Procedural maps Vs PhotoShop Texture Painting

Mohamed Rotab · Jun 2008

Hello Guys ,
I had this task few weeks ago to make next-gen weapon , I followed the normal next-gen pipeline ( That i know ) which includes :

HighPoly model creation > LowPoly Mode > Unwrapping > Normal Map and Ambien occlusion Baking > Diffuse and Specular maps painting in photoshop .
The final result was very satisfying ( according to the lead artist and art manager opinion ) ( sorry can't publish any images due to NDA ) .

But this was not the client opinion . They said that photoshop texturing is ( not a widely recognised Next Gen technique ). and instead of that , we should apply procedural shaders and maps to the HighPoly model ( Inside 3dsmax ) and bake it ( Both the diffuse and the specular map ) into the LowPoly model plus a minor adjustment in photoshop .

when i compare the model i did with the refrence model they send us ( based on procedural maps ) it's very obvious it's very blurry and looks past-gen to me .. while the one we did is looking just fine .

I was wondering if this is true and if procedural shaders and maps are the way to go to create next-gen art .

warby · Jun 2008

i have never done that and don't know anyone that does

Rob Galanakis · Jun 2008

Sometimes environmental artists will use something like Dark Tree to lay down base textures and generate maps, but they will almost always undergo significant treatment in Photoshop. And I don't know anyone that would use that on weapons, at least not yet.

EarthQuake · Jun 2008

Yeah they are full of shit and have no idea what they are talking about.

Neox · Jun 2008

Well it's the cheap way to get content done, art wise not the best way, but it's fast and becasue of that cheap, "Nextgen" titles are full of highly detailled assets, and soooo many studios and even more publishers don't to do less but better assets, they just want giant highly detailled world for the chepest price they can get.
So if you think of "nextgen" especially for smaller studios it's somehow the way they say it is, not that it is better, i've seen this alot and i don't like it. Smaller sets with more love are definitely a thing i'd always prefer instead of giant world with thousands of generic assets.

Kawe · Jun 2008

It depends. I've seen (not used) some pretty nice procedural map generators. However I think you should always give some love in Photoshop. If machines could do everything then this board wouldn't exist

EDIT: Here's something I read about in 3DWorld 99. http://www.mapzoneeditor.com/
It seemed pretty nice (nodes are awesome). Not sure how well it works out with more complex objects though.

Murdoc · Jun 2008

Probably what they were talking about is what they did on Heavenly Sword, this isn't the use of procedurals on the low poly model.

You model and texture everything in high res, using procedural maps or photoshop maps tiles on all the peices. The reason you would do this is you can then rearrange everything into a new model if you wanted or make quick adjustments on detail.

Then just bake the normal, diffuse, spec, whatever else to the low poly shell.

I've only heard of Heavenly Sword using this method and personally don't think there is a lot of gain unless you have a lot of objects that look very similar.

pior · Jun 2008

Darktree is indeed quite cool, you can get cool leather and similar materials at no cost. And I think it's rather easy to bake down. Used it only once but plan to use it again to generate quick surface information on the highpoly source.

Mark Dygert · Jun 2008

Personally nothing beats knowing how to paint/manipulate good maps. Procedural maps have their place and can be a great starting place but I've never seen them be the end all to a material pipeline that actually looked decent.

I use them to start maps, concrete, wood and mostly metal. The advantage is that you can set a procedurals material to always follow a world axis and then bake that into your jumbled UV mess. Having the seams be (more or less) correct and the pattern facing the right way on the final model regardless of the way the UV pieces are laid out. But at best its normally a "decent start" not a quality final product.

Also depending on the app you use to do the baking, most will correctly color the padding making a final bake after painting and retouching a breeze to do padding.

Richard Kain · Jun 2008

Procedural tools for texturing have come a long way. They are now quite robust, and you can make some very impressive repeating textures with them. For certain applications, I could definitely see their use speeding up the development process. One of the biggest advantages of procedural mapping is that it is considerably more scalable than painted textures. (being largely based on vectors) If you've constructed a procedural texture properly, it will look twice as detailed at twice the resolution, whereas a painted texture will only look its best at the resolution it is painted at. (scaling it up or down will decrease the quality, even if only a little bit)

One of the big disadvantages of procedural textures is that they tend to make the texture work throughout a game look very..."samey." Their use almost insures a certain lack of stylistic diversity. Also, I've found that procedural textures also tend to have an "artificial" feel to them. It is almost as if they look too clean. Moreover, procedurals are ideal for repeating textures, but next to useless for unique textures. I would never use procedural texturing for a non-repeating model. You might as well try texturing your model in Illustrator, you'd probably get a similar result.

I think procedural textures are good for environment modeling, especially for prototyping. (they are a great way to fill an environment with decent-looking textures quickly) But for the end product, you will always get the best result using painted textures.

Mohamed Rotab · Jun 2008

Thank you guys for all the help .. i guess i can understand now that Procedural maps is good as a starting base where further and extensive photoshop work comes .
It's just this sentence ( ( not a widely recognised Next Gen technique ) ) that worried me alot i suddenly thought that i have become an old fashion

Thanks again for the help .. all appreciated .

Kevin Albers · Jun 2008

I've used dark tree shaders as a starting point for next gen textures with good results, but it still involved a fair amount of photoshop work. Clearly the clients don't know as much as they think they know if they think most next-gen textures are made without photoshop.

Eric Chadwick · Jun 2008

Here's an example of a good procedural...

(click)

...but it takes a pretty deep tree of nodes to get results like this. Once you set it up the variations are a snap, and normalmaps, specmaps, etc. are generated automatically. Still, it's very hard to avoid that procedural look. Painting skills are still a very necessary part of texturing.

PaK · Jun 2008

I understand the motivation to keep things procedural, but i seriously doubt those are the motivations behind the instructions you received.

In my opinion, unless the project has a very defined pipeline that saves the production highpoly model for future editing and reworking, there is NO good reason to force an artist down a certain path of production.

-R

Sage · Jun 2008

Ah come on guys just because you make excellent art for AAA games that make most people drool doesn't mean you are right. Procedural textures alone rule and bitmaps drool simple as that.

Now on a serious note, I'm sorry you have to deal with that kind of mentality. Procedurals work hand and hand with bitmaps (photoshop textures). They are not meant to replace bitmaps they are meant to work together. Also good materials with procedurals can take their sweet time to render, so this is probably not for games. Is this an art test? If it is you might be better off working for someone else if you can afford it. It would bother me to have to deal with that kind of nonsense.

On a side note they might be referring to combining normal maps so they look good up close and from far away, which is a slightly different than just using one 1024 x 1024 to texture the weapon. You have a smaller seamless texture that gets mixed in with a larger texture so it has sharp small details when you get close up.

Ryno · Jun 2008

For a weapon? Where you need direction specific scratches on the slide and ammo cartridges? And dirt and grime where your hand meets the stock? Completely procedurally with no custom-cut masks? Mmmm hmmmm.

Put down the crackpipe because that shit is never going to happen.

Procedurals can be a good base, just as you can quickly make a good base in Photoshop. They are an option for starting something. But not something that you can rely upon to get you 100% of the way there. Shit, in most cases they can't even get you 70% of the way there.

Procedural maps Vs PhotoShop Texture Painting

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