A rant, about using photos in textures.
polycounter lvl 18
what's wrong with it exactly? there's always a few people on the boards who go off about "what ever gets the job done is fine" but i still see a whole bunch of artists never trying to use any photos, ever, and i just don't get it.
i do see it as somewhat honorable that someone might want to hand paint everything, but often, i see it as just a waste of time. I work with a few guys who hand paint everything and never use photographs. With some objects, like wood, for example, why not start with a photo as a base layer? wood is damn hard to paint,and i've maybe once or twice seen a hand painted wood texture that looks like wood. a guy I work with groans when he gets a wood texture assignment because he has a hell of a time painting the stuff. if he'd use a base layer of a photo, manipulate it, color correct it, and add on top of that, he'd have a great looking texture in a fraction of the time.
i used to belive in hand painting everything.. then i started to learn how to acctualy use texture overlays properly, and i started doing most of my color varience/texture varience that way. however, as i continue to do texture work, i find i use photos more and more. it might be lazy, but instead of painting huge burn marks, and other such decals, i find it so much easier to use google image seach and do a process of "photo painting". i'm not saying it's a good way to do things if you want to learn how to paint, but dammit, i get textures done in half the time, if that.
I haven't exactly gotten a straight answer from someone who paints everything as to why they do it, other than they think that photosourcing is cheating, or that they just enjoy painting. if you enjoy painting, all the power too you, i suppose, i'm not going to argue with that. i suppose that painting everything might make you a better artist..
either way
thoughts? what am i missing here.
i do see it as somewhat honorable that someone might want to hand paint everything, but often, i see it as just a waste of time. I work with a few guys who hand paint everything and never use photographs. With some objects, like wood, for example, why not start with a photo as a base layer? wood is damn hard to paint,and i've maybe once or twice seen a hand painted wood texture that looks like wood. a guy I work with groans when he gets a wood texture assignment because he has a hell of a time painting the stuff. if he'd use a base layer of a photo, manipulate it, color correct it, and add on top of that, he'd have a great looking texture in a fraction of the time.
i used to belive in hand painting everything.. then i started to learn how to acctualy use texture overlays properly, and i started doing most of my color varience/texture varience that way. however, as i continue to do texture work, i find i use photos more and more. it might be lazy, but instead of painting huge burn marks, and other such decals, i find it so much easier to use google image seach and do a process of "photo painting". i'm not saying it's a good way to do things if you want to learn how to paint, but dammit, i get textures done in half the time, if that.
I haven't exactly gotten a straight answer from someone who paints everything as to why they do it, other than they think that photosourcing is cheating, or that they just enjoy painting. if you enjoy painting, all the power too you, i suppose, i'm not going to argue with that. i suppose that painting everything might make you a better artist..
either way
thoughts? what am i missing here.
Replies
Anytime I see a straight up photosource texture, with no additions by the artist I cringe, but that's personal taste. I like to see the human touch in games I play.
groans when he gets a wood texture assignment because he has a hell of a time painting the stuff.
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Fire him and get someone efficient! everyone, including the project will profite from that.
I hate it when there's some time pressure going on and some people have been working for a half year on 1 room that doesn't even stand out visually.
sorry, don't think that answers your question.
If it gets the job done, and looks acceptable (ie. it fits in with everything else in the game and doesn't look out of place), then great, go for it.
I'm the same as Nitzmoff, though - whenever I see a texture that's essentially just a photo with little to no editing, it makes me shudder.
That said, take a look at the UT2k3 player textures - theres a whole load of photos in there that I can identify as car engines, machinery, even an MP3/CD player, when I look at the flats - but in-game they've been used on the model in such a way as to not look like a straight-up photo-manip.
So yeah, whatever works.
Painting everything will definitely help you improve as an artist much faster than using photo-sourcing though.
Also, if you want to blend photo-sourcing with painting effectively, you either have to edit the photos a lot, or be able to paint realism very well.
MoP
1) copy your photo-sourced layer
2) add a "Water Color" filter to your new layer
3) crank up the saturation
4) set the opacity to around 30%
[*]i feel the purpose of a texture is to complete the overall illusion of a 3D asset and that if the texture is virtuous in accomplishing its purpose the texture is successful. so the end should justify the means from a developer's persepective. if i can tell it's a photo, photoshop, etc. it's bad.
[*]in scenarios where photo sourcing is more relied upon, i feel starting with a photo to source from is restrictive on many levels. although it may create a more interesting concept assibilation, it definately removes the ability for the artist to develop artisticlly in their weaker areas.
as a creator you can only benefit from less restrictions as in the sense of being able to acutely render or draw/paint anything.
If the product style is realism, use photo source. If the product is painterly, don't.
I evaluate potential hires on their ability to paint and on their ability to get the job done fast, among other things. Good photo-sourcing skills are like any other skill. Some do it well, many don't.
should we not bother if we are capable of sliding our feet into the shoes.
