Learning handpainted textures
Hey all,
After seeing this thread I really wanted to get in to "Hand Painted" textures. So I started and made this one basing of the tutorial:
As you can see it's not that good and really misses rock definition, any tips on how to do that?
So here is my second attempt:
And my thirth attempt:
If you have any tutorials/tips please let me know on how to improve my skills! And ofcourse let me know what you think!
Zylex
After seeing this thread I really wanted to get in to "Hand Painted" textures. So I started and made this one basing of the tutorial:
As you can see it's not that good and really misses rock definition, any tips on how to do that?
So here is my second attempt:
And my thirth attempt:
If you have any tutorials/tips please let me know on how to improve my skills! And ofcourse let me know what you think!
Zylex
Replies
The wood I'm not too excited about.
I think you applied too much of what you know about brick and mortar to wood.
- The edges of the boards are beveled and worn individually as if they haven't been next to each other since being laid down?
- the nails seem to be laid out more like rivets than flooring nails. SOne nail per board might help. Considering metal and nails are typically high value items in old world construction you wouldn't waste them unless you really needed them.
- Typically flooring is laid out over a series of beams that are spaced out. The nails have to go in specific places to hit the beams. Modern sub flooring and plywood weren't around until the industrial revolution so hitting the beams was pretty important and your nails should hit some kind of underlying structural pattern.
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1102823
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=71221&highlight=hand+painted+textures&page=2
It's probably a bit too crispy.
Oh and this was a attempt on a small dirt texture for a game like minecraft but then with better block graphics.
-Lighting is very important, since hand painted textures generally go in games that don't use normal mapping, high poly counts, or even specs, it's important to paint in the illusion of depth, and you can't do this without thinking about a light source and ambient lighting. Think of your material, how its highlights will look, how the warm colors will affect it. Looking at your textures now they seem a bit flat, as if sitting outside on an overcast day with no lighting information.
-Hue Variance. Hand painted textures have a whimsical quality to 'em, lots of color variance, like i was saying about the lighting above, you're going to want a fairly large pallet.
-Character. Nearly all hand painted textures have cracks, wood grains, whatever. This is where you put the life in the texture, get a little creative and jazz it up a touch by adding that touch of artistic craftiness. I'd recommend looking around on google, look at childrens books, that sorta thing to see what gives wood, stone, etc life in these things. Oh and looking at WOW and Torchlight doesn't hurt either
Here's a hand painted wood texture i made, might give you some ideas:
Great study Crazyfingers, I guess your right about all the stuff! Now I only have to find out how to do this properly;) I hope I did better at this attempt:
Not so sure about the colors though, what do you think?
You are doing some good stuff though. JFletcher's tutorial does a good job at the step by step, but at the risk of making all hand painted textures look the same, i would suggest using it as a base...good stuff though.
these are coming along well, and each one is an improvement. keep it up.
You've definitely got a solid start though
Thanks for all your comments! I tried to interact the cracks some more into the texture and it's better but i'm not there yet. Also I find my stone pretty boring, how can I define the stone more?
this still need lots of work, but in general, something like this.
So far, all your textures here look like:
- um, ok. if I scratch here, then I think it should look like crack. maybe.
You don't think. You need to know. If you don't know, find out. Use google, or go to the oldest subway station in your city, sit there for hours, stare at all cracks on the floor you can find. (Well, at least thats what I find myself doing sometimes
Also, you still using black. Don't. True black is nowhere to be found in nature, therefore its pretty unnatural. Its also creates unwanted contrast in your textures, which is common for photosourced textures, but is no-no in all this handpainted business.
If you got it somehow in your texture, get rid of it. Paint over or whatever, just remove it. It makes your textures look dirty, in a way you don't want it to be dirty.
Don't use dodge and burn. This is fairly common advice for digital painting, and in fact, its kinda overrated, but both dodge and burn are friends with your lazyness. Instead of choosing colors for your shadows or highlights, you let automated tools do the trick for you, and you end up with flat (colorwise) and boring textures. Some day you will find these tools useful in certain cases, but not now.
Don't use photo-overlays. Use photos as references, but never overlay them over handpainted textures. At least if you want it to be still handpainted
Exaggerate your details. Don't paint some 3x4 pixels crack and call it done. Even if it looks like crack, with that size, its one of the details you don't bother to paint. Therefore achieving cleaner and stylish look.
Learn something about how light works. Direct light, bouncing light, etc. Maintain your lightsource position for each element of your texture, unless you painting something specific, like self-illuminated texture.
Study materials. Handpainted or not, marble and asphalt still cracks differently. Same for reflective properties.
It's still not great, but definitely getting where I want to be!
The yellow bits in your previous texture and blue in this texture look almost like glow or something. Glowing isn't very common for stone
I don't know for sure, but it looks like you painting grayscale and then overlaying color on top? Well, don't do it. Mixing color isn't simple, but start doing it as soon as you can, because this grayscale + color will turn into a hard-dying habit pretty quick. There is nothing wrong with it, I know some people who doing quite amazing things that way, but I also think that dealing directly with colors is more productive.
Anyway, if you afraid to paint in colors yet, at least don't use overlay mode (if you using it at all). Its modifying your color, you don't want it. Use Color mode instead.
Another thing to consider, is that colors are affected by surrounding objects and their colors, also your imaginary lightsource also affects highlight colors. There is no way to tell what you had in mind when painting your texture, but you can use that to achieve various results.
You can make your texture look more dark and gloomy simple by changing your light temperature, without messing too much with its contents.
Another thing with your stones is that cloudy feel. I don't know what you doing, but it looks almost like you using some sort of cloud filter to imitate stone facture. If thats the case, or maybe if you doing it by hand, you might want to consider of not doing it anymore.
It works almost like a heightmap. Lighter colors appear to be higher than darker colors. You won't get that much height difference in one stone tile really. Add to that your cracks, painted without any regard to these 'height' differences, and they're almost floating above, effectively ruining all your hard work.
Read this great tutorial by Niklas Jansson
http://www.itchstudios.com/psg/art_tut.htm
I'm pretty sure you can notice which stones are mine. I started with the brown, then the blue, and most recently the green.
I used the darker brown stuff as a reference.
Edit: I've got no idea how to make mortar. how do? :poly122: