Your highlights are all over the place. Try to localize them so the rendering makes sense on the texture. (Not on the top and bottom of scratches, edges, etc).
The texture also lacks contrast. It feels very soft and flat. I would make the highlights brighter and the shadows darker.
The gold needs brighter highlights.
Additional color (and saturation) variation in the blue metal would help it read better too.
Great job of following the Tyler's 3dmotive tutorial to a T. I would try to push your work with your environment piece in your own style though.
Hay Jeffro thank you for the crit! I have take on board what you have said and it has really helped me fix the texture! I tried to add saturation to the colours and remove the flatness you spoke about. I also darkened the shaded areas and lightened the highlights. I hope you can read this better.
I see what you mean about the origonal texture being flat.
Although this is not perfect, I think it does read a lot better now.
Thanks again for the advice! let me know what you think.
Desaturate your screengrab in Phoshop and notice how the wood and the bronze are the same shade of grey. That should not happen for the most part. It's something usually to avoid.
I think you just did a contrast adjustment in Phoshop and that's making your darks too dark now. You'll need to paint in a greater spectrum of value to get more contrast.
The golds still need the brighter highlights.
I'd work on rendering the wraps a bit more convincingly as well. They need some more love.
Desaturate your screengrab in Phoshop and notice how the wood and the bronze are the same shade of grey. That should not happen for the most part. It's something usually to avoid.
I think you just did a contrast adjustment in Phoshop and that's making your darks too dark now. You'll need to paint in a greater spectrum of value to get more contrast.
The golds still need the brighter highlights.
I'd work on rendering the wraps a bit more convincingly as well. They need some more love.
Ok so now i have brightened the gold highlights, gave the wraps some love, brigthened the darks. Brightened up the bronze so not symilar too wood. Im happy with the result. I wanted the weapon to be quite viberant and I hope you like the changes.
Looking better. The golds still need some work on the highlights.
Your leather wrap isn't reading like leather. It needs to have a bit smoother shadows and highlights.
Your rendering of highlights across the board needs to be reworked. If light is coming from above (which would hold true if a Orc dude was holding a shield or sword and there was a sun above) then on a scratch, ding, nick, whatever it should be shadow on the top and highlight on the bottom.
Looking better. The golds still need some work on the highlights.
Your leather wrap isn't reading like leather. It needs to have a bit smoother shadows and highlights.
Your rendering of highlights across the board needs to be reworked. If light is coming from above (which would hold true if a Orc dude was holding a shield or sword and there was a sun above) then on a scratch, ding, nick, whatever it should be shadow on the top and highlight on the bottom.
Here's a fast paint over. Basically just be consistent with your painting. Highlights/shadows need to be consistent across the piece.
Hope it makes sense.
Man made a lot of sence, I took your advice about the golds and realsied that they where too yellow. The colour scheme over all was way off. I decided to change some of the colours and entre more of a realistic colour scheme.
I added blues into the shadowed areas and re painted the golds.
I also replaced the blue rim of the sheild with bronze.
Thank you for the advice man. I will take it on board with my had painted style, I know its going to take some work, but i think im on my way.
You've shown great improvement throughout this process; I can't wait to see your environment!
My only crit is the mirrored UVs pop out obviously on the shield to me. Can't help but wonder if there's a better way to pack/stack those repeating elements to fit the whole shield on there, or maybe even give the shield it's own unique map. I'm well aware it's way too late to worry about that and you're probably set to move on from this piece, but something to think about in the future.
Like sybrix said the tiling is a bit obvious. You could cut down on that a bit by just not mirroring the center steel band on the shield. The wood would still mirror, but you'd lose the obvious line straight down the middle.
Still, from start to end that set shows great improvement. On the the next piece..
I am kind of glad I waited to reply to this thread, solely because I feel like I may have ended up misdirecting you... but your latest revisions look miles better compared to when I gave you crit... so great work there
I dont usually do this often, but I cant actually give you a crit on where its at now because I feel like they're at a state where you can call them complete and move on to something new
Love this thread, been watching it just haven't posted anything yet. You've improved so much through working on this piece! Your newest revision is gorgeous, I think you've really nailed it and I'm glad you changed the color scheme a bit. Honestly my eyes go directly to the shield when I look at the two models together, just because I like it the most . I think your occlusion might just be slightly too much, but other than that I'm going to second Limewax and say call this finished and move on. I can't wait to see what else you do!
