WIP Hand Painted Texturing...Crits please

mayagamer

I just graduated recently and I would really like to be an environment/texture artist for a game company. I usually lean more towards next gen modular assets using zbrush to sculpt and polypaint a lot of the texture. However i have always loved and been a fan of hand painted texturing and have always been jealous at the fact I wasn't very good at it.

Having said that I read through a couple tutorials floating around here and here is my first stab at it. I will be posting updates as well as multiple textures so please check back as this thread hopefully will be updated regularly.

First attempt at a hand painted texture

Rough blocking out


Refining with some shadows


Where I am currently at


any comments or critiques would be greatly appreciated I am really excited to start refining my hand painting texturing skills.

mayagamer

ill have an updated one tomorow

mayagamer

current update, better saturation and sharper edges and highlights

keres

I think the highlights are a little too sharp. Usually the highest highlights and the lowest shadows are produced by normal maps. If you're not using a normal map, then it is still ideal to have a fairly uniformly lit image. The colors are looking good, though. The bed in which the rocks lay surely needs work (as it is just a solid.)

nordahl154

Looks nice, and gives people a good idea of what the workflow should be. And yes, you should tone down those highlights a bit xD. Sharpening the surface of the stones and spicing it up would do greatness! (Looks like gravy at the moment)
(nordahl154 is not too fond of gravy)

I think you could also desaturate it a tiny bit.

SanderDL

I think you should have a look at your tiling. You should have a few stones being cut off at the edge and go on at the other side. Also the stones look a little far apart.

MeintevdS

I think you went a bit to saturated there. Your rocks also looked to polished especially with the almost bright white specular on them. Like the image below:


The rocks you are going should look a bit more like this I think:

I realize this image uses really diffuse lighting and thus has no real shadows and/or highlights, but it does get the point across. Rocks and stones are a rough surface and will never have such strong and sharp speculars.

I also think your rocks miss some texture at the moment, they are really just one color with with some dark mixed in and a few random holes.

Something that might help too is to give them a tiny bit of ambient occlusion to make it look like they are interacting with the cement/sand/dirt under them.

Your 4th image is a huge improvement from the first image, but it's not there yet. Keep it up!

gilesruscoe

Not a bad start, I think you should try to break up the top edges of the stones a little more to help spread that specular light over the stone a bit more. Make it more interesting, add some height differences across the surfaces, more holes and cracks in the stones. It's easy to go over the top with everything though.

It's all a little too brown at the moment, try put some very subtle cooler shades (such as purple, blue, green..) into the shadowed area's, this wil help it pop a little better.

mayagamer

thanks to everybody whos commented so far.

im not using normal maps for it keres but thats good advice that ill take into consideration next time i do use them.

next update i will try and make them more evenly lit with a not so polished highlight as well as try to break up and texture the surface of the rocks. I will also add a little something to the background/grout.

I wasn't planning on making it tileable just wanted to practice painting but i might as well practice that too so I'm going to move some stuff around and hopefully it will be somewhat tileable on the next update.

mayagamer

here is another update, i tone down the brightness and tried to make it more evenly lit, messed with the saturation, started to mess with what the stones are laying in, as well as trying to make them not look like gravy lol

next update will have more occlusion between the rocks and the ground in which they lay, as well as repositioning some things so i can tile it.

mayagamer

attempted to make it tileable, texture is a 512 and i quickly tiled it on a 1024 to give you guys an example



and the tiled version

Calabi

I'm no expert but it looks pretty good.

Although one question, is this for a floor or wall? Because I dont know if I've seen any real places/refs that look like this.

I mean is it man made or natural made. I dont think I've seen or head of any natural processes that make something like this.

If it was man made then they would be placed more deliberately, closer together, for walking on or to enhance the adhesive properties. The rocks would have more variations in colour, even bricks have lots of variations in colour(you dont get pure rocks very easily). The ground needs some details, like moss dirt and other aspects.

The rocks also look like they are floating on a brown background.

mayagamer

heres a few of my reference images







in the last picture you can see where i got the main sizing and spacing from...I know most stones are layed out a lot closer as in the first two pictures.

the next update will hopefully have the stones more layed into the ground and not floating on it.

Calabi

Oh I see, I was confused because yours are looking more coming out of the ground instead of imbeded into the ground.

Surely if the are on the ground they would have very few shadows anyway, unless its really early morning or evening?

mayagamer

heres a start of a brick texture.












the last three are the same just playing with different levels of saturation and contrast. hopefully by the end of this thread i will be able to create decent hand painted textures of the basic materials stone, wood, metal, cloth, etc etc with my own personal style to them

there will most likely be an update of the stone path texture tomorrow