Painted Textures
polycounter lvl 10
Hey guys! I've come to realize that among all the disciplines in game art, painting textures is by far my favorite 
So I'm starting this thread with the intent of getting feedback while I build a texture library. Eventually, I want to explore all different kinds of surfaces - so far my portfolio consists of some pretty standard ones (stone, wood, dirt - I haven't even tried metal yet!), so I'd like to add some more variety. Any suggestions for interesting surfaces to try, that would be awesome :]:] Mostly I want to make tileables, but here and there I might texture a small, unique prop to change it up. I plan for this thread to be a long-term one that I keep adding to, not really looking for an end, just improvement.
Here's a stone texture I'm working on right now:
Critique and comments welcome.
So I'm starting this thread with the intent of getting feedback while I build a texture library. Eventually, I want to explore all different kinds of surfaces - so far my portfolio consists of some pretty standard ones (stone, wood, dirt - I haven't even tried metal yet!), so I'd like to add some more variety. Any suggestions for interesting surfaces to try, that would be awesome :]:] Mostly I want to make tileables, but here and there I might texture a small, unique prop to change it up. I plan for this thread to be a long-term one that I keep adding to, not really looking for an end, just improvement.Here's a stone texture I'm working on right now:
Critique and comments welcome.
Replies
if you are doing this just for a library I'd keep the lighting pretty consistency direction wise so its easier to swap and throw stuff in, you want to try to make the lighting on textures match the real lighting in the enviroment.
TicoTaco - I start from a blank doc
A couple of the blue stones feel really soft and rounded; It doesn't come off as stone but some fuzzy blue blur. I think if you just picked a couple of parts of the to define the edge a little more it wouldn't be so distracting.
Gannon - I'll work on those fuzzy blurs haha - I used a soft brush as a start for faking some deeper insets, but I will try to make them more convincing/less distracting now - thank you for the crit!
I think it looks great. I live how you've got some tiles that are sunken in. Maybe try accentuation that. At the moment it looks like just a few are pushed directly down. It might pay to experiment with having some that are pushed down at one end only, if that makes sense.
Keep it up. Awesome work as always.
ZacD - No, I'm painting it by sampling directly from the normal sphere. I feel like I have more control this way, and get a cleaner map- no lumpy edge artifacting that sometimes results from the filters. I will use Crazybump for some subtle surface detail though.
Would love to see an example of yours
First of all : Awesome work, love the flow of yor texture, I like the painty feeling.
Next : I feel like the stone could need some detailling. I think sharpening the lights around the knock and bruises. I think adding a little more contrast could do some good too. Last, the yellow/orange stones look to me like they're a little higher than the other, if so, the shadow could be a little stronger on the inside stones.
Keep up the beast work !
Will be watching
The old school hand painting normal maps thing is cool. It's super unpredictable though. It's probably easier to paint a height map and run that through nDO/CrazyBump. But I'm super looking forward to your take on it. Livestream that so I can watch what you end up doing please.
http://dev.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=53626
The ground texture you have is good. Like Gannon says the blue stones don't match. Also the values are all around each other. I would push some brighter brights and darker darks in the texture. Try running a levels adjustment over this and knocking down the flatline areas.
Chris - Thank you for the advice - I will make a couple normal-sphere painted maps, a couple grayscale ones, and then compare the qualities
Serith - No, I haven't tried ZBrushing textures yet, but I'd like to sometime throughout the course of this thread!
Scythe - Thanks very much for the critique.
Jeff - Thanks for the thought! I had taken that into consideration. For now I'd just like to focus on each texture by itself, but if I did want to put these together in a scene one day, I agree I'd probably have to rework them for cohesiveness. Also I will try to record the normal map painting, and thanks for the critiques on my stone. I still struggle a good deal with getting a good value range; hopefully I've improved it with my update below. Let me know if you think it still needs pushing!
Slowly but surely, progress! Added some surface detail and tried to push contrast in value levels. I feel like I may have over-saturated the oranges when making them darker . . . thoughts?
And a before and after thingy for your reference:
Also, here's a little chair I sketched and modeled for the next texture I wanna practice - wood. Critique and comments welcome on design and poly-usage:
Thanks in advance!