Sybrix & Baddcog : I see what you mean about the obvious mirroring, I think if i just remove some of the fine details from the central stip of metal and bronze it wont look as bad. I will take that into acount for my next piece of work. as you say 'on to the next one'.
Limewax: I have been waiting for your reply and thank you! Your advice really helped me out and I too am happy with what i have learnt from this. I can't wait to get one with my next project.
mnphear: I cant believe i didnt realise it was too strong haha. You are so right its way to dark. will have to tweak that before i put the piece into my portfolio. Thanks for letting me know!
Andy H: Thank you for the comment man! really apreciate it. The sheild was a pain! but i love this handpainted style now! Think I found my calling haha. Time to move on!
So now i am going to start work on my environment. Right now I want to create a small village with farm land, which leads up towards the ruins of a castle or structure. In the world of warcraft style. So from that now I am going to do some concept work and start modeling some props and creating the environment textures.
Definitely getting there. I'm not sold on the bronze. I would rather see that steel or something else. The gold, bronze, and wood are a lot of yellow/browns. Be nice to work in cooler colors.
Definitely getting there. I'm not sold on the bronze. I would rather see that steel or something else. The gold, bronze, and wood are a lot of yellow/browns. Be nice to work in cooler colors.
Hay jeffro, I see what you mean about the colours very dim. I quickly tweaked it:
Think it looks a lot cooler now, not so dull.
I think its actually done now haha. I can put it to bed. Let me know what you think.
I think your shadows are too strong, wide, and not very well defined. You could definitely do with toning the AO down, and then painting in some drop shadows.
that wood is very interesting, how did you do it and how long did it take?
really cool man
Hay man, thanks, Wood took about 10 minutes, i started with a dark brown and then painted in the planks with a lighter shade. I then added the details and pronounced them with high lights. I finished off by adding blue into the shadowed areas, Jeffro showed me how and it adds a lot the texture.
Hi guys! Started work on my Blizzard styled environment project. firstly I researched a lot! Through reading some of the threads on here too I realsied the best way to tackle the building of my village Is to create modular peices which can be combined to make multiple buildings.
I have not yet UVmapped or textured the peices at this point. I will be working on that over the next few days. My buildings are inspired by that of the Worgen zone of Gilneas. I was attracted to the shapes and angles created by the buildings in this zone and wanted to reproduce this in my environment.
Here are the meshes, so far...
Big Building peices. ( More will be added. )
Building Assets. ( Still need to break up big shapes on windows. )
Possible Building from Assets 1.
Possible Building from Assets 2.
These just quickly demonstrate possible buildings I can throw together once I have tweaked and textured the Assets.
The new color scheme for the sword and shield is oooodles better!!! I agree with Snader about your shadows though.
Your modular building stuff looks extremely promising, great work! I'm really excited for updates haha
Thanks Jessica! I learnt a lot from the Axe and Sheild, I have fixed some of the shadows. Just havent posted it. were you talking about the shadows behind the gold studs or others?
Basically it looks like you have a ton of AO and no cast shadows. Your AO (basically everywhere the different parts of your prop intersect) is very strong, dark, and diffuse. So I would tone that down a bit and reel in the spread.
Also adding some very crisp cast shadows in certain areas (like coming from parts of the prop that stick out a lot) will be good, and try to give those shadows some volume (don't make them black-hole kindof shadows, but let the texture beneath show through and suggest a little bounce light
Looking good so far. Interesting approach to the buildings by going modular. I can't wait to see this develop further. Time to texture like crazy! We only got like a week left to finish! :O
Looking good so far. Interesting approach to the buildings by going modular. I can't wait to see this develop further. Time to texture like crazy! We only got like a week left to finish! :O
Hay man, this is for my masters project. I cant even apply for the blizzard comp becuase i don't study in the US or Canada :poly127:
Hay guys, just got finished texturing some of my modular building assets:
Mesh without texture.
Applied basic colours to get a feel for how it reads.