It's only amateurs or college kids that think photosourcing is some kind of no no or requires less skill than painting.
I can do both, they are both hard to do to a high quality degree, combining them is likewise a hard job.
r.
they are both hard to do to a high quality degree, combining them is likewise a hard job.
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Hear hear, Ror. You cut to the chase where I waffle
r.
r.
The walls have eyes!
Now I could understand why some turn to photosourcing when your on a strict deadline, but if your doing a portfolio piece or something then you need to hand paint everything. I don't know how 'the industry' sees it, but I don't think its very impressive to see a great model with a photosourced texture. Just makes me think "wow, you can model, but can you actually paint?". Now if I where someone looking for texture artists for a game im just trying to pump out of my ass, then yes, im going to look for someone who can photosource. But if your working on something like a kingdom hearts type of game, and you have no digital painting skills at all, what are you going to do? I think both skills are important to learn for an industry job, but to be honest I think photosourcing is a lazy way out of texturing.. Just my opinion....
[photosourcing makes me unhappy
I'll leave this pointless debate until it starts up again next year or the year after again...
/me shrugs!
r.
When I see your post, i think, 'wow you can type words, but can you actually think before you press the keys'?
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Hehe.
I agree with what post above, Ror. Doing both techniques is difficult, and it takes good skill to do them well. This is defineatly showcased in the high-end stuff you guys are doing at Epic. I do both myself, depending on the situation. Every game or application is differant, and requires a differant 'look'.
If it gets the job done and looks good - use photos.
The only time I'd say its fine to NOT use photos is if its for a cartoony game like Ratchet & Clank or if you're trying to learn to paint. Otherwise, learn to save time and use photos.
I am, afterall, a photo using WHORE.
I'd say, if you can do more than just take a picture of someone's face and slap it on a model then it's just pure lameness but if you can spruce it up just a bit with some effects, filters, and other touch-ups so it looks like it fits well on the model, then why not?
Same thing with wall, ceiling, and floor textures ... I'd probably do some more work to that texture than just take a picture of said texture. Now, I can't paint walls, ceilings, or floors by scratch so I'm more likely to freak out before I start on such an assignment ... I just haven't found that kind of patience. I'm more of a character guy than a map guy so I feel more comfortable making character textures than regular flat textures. However, I do overlay whatever royalty-free textures I could get my hands on, and experiment with it to see how it would enhance a player skin. Maybe it'll give it that rough look I've always wanted ... who knows!
If I ever get hired by someone in the industry and they tell me that I have to finish it at X amount of time and that deadline is coming up so close, I might as well find every way possible to cheat while staying within legal bounds. If I feel it looks like crap and they tell me not to worry about it then oh well-- it looks like crap ... I just hope I have a workstation to look at the following morning ... but if they give me more time to improve on it, then sure, I'll take advantage of that time and see what I could fix.
For now, I have all the time in the world to complete something since I'm just a hobbyist ... but right now, I'm looking to find ways to speed myself up but not crash into anything. In the pro world, there's these things called deadlines so I have to set myself a deadline and see if I could finish it at said deadline. I try to be realistic with myself and set a time limit I could manage but then I'll progressively go faster when I feel more comfortable.
With that in mind, there are 2 new rules for those against using photos:
Hand paint all your noise.
Manually edit all your blurring.
I really couldn't feel that I did a job well done if i just snapped some pictures and slapped them on as a texture.
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when you're using 750 polys for a head, you'd have to be either the world's best or most lucky digital photographer to slap your photo on and have it meet your geometry and mapping.
likewise for environment textures, not a lot of nature actually tiles. Rabbits don't run around fields of grass removing focal points for you, and medieval architects tended to lack the foresight of making their stonework seamless from the point-of-view of a little silver box with a glass eye in the front held 4 feet away. This is what Photoshop and the artist's skill and experience is for.
obviously, a lot of photosourcing in games IS cack, lazy and detrimental (tomb raider 3, anyone? *shudder*) ... but to do it and use it well is a real skill, and a massively useful one at that.
About a year or so ago, I decided to learn how to paint by hand, and I find it immensely enjoyable, so now, I strictly hand paint everything.
I don't think there is a wrong or right way. If it looks good, it looks good, who cares how it got there?
If it looks good, it looks good, who cares how it got there?
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hear hear
Photosourcing is fine, I do alot of it. I use it for my grit, surface texture, color variation, etc. I like filters too, noise, blur, find edges, etc. An artist I respect one time told me, "use anything you want, as long as it's not evident in the final asset, it's fine"
When learning to create art for any medium, it's good to understand the basics. Even if the game you are working on, requires 100% photosourcing, it will benefit from all your artistic knowledge. Learning to paint, whether it be on real paper, a digital scene in photoshop, or a texture for a 3d model, is a valuable skill, that will benefit you no matter what you do later, photosource, high poly models only, skyboxes, or even lighting levels. It teaches you the foundation of composition, focal points, lighting, material types, specular behavior, falloff, readability, and on and on and on.
I've seen people online, and in the industry and on polycount who never did learn how to paint. They rely fully on photos for everything, and while they can create shippable level assets, they are barely so. They don't understand the foundations of art, because they've always been able to rely on the information presented in the photos they've used, and therefor never developed any kind of aesthetic eye. The assets end up dry, uninspiring, and boring. The best photosourcing I've seen, have been done by people with very strong traditional abilities.
In short, photosourcing is fine, but don't use it as a crutch for the duration of your carreer, learn to properly create a good piece of art, and you'll be able to handle any style thown at you, be it 100% realistic, or heavily stylized, or somewhere in between.
So some time i decided to use photos my self. I took photos from 3d.sk and put them on a model, overpaint, get another part of an intersting feature of the head etc. Result: I can make a unique face out of my imagination without having photos of a person who actaully looks like the face i want to have as end result. Nowerdays i can paint them mydelf without using photos (though some overlays here and there).
I think it was a good leason to use photos and spread my visual imagination. By now i add subtle GI in my textures and i have a lot more knowledge of the heads anatomy and function. Also i can amke stylized heads with realistic textures on it. Its fun.
Here is one of my works when i started using photos as base:
http://www.stephko.viranyi.de/images/pt_char_reskin_murdock.jpg
while this is a work which is fully handmade:
http://www.stephko.viranyi.de/images/pt2_benicio.jpg
My opinion on photosourcing. Use it at least once to see hwo it could look like.
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I don't think its a pointless debate at all. I think if you want to become a well established artist, its better to paint the textures from scratch.
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You're wrong, to become a well established artist you have to show that you can be creative and resourcefull. A good artist should be interested in mastering any discipline that could enhance the quality of his work or help him achieve styles and looks he can't with 1 discipline. I'm pretty sure that any great artist of the past would have been euphoric at the prospect of being able to use overlays to enhance their work, or affect its mood, breaking the limitations of their canvas and paint.
Having that chance now and not wanting to use it is rather stupid. you should not neglect your painting because of photosourcing, but you also shouldn't neglect any other technique because of painting, they all aid eachother.
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but if your doing a portfolio piece or something then you need to hand paint everything. I don't know how 'the industry' sees it,
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Well, if you don't know how the industry sees it anyway, how do you know you need to handpaint everything ?
It's us that's gonna be looking at the portfolio, and the industry says you're wrong. Using photosources in textures still leaves you a lot of painting to do. You should really look into how photosources are properly used in textures. Most of the time you wont be able to spot the photos.
You have to show in your portfolio the BEST you can do in whatever art style you are showcasing, limiting yourself to painting alone is cute and noble, but it's only gonna limit your overall quality and flexibility as an artist. I'd hire a good artist over a good painter anytime, if you know what i mean.
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But if your working on something like a kingdom hearts type of game, and you have no digital painting skills at all, what are you going to do? I think both skills are important to learn for an industry job,
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Correct, althought i bet i could get a painted look starting with photosources if i wanted to. Ignoring one technique is not gonna help your overall skill level. Specially not with the current trend of 'realism for teh win'.
Really, what you do with photosourcing and painting is limited only by your skills and creativity.
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the only problems i have with photosourcing that it is so limited
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It is not, your skills and/or experience handling it properly are limited. If you can paint a face on an empty gray canvas, there's no reason why you couldn't paint one over a concrete texture or another existing face. Whether you manage to take any advantage of the underlying texture is the question.
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My opinion on photosourcing. Use it at least once to see hwo it could look like.
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Probably the worst thing you could do. What about telling people the same about painting ?
Now, how did your first painting look like ? Would you recommend people to drop painting if it doesn't look great, or rather tell them to practice and learn ?
It's the same with photosourcing.
A few examples:
http://www.strangefate.com/Tutorials/textures/tut-ps1.jpg
http://www.strangefate.com/Tutorials/textures/tut-ps2.jpg
http://www.strangefate.com/portfolio/11.jpg (spot the car parts)
http://www.strangefate.com/portfolio/flr48ara.jpg
http://www.strangefate.com/portfolio/flr37ara.jpg
http://www.strangefate.com/portfolio/4.jpg
http://www.strangefate.com/portfolio/8.jpg
The textures are all around 2.5 - 4 years old so it's not the hottest stuff around, the higher polycounts and normalmaps pretty much killed textures as they were, reducing them to mostly simple materials somewhere during the UT2k3 dev ...and i'm mostly a modeler nowadays.
Still, the only handpainted stuff on those textures are the gray shaded bases and highlights after applying the textures.