Jessica
Also, the stone texture, is it for a wall or floor, and would that change the lighting and shadow information much?
As for the Normal painting idea, just remember that Normals and Spec compensate each other more then anything.
Nice chair Jess! Add a few more splits to the back of the chair to smooth out the silhouette. You can probably reduce the polys in the top part of the back too. Nice piece and design though. The little cylinder on the side I would just remove and paint on. There is too many polys in that piece.
@salacious_Crumb Personally filters aside from sharpen and offset (to tile) I don't use. Not that it's cheating but that I can't use filters and make the textures look decent. Where the texture is used always changes the lighting and shadow information a ton. The same can be said for location. If it's near a light/volcano/etc or just in a standard area/room.
I think the one thing on the texture is still that the 'deep set' stones just look different.
I think they still need that sharp beveled highlight like the rest, but maybe just less light/thinner highlight. Just so that top edge still has definition. Right now they just look rounded off/heavily shaded evenly from all sides.
On that chair I think you can remove a few edge loops on the arms and other places, and keep the silhouette looking nice.
EiGHT - YESSIR
Ace_Angel - Thanks for the reminder
Baddcog - Will get on that! I appreciate the crit.
njc6425 - Thanks for the encouraging comments ^_^
Jeff, Denny, KennyTles - yay for the optimization suggestions!! x] - I was able to cut over 100 tris while maintaining the silhouette. New geo:
Here are some colors. Critique and comments welcome:
Why would you not want to do that? Because if any other artist on your team (even yourself) uses this texture anywhere else in the world, they would never get their UVs laid out in the exact same direction as you.
Also, what if the cuts in the geo conflict with the direction/alignment of the lighting on the texture and the direction of the sun?
Rule of thumb is when you make hand painted objects / character, you must paint top-down lighting, and when making tiling environmental textures, you must use straight-on lighting (you can sometimes get away with top-down lighting). This way if any artist uses your texture anywhere else in the world, you won't have conflicts with lights.
This will help create the illusion of depth a bit more too. Have your raised, flat surfaces be the brighter areas and your slanted / receding surfaces be darker.
Can't wait too see what's next, Jessica. Show moar textures.
Haiasi - Thanks so much for the explanation and paintover :] As you said lighting is rather studio-dependent, I will continue to paint from a top left 45-degree angle to cater to some of the studios in my area. But I definitely understand what you are saying about lighting conflicts and glad that you have made me of aware of this.
Update! - my stone texture with spec and normals. Also, I recorded my process for the normals (went overboard with the editing ... lol xD):
Render:
Diffuse:
Spec:
Normal:
[ame="
Also, here's my wood diffuse texture so far:
Critique and comments welcome! :]
Keep it up.
Cool Stuff!
Anyway im a big fan of your work and it's always great to find an update by you
Your work is terrific. I can't seem to figure out how it is that a company hasn't picked you up yet. You have enough in your portfolio to get their attention.
Not really sold on the foliage on the chair legs, what about some planes and some of the stuff you used on the house?
I also think the legs could do with a solid beam holing the legs together. It doesnt have to be large as you wouldn't want to lose the opening below the seat, but right now the shape of the legs reminds me of building balsa airplanes and how weak the formers (bulkheads( are before gluing on the stringers....
In any event, I also really like this idea of a long term project to build on and improve your work....
Either way, you are ready, get it out there in front of the companies.
Great work too
One small critique: Your chair kinda lacks support where a lot of the pressure/weight will be applied. The horizontal running planks make it look really weak and don't give the impression that it could hold a person's weight. I would add some supporting structure, maybe similar to the front of the chair?
I would also be interested in seeing the normal-map in action. I would probably just have used something like CrazyBump to create a normal map from the diffuse and then maybe paint over it.. but that's probably just because I'm lazy
If these are the kinds of brushes and strokes you are comfortable working with i would suggest you work at four times your target resolution.
my only critic on the chair would be that some of the veins you painted don't really make sense... like on the chair's feet or the arm support. I mean you have horizontal veins ends in the feet on one side and then vertical veins on the other side......but that might just be really a nitpick
sry if this has already been asked!