Worked out basic wood colour and where shapes would be.
Added wood grain and created sections of rock on window ldge and door frames, also painted handle gold.
Gave wood highlights, worked in detail on the rocks.
Brightened up wood and created windows with bounce light hitting rocks and wood. gave rock archway more geomarty. Happy with it so far, Im sure I need to tweak aspects but im going to move onto texturing the next load.
Looks nice! I agree with marq though - right now it is very hard to tell the where the edge is even if you have some value separation between the top and front planes. Defining the edge better with a highlight should be a quick fix!
Thank you marq4porsche and Jessica Dinh for the advice on the rock highlights. You guys were right, it really helped define the geomatry:
Also going back to my Axe and Sheild work I imported them into udk and also changed the Axe a little by breaking up the sections and enlarging the detailed areas, like the blue spicky bit and the blade.
All of those look GREAT. How do you create those textures. Any help will be great for a project I a, working witch will be on the forums soon.
Hay man, thanks I too am new to hand painted textures. My best advice is to read through some of the threads posted on here, a lot of talented people are giving great advice. Also I followed a tutorial on www.3dmotive.com which teaches you how to model and hand paint a weapon and sheild using brilliant techniques. It really helped me and im sure it will do the same for you.
Let me know how you get on! look forward in seeing your thread!
Here are some more of my modular building assets textured. The roof is left white as it will be using a tiled roof texture.
The texture map.
I only have one more texture map to finish of the building assets then i can move onto creating the tilable textures for use on the main building and roof. I will post the final one tomorrow and hopefully get some of my tilable done!
Awesome!! Seems like you are using a round with opacity set to pressure - you may want to try going in at the end with a little 100% hard brush for sharpening up certain details here and there - in crevice areas, at edges, etc. It should give you a nice, clean finish :]
I'm not sure if you're sharpening these at all, but I'd really suggest you do so. Right now everything kind of seems faded, but I bet if you ran a Sharpen filter over them once or twice, it'd make it all pop more. This would especially be true for your windows and your vase. The dark indentions on your vase don't have enough depth to them, if that's what you were trying to do. Add a darker hue in there and maybe a much lighter hue on the outside edges to make it pop more. Sharpen that too if it still looks sort of flat and see how it looks. This is all personal preference though, I like painting as much depth as I can!
Edit: Also wow, Jessica always says something related to my posts while I'm typing it up. :P
Yeah, in addition to using the little hard brush for cleanup, I love Smart Sharpen. But you may want to dupe your work onto a new layer for the Smart Sharpen so you can manually erase some artifacting that might happen with that.
Oh I forgot about the whole duplicating layers thing to deal with the crazy rainbow pixels that appear when you sharpen too much, thanks Jessica!
Edit: Alllsoooo one last critique for now. I'd go back and paint some more depth into the stones around the doorway and stairs. It goes from the light hitting the stone to just BLACKNESS. If you make it look like the stones are actually bricks, such as painting a midtone between the crevices, then finally transitioning to the shadows deep in there, it would look way more dimensional. (Isn't that the whole point of hand painted textures? )
Hay guys great crit! I have taken your advice on board and applied it to my textures. I love that smart sharpen and you guys were right about it making the texture stand out more.
Andy - I tried to implement what you said about the rocks and make them look more like bricks. As well with the vase which is a chimney top, I darkened the cracks and added highlights.
Jessica- Thanks for the advice on the sharpening too, I also see what you mean about adding final detail with a hard brush at the end, I still need to do this a little. Well done on the project you have just finished! I have been following it for a while, it has really inspired me to go for it!
Also, there you go!! The stones are way more dimensional, looking really good! The chimney also has some nice dimension in those crevices. The only thing right now that's starting to stand out to me is the wood on the door. For some reason, maybe it's the way they're painted, they almost look like strips of old wallpaper that's peeling, if you can see what I'm saying. It just looks like strips of wood pattern placed on top of a dark wall. Try to do what you did with the stones, and maybe also make a smooth gradient from the edge of the planks to the center. That way you'll still have the edges but it won't look flat. I can sort of see when I look super close to the texture sheet where you painted a little bit of the edges that go towards the back of the planks, but it's too subtle, make it pop more just like you did with the stones. I think it's great that you're painting in your shadows so deep, just make sure you include the mid values too.
try adding some larger highlights on the wood, take the original highlight colour and that brigten it and add contrast to it (slide it left)...when you are selecting colours play with your saturation a bit, dont let it be the same contrast troughout.
