Another Texture Practice Help! Skull and other stuff

Calabi

I'm trying to get my head round texturuing, hand painting mainly as its a style I like(doesnt age as badly) and would suit my purposes better.

I thought painting a skull would be a good start, turns out the surface is pretty complex.

I've overlayed a photo ref, I've copied some elements from it, but I've realised if I'm going to have a few details then I'm going to have to have a lot for it to look right. In that case I might as well just use the photo. So I'm not sure what direction to take it or how to approach this.



Any help would be appreciated.

haikai

That's a pretty dense mesh to be hand painting. The beauty of hand painted textures is that you get to define the finer details and lighting through the painting, but once the mesh starts to get this specific then it becomes less necessary. That's not to say that there aren't things you can do to improve the texture, but maybe this isn't the ideal model to be experimenting with hand painted textures.

I suggest finding some reference images of interesting skulls (not perfectly preserved, bleached ones) and seeing how much of the dirt and decay you can communicate. The texture right now seems too warm with light saturation- almost like skin with blood underneath.

Calabi

I think your right, Haikai. I'll try a few a few things, and if it doesnt work out I'll try some different models.

Thanks for the help Haikai