Now, i really don't see the limits of the technique, you can do anything, incredibly quick too if you have the experience and know what you can get out of what sources (so you don't have to screw around).
And, if you don't like something, you go in and paint over it. Some hundreds textures like that in a few months ? no problem.
I'm sure that most of you tried using photosources, but just like painting, it's not something you can give it a shot and judge it from there with your infinite wisdom. If it's making your work look bad, or 'limiting' you in any way, the problem is probably your lack of experience, not the technique.
The only thing limiting you is the amount of techniques you master.
I said give it at least one shot even if you are a kick-ass painter.
I started painting and paint all my textures. I used photosource once to fnid out how it could look like on the model.
And hey, dont take it to serious strangy..zztzt sounds like i just insulted your work, person, family and pet
By limited i mean, its hard to stay in the style and to make things look like their photosourced counterparts. I really cant stand it that the g.man from HL2 looks awesome but somee handpainted parts look out of place cause they are not photographed. Hard to explain, though. Hope you get it anyway.
Generally I think its important to know both techniques, though I think there are more important skills you should have like poop said (tzraditional media, design etc)
The handpainted parts can be easily made photo-like with some proper overlays and saturation tweaks, that's one of the main points of using sources. If you rely solely on what you have photographed and can't paint, invent, and improvise, then you're doomed of course.
If they failed to match the style, then rather due to lack of time, different Artists and their styles or knowledge on how to blend sources properly, most of the HL2 textures are untouched photographs afterall (with the necessary saturation and basic tweaks of course). I use wood to simulate concrete if i have to, marble for leather, soft metal on skin etc.
You don't have to photograph everything, just know how to mix other things to get the properties you want, and mainly know how the material you're wanting to simulate looks and behaves in real life.
I can't remember any problematic style mismatch in HL2 tho, but has been a while since i played it.
Of course there are more important things you should know obviously, but that was never up to debate here, merely the value of photosourcing in texturing/skinning which is still underestimated.
Being a versatile swiss knife is so much better than being a plain butter knife, eveybody loves swi$$ knifes.
yah guys, i'm not suggesting you grab a photo, slap it on a phong shader, hit the render button, and call it complete. by using photos in textures i'm suggesting using a multi-layered process, mixed with hand painting, and also some painterly-like use/placement of photos.
anyway, i'm not going to add anything cuz i think it's all been spoken. i'm glad that most people seem to have a what-ever-gets-the-job-done-quickly attitude.
I'd also like to apologize profusely to Ror, because i seem to have offended him with the topic.
Ok, well since this is a debate, the most important thing is to hear both sides, and also understand them. Now that I have heard both sides it's easier to form my opinion. In my first post, I really didn't understand a photosourcers standpoint. I can understand using photos and adding more too it to make it your own, but my first encounter with a photosourcer wasn't anything like that. This person hacked some other peoples models together and then found some images on google and applied them to the model. Not much editing invoulved. From that, all I took this for was a lazy ass hackjob artist. Also from that, I formed my first opinion of a photosourcer.
But I guess if you are taking the photos yourself, the photos are yours, and laying them on a model isn't a crime. So..ok, from this thread, that is my new opinion on photosourcing. Now painting, its somewhat more time consuming, but the results are more unique then a photo. Also, on some objects or creatures, its pretty much impossible for photosourcing to come in handy. The only thing photos are good for now is for a base texture. That is where paiting skills come in handy. So in short, photosourcing is good for realistic models and maybe even handy for some other types of models. But as I said before, with a game like kingdom hearts, painting is the main skill you will need. So all im saying is what has been said before I guess, both skills come in handy, some don't like it, but its important to be resourceful and master both skills. I feel like an echo in this thread now, but a very long and elaberate echo.
I also am not strictly a texture artist. I have other areas I am responsible for, so anything I can do quickly, but with desireable quality, I do. Using photographic reference was not only my quickest option, but it was customer preferred for realism. It's a workflow I had to get used to. And no, I have never been able to "slap" a photo on a model and be done. 90% of the time the end result is largely different from the photo I start with, there's alot of tweaking involved in using photos for texture purposes.
But, no way is better than another IMO. I'm a big advocate for whatever gets the job done and looks good, with concern to both techniques.
Usually time and money set the pace, so either way is fine by me in a production environment.
The way I look at it is who am I to judge another artists methods in how they practice their art. My job is only to decided if the media servers the purpose for which it was created for in the first place, to enjoy the results and not over analyze the process.
If someone is trying to create something photo realistic then it makes sense that they should use a photo source. If they see an idea in a photo then it makes sense to expand the idea using the photo as a base.
What is strange is those that are apposed to an artist use of a particular idea or technique is usually another artist.
If i need to use photo overlays for a particular effect or style I will, but it no use saying that you should favour one over the other, because its depends entriely on the style of the project