In my case, it's pretty simple. My deadlines have never allowed me the time to learn how to paint textures with photo-realism. I also have no formal art training, am completely self-taught, and have to do what I gotta do to survive. I also am not strictly a texture artist. I have other areas I am responsible for, so…
In my view, it completely depends on the needs of the job. Who are you creating the content for? Other artists or the people buying the product? Most of your paying customers are not game artists. If the product style is realism, use photo source. If the product is painterly, don't. I evaluate potential hires on their…
Hand painting everything is a good way to learn how to paint. I was like that too, I never used a photo. In fact, everything on my site, since it's from at least half a year ago, is all hand painted. But once I got into a faster-paced production setting where we were going for realism, I had to jump on the photo bandwagon,…
I'm not going to attempt to paint a realistic wood texture when I currently own a nice digital camera, which is sitting on my nice wooden (yet fake) computer desk. But, if it were a wood texture for a tree house asset in a cartoon-like childrens game, I'd go wild with it. If style and color is your goal, hand paint. If…
Congratulations, you're an artist working to deadlines! 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,…
[ QUOTE ] 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. [/ QUOTE ] 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…