at my texturing tut.

    http://vimeo.com/11100774

    <3
Sign In or Register to comment.