Help me improve my texturing skill! (Medieval Crate)

Eastlin

Alright for a Medieval enviorment i made a crate prop which i'm struggling with to get a proper texture.

Here's two renders to show what i currently got.





Anyone mind telling me how i can improve my textures radically? at the moment they are horrible.

Also this is only a diffuse map i got no bump atm, still working on texturing this baby out.

DrunkShaman

It looks pretty straight forward. You have used base texture map only (you said that.) You didnt implement OCC map on top of the diffuse (base texture map), you didnt use a specular map, and the normal map.

If you just want to create a bump map. Export the diffuse map out and open it in photoshop or any 2d arts program. Than convert it to a gray scale to make it black and white.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66ulKGSkJVo"]How to create normal map in 3ds max - YouTube[/ame]

May I ask what programs are you using?

Eastlin

3ds max, Photoshop cs 5 i believe. and i usualy use Crazybump for textures.

the prop is intended for use in UDK

megalmn2000

Bake a ambient occlusion map and put it in multiply in Photoshop, so it will look less flat.

Eastlin

my dilemma is more of, my metal texture looks like shit it looks like some bug gray blur.

Any help with that pls?

megalmn2000

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

Elith2

Looks like you need a spec map more than anything to get that metal to pop, the texture itself needs work, but having the spec would take it away from looking like the concrete texture you have at the moment.

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

Might be of some use to you, I think you are using photo reference for your textures? But the same basic principals apply. Hope that helps some.

Elith2

Awwh beat me to the punch megalmn2000 :P

megalmn2000

lol

Eastlin

Ok here is the latest fix on it, it's in UDK and it got a normal map and a spec map.



What i need to do is to add Bolt's and the like to the texture.

Any idea's what more i could put into it?

edit: a pic of the crate in sunlight http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21462758/render8.jpg

camza

What resolution is your texture at? The metal looks very fuzzy as if it only has a very small amount of UV space to work with.

Ikosan

when you have your ambient occlusion texture rendered out i recommend not just putting it through as a multiply layer in photoshop. This adds black to your shadows which tends to make things look dirty (especially if your doing something like skin. Instead in photoshop copy your ambient occlusion and use it as a mask for a hue saturation layer. Then set your hue saturation layer so that your shadows now move to a more saturated but colder hue, lower the value as well but not so much that it goes to black. This gives you the depth but keeps the shadows visible and gives you a more clean look, its especially useful if your doing things in a more cartoony style but is still good practice for more realistic textures.

Eastlin

camza wrote: »

What resolution is your texture at? The metal looks very fuzzy as if it only has a very small amount of UV space to work with.

It's at 1024x1024 figured that is a proper size for props.

@Ikosan

I just get each in a separate file, meaning i made the texture and then put it in crazybump to make the spec/displacement map.

biofrost

You should post your uv's so we can see how they are laid out. With a 1024x1024 it should look much sharper.

Eastlin

That's the current difuse, it is quite a mess though.

petrol

Several problems with this you've posted above.

1) Wood and metal, given that only Crazybump normals are used, should share a lot of texture space.
2) Your base textures look like they came from blurry photographs, or you've chopped bits out of other images and scaled them up.
3) Even though this looks near enough a unique layout, there is tons of wasted (black on your texture) space. The more of this you use up, and the sharper your source images for making textures, the sharper your textures should be.
4) The metal looks even lower res than it should, obviously because there is not so much 'texture' there, as there is just flat colours. Also I suspect you may have UV'd the 'unseen' faces of the metal parts, rather than deleting them? If this is the case then you're obviously wasting valuable texture space on something that will never be seen.

Hope these pointers help.

passerby

it looks like your just slapping photo-refs on it and just painted grey with a soft brush for metal, you really got to put some more consideration into than that.

Kawe

the question is as always. how do you want it to look? do you have a concept or a reference? maybe a story?

I mean if you want it to look like a prop from a game made during the late 90s then you are all set.

Asking for help like this will just net you random advice from what people are guessing that you want to do.

EDIT: What I'm saying is that if you take some time to write some more about what you are trying to achieve then you will get a lot better feeback!

Eastlin

Well basically when i started this i just googled Medieval Crate and found this picture

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8jIBmdC99Kc/S-TEx7GB-pI/AAAAAAAAA3U/hXApSBs-Mnk/s1600/chest_01.jpg

And ive tried to make it similar to that.

wizo

I fully agree with Kawe, use as much reference asyou can make it clear what you want your work to look like once its finished. A lot to do with successful art is how much the artist understands the subject. Go easy on yourself, gather 5-6 refs, choose one that suits best what you want to do.

A mistake is to base your work on interpretation of another artist instead of using real life as a ref. I know I used to do that.

Hope it helps!