Replies
Hay Jeffro thank you for the crit! I have take on board what you have said and it has really helped me fix the texture! I tried to add saturation to the colours and remove the flatness you spoke about. I also darkened the shaded areas and lightened the highlights. I hope you can read this better.
I see what you mean about the origonal texture being flat.
Although this is not perfect, I think it does read a lot better now.
Thanks again for the advice! let me know what you think.
Desaturate your screengrab in Phoshop and notice how the wood and the bronze are the same shade of grey. That should not happen for the most part. It's something usually to avoid.
I think you just did a contrast adjustment in Phoshop and that's making your darks too dark now. You'll need to paint in a greater spectrum of value to get more contrast.
The golds still need the brighter highlights.
I'd work on rendering the wraps a bit more convincingly as well. They need some more love.
Ok so now i have brightened the gold highlights, gave the wraps some love, brigthened the darks. Brightened up the bronze so not symilar too wood. Im happy with the result. I wanted the weapon to be quite viberant and I hope you like the changes.
Your leather wrap isn't reading like leather. It needs to have a bit smoother shadows and highlights.
Your rendering of highlights across the board needs to be reworked. If light is coming from above (which would hold true if a Orc dude was holding a shield or sword and there was a sun above) then on a scratch, ding, nick, whatever it should be shadow on the top and highlight on the bottom.
Ughh... just read my description. OK that probably doesn't make sense. I'll try to find time to do a paint over of this sometime this week. I'd recommend that you read though http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm and specifically http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm#light_stuff. It will help your texturing a ton.
I would really appreciate a paint over man. Give me more of an idea of what needs improving.
Hope it makes sense.
My only crit is the mirrored UVs pop out obviously on the shield to me. Can't help but wonder if there's a better way to pack/stack those repeating elements to fit the whole shield on there, or maybe even give the shield it's own unique map. I'm well aware it's way too late to worry about that and you're probably set to move on from this piece, but something to think about in the future.
Still, from start to end that set shows great improvement. On the the next piece..
I dont usually do this often, but I cant actually give you a crit on where its at now because I feel like they're at a state where you can call them complete and move on to something new
Sybrix & Baddcog : I see what you mean about the obvious mirroring, I think if i just remove some of the fine details from the central stip of metal and bronze it wont look as bad. I will take that into acount for my next piece of work. as you say 'on to the next one'.
Limewax: I have been waiting for your reply and thank you! Your advice really helped me out and I too am happy with what i have learnt from this. I can't wait to get one with my next project.
mnphear: I cant believe i didnt realise it was too strong haha. You are so right its way to dark. will have to tweak that before i put the piece into my portfolio. Thanks for letting me know!
Andy H: Thank you for the comment man! really apreciate it. The sheild was a pain! but i love this handpainted style now! Think I found my calling haha. Time to move on!
So now i am going to start work on my environment. Right now I want to create a small village with farm land, which leads up towards the ruins of a castle or structure. In the world of warcraft style. So from that now I am going to do some concept work and start modeling some props and creating the environment textures.
Here we go!...
Hay jeffro, I see what you mean about the colours very dim. I quickly tweaked it:
Think it looks a lot cooler now, not so dull.
I think its actually done now haha. I can put it to bed. Let me know what you think.
really cool man
Hay man, thanks, Wood took about 10 minutes, i started with a dark brown and then painted in the planks with a lighter shade. I then added the details and pronounced them with high lights. I finished off by adding blue into the shadowed areas, Jeffro showed me how and it adds a lot the texture.
I have not yet UVmapped or textured the peices at this point. I will be working on that over the next few days. My buildings are inspired by that of the Worgen zone of Gilneas. I was attracted to the shapes and angles created by the buildings in this zone and wanted to reproduce this in my environment.
Here are the meshes, so far...
Big Building peices. ( More will be added. )
Building Assets. ( Still need to break up big shapes on windows. )
Possible Building from Assets 1.
