Diffuse Workflow/Pipeline (Share opinions and workflows!)

David Wakelin

Hi guys,

I'm currently texturing my character and ive baked a normal, AO, and a specular map in Maya for a Model but wanted to know peoples own workflow on a diffuse.

So far I've painted basic block colours for skin tone and material and then overlaid the baked maps to exaggerate the basic texture, but is there any advice on how to make the colours look like realistic materials? I.e turn my "green creased tshirt" into more of a fabric effect?

Would like to hear people's opinions and own workflows if possible! I'm learning so any advice would be great!

Cheers

tristamus

I don't work on characters but I'm pretty sure it's usually best to start out with an AO bake, then use that as a guide for where / what / how to start painting things. Also, laying down your base color / under-coat colors is important, because then you can go over that with more and more layers of subtle details and such.

ahtiandr

Hi David

I am texturing cloth atm so I decided to show you my workflow here. Not the best I am still learning.

Basically I used just random cloth texture and blurred it to get basic colour variations. Then I used cloth pattern which was also used in zbrush with noise maker to make details in normal map. Then I added some dirt textures as overlay to break the perfect and clean look. Added lots of different colour corrections. Then I added some brown- orange colour to break the green look. The colour was added in normal blending mode but with opacity of around 70% and I used soft large brush with low opacity of around 30%. And finally I copied AO and placed it on top and masked it with black colour and then I painted white in mask channel in the places where I wanted my highlights. The Highlight layer was set to around 70% overlay. That is pretty much it. I hope you will find it useful:)

Here are the breakdowns:


Here is the final result with all maps applied in marmoset:

bugo

@ahtiandr: Hey man, thanks for sharing this, I would slightly not show so much of the fabric as it can cause dithering, or make it a bit bigger? Looks good tho.

David Wakelin

Look forward to hearing more from you all

ZacD

bugo wrote: »

@ahtiandr: Hey man, thanks for sharing this, I would slightly not show so much of the fabric as it can cause dithering, or make it a bit bigger? Looks good tho.

Whitcher 2 has a lot of cloth like that, it does look amazing in cinematics, at medium distance it can look odd and dither, but in 3rd person it looks great again, so it depends on the use I guess :P You could just turn down the contrast on the pattern too, that'd help.

ahtiandr

yeah, bugo is right and when I zoom out in marmoset or even in ps the texture has dithering. But I am doing this for cinematic in UDK and the character will be shown in close distance so it looks fine there but yeah it depends on the distance.

tristamus

ahtiandr wrote: »

Hi David

I am texturing cloth atm so I decided to show you my workflow here. Not the best I am still learning.

Basically I used just random cloth texture and blurred it to get basic colour variations. Then I used cloth pattern which was also used in zbrush with noise maker to make details in normal map. Then I added some dirt textures as overlay to break the perfect and clean look. Added lots of different colour corrections. Then I added some brown- orange colour to break the green look. The colour was added in normal blending mode but with opacity of around 70% and I used soft large brush with low opacity of around 30%. And finally I copied AO and placed it on top and masked it with black colour and then I painted white in mask channel in the places where I wanted my highlights. The Highlight layer was set to around 70% overlay. That is pretty much it. I hope you will find it useful:)

Here are the breakdowns:


Here is the final result with all maps applied in marmoset:

I am so digging that cloth. Nice, man. Looks a bit like Link's tunic too :poly136:

ahtiandr

Thanks tristamus !

I am trying to get the leather at the same quality now. This one doesnt look good to me.

JamesWild

Wouldn't mipmapping sort the dithering out? Unless you've got your GPU drivers set up for performance over quality and oversharpening of mipmaps. (most I've seen allow you to set a bias) I'd expect to see it in Photoshop but not a games engine.

Xendance

JamesWild wrote: »

Wouldn't mipmapping sort the dithering out? Unless you've got your GPU drivers set up for performance over quality and oversharpening of mipmaps. (most I've seen allow you to set a bias) I'd expect to see it in Photoshop but not a games engine.

Yea, it would. Assuming the mip maps are good that is, but for example in UDK you have no control over that because the SDK calculates them by itself when you import. Though it does offer different options for mip generation.

C86G

When overlaying a fabric texture, don´t you get seams where you put your UV seams?

ZacD

C86G wrote: »

When overlaying a fabric texture, don´t you get seams where you put your UV seams?

There's plenty of ways to fix it...

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130217/completely_eliminate_texture_seams_.php?print=1

ahtiandr

JamesWild, I tried to play with the settings in Nvidia control panel and nothing changed in marmoset at least )=

I have some seams but they are only noticeable in a very close up look. But even so, you can get rid of them by using clone tool and 3d painting app like body paint or 3d coat just to name a few. Also almost every real cloth has seams and I usually place my uv seams there to hide them.

cryrid

C86G wrote: »

When overlaying a fabric texture, don´t you get seams where you put your UV seams?

If you put the UV seams where the clothing seams would be, then it should look right.

David Wakelin

What is mipmapping?

David Wakelin

bump

SpeCter

David Wakelin wrote: »

What is mipmapping?

Mipmapping = using smaller resolution textures for objects farther away.

ahtiandr

I actually added just a slight blur of 1.0 to the pattern layer and normal map and the dithering is almost gone but the pattern is still pretty much visible.