Camera for Making Textures and more...
So I recently purchased a camera in order to take photos of buildings or objects that I need to model. I figured it can also be used to make texture assets as well, I know that most textures for games are made from photographs.
Does anyone have any advice or known tutorials that can help me make better use of my camera?
Does anyone have any advice or known tutorials that can help me make better use of my camera?
Replies
Also you want to avoid having pure white or pure black in your photos, you can always lighten something up in photoshop, but if it is pure white or black and lighting imformation there is gone.
i used it bunch of times during sunny days to brighten walls that were standing in shade. this worked well.
if it's really dark then using lens will result in extremely strong highlights and really dark shadows, uneven brightness on photo etc. this kind of photos are either useless or big pain in the ass to turn into textures.
i used to experiment with sticking paper onto flash to soften it and it does help reduce the contrast, but again it's not a trick that would help with really dark surfaces.
Here's a good but simple set of guidelines to follow when photographing surfaces for texture use:
http://cgtextures.com/content.php?action=tutorial&name=shootingtextures
That's a great reference. But this is contingent on the use of photo as the texture. If you wanted to create textures using packages like zbrush and mudbox, it matters not how the texture reads in the photo. (obviously blurry is bad). However, if your polypainting, this matters.
I do however model in 3Ds Max, is this tutorial not useful for that Crazyeyes?
I use zbrush for textures. You just can't get the fidelity you want with maya or max when it comes to things like rocks or brick.
Also zbrush is not just for characters, studios like Epic and Vigil rely on it for their weapons and environments.
depends on the style of your game i guess, but generally i would say "no"? are models with a tricount > 500 overused? is the rampant use of textures instead of simple phong colors really the way to go?
It can depend on the tech and type of game. But, then again it can also just be a shitty created surface. Alot of times memory is a huge factor. I know that COD sacrifices bump and spec on surfaces that don't necessarily need it. Plaster walls for example. Personally i think anything that starts in zbrush as a sculpt and/or color map looks better if done right.
It's really up to you and what looks good. For me, I've just realized over time that zbrush works if a solid work flow is worked out.
There are alot of tutorials on the polycount wiki related to creating textures in zbrush. Might be worth checking out.