Possible Building from Assets 2.
These just quickly demonstrate possible buildings I can throw together once I have tweaked and textured the Assets.
If you guys have any suggestions let me know!!!
Time to texture like crazy! :poly142:
Your modular building stuff looks extremely promising, great work! I'm really excited for updates haha
Thanks Jessica! I learnt a lot from the Axe and Sheild, I have fixed some of the shadows. Just havent posted it. were you talking about the shadows behind the gold studs or others?
Also adding some very crisp cast shadows in certain areas (like coming from parts of the prop that stick out a lot) will be good, and try to give those shadows some volume (don't make them black-hole kindof shadows, but let the texture beneath show through and suggest a little bounce light
Hay man, this is for my masters project. I cant even apply for the blizzard comp becuase i don't study in the US or Canada :poly127:
Mesh without texture.
Applied basic colours to get a feel for how it reads.
Worked out basic wood colour and where shapes would be.
Added wood grain and created sections of rock on window ldge and door frames, also painted handle gold.
Gave wood highlights, worked in detail on the rocks.
Brightened up wood and created windows with bounce light hitting rocks and wood. gave rock archway more geomarty. Happy with it so far, Im sure I need to tweak aspects but im going to move onto texturing the next load.
The texture map.
on to the next one...
Also going back to my Axe and Sheild work I imported them into udk and also changed the Axe a little by breaking up the sections and enlarging the detailed areas, like the blue spicky bit and the blade.
Thanks man, hay im going to be aplying for an internship at Telltale games soon, whats it like working there man?
Oh and I sharpened the texture, thanks for the advice!
Hay man, thanks I too am new to hand painted textures. My best advice is to read through some of the threads posted on here, a lot of talented people are giving great advice. Also I followed a tutorial on www.3dmotive.com which teaches you how to model and hand paint a weapon and sheild using brilliant techniques. It really helped me and im sure it will do the same for you.
Let me know how you get on! look forward in seeing your thread!
The texture map.
I only have one more texture map to finish of the building assets then i can move onto creating the tilable textures for use on the main building and roof. I will post the final one tomorrow and hopefully get some of my tilable done!
Edit: Also wow, Jessica always says something related to my posts while I'm typing it up. :P
Yeah, in addition to using the little hard brush for cleanup, I love Smart Sharpen. But you may want to dupe your work onto a new layer for the Smart Sharpen so you can manually erase some artifacting that might happen with that.
Edit: Alllsoooo one last critique for now. I'd go back and paint some more depth into the stones around the doorway and stairs. It goes from the light hitting the stone to just BLACKNESS. If you make it look like the stones are actually bricks, such as painting a midtone between the crevices, then finally transitioning to the shadows deep in there, it would look way more dimensional. (Isn't that the whole point of hand painted textures?
Andy - I tried to implement what you said about the rocks and make them look more like bricks. As well with the vase which is a chimney top, I darkened the cracks and added highlights.
Jessica- Thanks for the advice on the sharpening too, I also see what you mean about adding final detail with a hard brush at the end, I still need to do this a little. Well done on the project you have just finished! I have been following it for a while, it has really inspired me to go for it!
Also, there you go!! The stones are way more dimensional, looking really good! The chimney also has some nice dimension in those crevices. The only thing right now that's starting to stand out to me is the wood on the door. For some reason, maybe it's the way they're painted, they almost look like strips of old wallpaper that's peeling, if you can see what I'm saying. It just looks like strips of wood pattern placed on top of a dark wall. Try to do what you did with the stones, and maybe also make a smooth gradient from the edge of the planks to the center. That way you'll still have the edges but it won't look flat. I can sort of see when I look super close to the texture sheet where you painted a little bit of the edges that go towards the back of the planks, but it's too subtle, make it pop more just like you did with the stones. I think it's great that you're painting in your shadows so deep, just make sure you include the mid values too.
Keep at it dude, really enjoy this thread!
Texture map:
All modular assets :poly141: Tired....zzzzz
Also I have it on a house that I added the assets too. The rest of the house that has basic colours will be textured this weekend.
The beam at the top of the roof is going to have a wood texture applied to it.