Hand painted wood practice
polycounter lvl 15
So I'm trying to diversify my portfolio a bit. I'm thinking some hand painted awesomeness would do the trick. I've gone over the tutorials on the wiki and played around a bit.
I figured I'd try something on the easier side of things, a wood beam. Here's the texture flat and a render. Any C&C would be greatly appreciated
Also, any tips on technique and/or photoshop brush settings would be really helpful.
I figured I'd try something on the easier side of things, a wood beam. Here's the texture flat and a render. Any C&C would be greatly appreciated
Also, any tips on technique and/or photoshop brush settings would be really helpful.
Replies
Right now the texture is feeling very chaotic. You should try going a lot simpler and focus on the values and lighting first. Never forget where your light is coming from.
Here are some handy tutorials to help you get started:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1259024#post1259024
hope this helps keep it up
Mcejn: Thanks so much for the tutorials. They definitely helped.
I'm liking where the texture is going now. I feel like it has more focus and intent behind it. With the other one, I was being a bit more chaotic.
Thoughts?
I'd say focus a bit more on cleaning up some of your lines and also to use the highlights a bit more sparingly, and at varying intensities (where it makes sense - highlights where edges meet will naturally catch a bit more light).
You may also want to try pushing the darks and lights a bit more to give the wood some more depth.
All that aside, looks good. Keep it up man!
try to simplify the grain it self
keep it up though your def getting there
Definitely. You'll find the more you paint the easier that direction is to feel out and comes more quickly. And to an extent this will carry over to different material types. It wont take as long to nail the next material as it did the one before and so on.
As far as crits:
If this was going simulate layered siding on a cottage like vinyl siding I'd say you could polish it a bit more and call it done, but as a tiling floor or something that isn't layered you need some extra push.
It mainly has to do with your highlighting. Its strongly one sided. but your shadows aren't which gives it the sloping effect.
Overall I second Mcejin on his tips about highlights, and depending on how deep the creases should be depends on how far you should bush the darkness of the creases.
Thanks again guys, it is much appreciated. I think I've reached the limit of what I can learn from this piece. I'm not calling it perfect, but I'd like to try my hand at some other types of materials (IE rocks, dirt, grass, etc) in order to improve my technique a bit.
Crits are definitely welcome on the wood. I'm not sure if I'll go back and improve much on it though.
Wood texture on a model:
and a shield i'm working on. The spike and the back haven't been textured yet.
More to come.
The one thing that stands out to me, is the highlights are pretty strong, almost as if it was stone. Wood isn't that shinny and generally any lighter colors are raised spots that catch more ware exposing newer wood, so its more worn down than sharp shinny highlights.
The surface of cut, untreated wood has very little spec to it, most of the time and tends to diffuse light kind of like skin... sort of...
Also planks don't go on forever and they're normally nailed to some kind of support structure at regular spacing.
One thing, that can kind of help is a free little procedural texture generator called "woodworkshop" it can help you get the pattern and even plank detail in all the right places. Its not a good end result but it can serve as a good guide and speed things up.
Another tip in texutring wooden objects like a beam, is to apply the procedural wood material in either max or maya, then bake that out and start painting. It can really help to get the rings of the wood on the end to match up with the grain detail of the edges without having to really work at it. Again a good place to start and a general guide but not a good end result.
One other thing that helps with seam clean up is to use some kind of 3D paint program, like mudbox, or viewport canvas in 3dsmax. That really helps to paint details on seam edges or clone out and smooth over some of those little hiccups.
Good stuff, good progress keep at it!
The shield res looks too low. I would mirror the UV's of the shield down the centre and have a 2:1 map, you can still get away with some cracks if you go easy, similar to the shield here: http://timmcleod.net/images/themerchantsgoods/merchantsgoods.jpg
Remember as your title states, it's hand painted so don't get too mechanical. there's something about the shield that's giving me the wrong impression, I'm not sure if it's the perfectly round circles around the outer edge. Either way don't be afraid to make things a little skewed/wonky for some character. I think you could benefit from dropping some hand painted highlights around the edges on those circles, avoid the photoshop bevels or whatever.
@Mark: Great tips for laying down wood. i did struggle a bit establishing the form initially. I will definitely look into these for the next wood texture I do. As for the lack of planks/bolts, I'm planning on using this texture for a personal project a bit later. I've intentionally left out the bolts and plank separations until I figure out exactly how I want to use the wood.
@snow: I considered mirroring the front of the shield but wanted to have some variety in the look. The back side of the shield is mirrored however. I can post some texture flats if there's interest.
I decided to add a bit more geometry to the shield. It was originally 12 side, I've remade it to be 16 sided. I think it reads a lot better and is less jarring to the eye.
I'm not sure what you mean about photoshop bevels. I didn't use any photoshop bevels. As I said, all hand painted.
Metal is nice. Might want to experiment with adding more colours (from reflection) particularly greens at the bottom (very very subtle) maybe even some very very faint silhouettes (of the "environment") Just nothing distinguishable or strong, as it's handpainted in.
The scratch in the shield is a bit odd, looks realy low res compared to the rest for some reason. It's also lonely - add tons of dings and bumps to the shield, it'll look a lot cooler!
Great progress on the wood compared to the first iteration. Scratches are a bit strong/deep/metally though, they attract too much focus, being too intense. Bit saturated for my taste but that's just personal preference. All in all great progress, hope you can use the crits
If you need some inspriation for textures, check out Slipgates work on Allods:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=74450&highlight=allods
Theres art on every few pages.
I'd also suggest painting at about 512 or 1024 (for these particular props), you can always project to a lower resolution later on, but painting at a higher res allows for more detail and cleaner textures.
Otherwise, the bolts on the front of the shield really stand out to me. They're uniformly white/bright, and need some shading to help them pop.
The round base of the spike should look like it's raised from the surface of the shield itself, so work to create more depth there.
Try playing with the values/hue of the blue throughout the different elements of the shield to help break it up and help distinguish them.
Great progress man, keeps getting better and better!
I like this texture its done really well
currently im working on a hand painted wooden character and having a look over your work has given me some really good tips on how i could go on mine
Keep up the good work