I want to create a tiled texture to texture a cave dungeon. The texture direction is hand-painted, wow like. I've looked for tutorials, but most are about either sculpting the surface or using photo sourced textures and lot of filters.
I've not so much of a problem when the wall consists of single stones or bricks, but I don't know how to approach a rock/cave like texture. Looking at reference photos I only see lot of small details , I'm currently lacking the ability to catch the core features of the rock and to translate this to some painting technique.

Any help will be appreciated :-)

Can you attach some reference material of what you have in mind, Photos/hand painted textures ?
i will try to help you out.

It is really hard to find some good reference images of a cave, or I just don't know where to look .

Here's an image from diablo3, the slope under the monk:
http://www.planetdiablo.com/images/i...inthemines.jpg

Here's an other image from diablo3, the rocks on the left side:
http://www.planetdiablo.com/images/i...s-overseer.jpg

I'm not trying to exactly match this visual style (due to lacking such great texturing skills), but I want to apply a hand-painted touch to all my textures.

These might help
http://wiki.polycount.com/TexturingT...istic_Textures
http://wiki.polycount.com/CategoryConceptFundamentals

A wild link appears!

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=88996

2nd page has a nice step-through of their process.

Thanks for the link, but I'm already familiar with the tutorials.
This is my current attempt(experimentation level):


Here's an other texture I made to estimate my current skill level:


Edit: ah the work of Orb and alloa on Crasher and DeathMonsters. Fantastic art ! But I'm not looking for sculptered model/textures. I think that the workflow for such texture is quite different to the one I'm trying to achive: create a tileable, painted (and stylized) texture and apply it to a model later (or create the model with the texture in mind, i.e. a modular set).

maybe this will help. captured some of my steps.

i missed the first step, which was to find a rock texture i like on cgtextures or similar site, and paint over it so that i only kept the large forms. when i get home, i'll try and whip up something a bit more clear.

Sectaurs: Wow that looks really nice. I love the subtle colours in the rock. Did you colour pick those colours from the original photo?

Sectaurs, wow ...
Ok, this one inspired me to start the following texture (still grayscale). Well.. currently it looks more like a flesh wound than rock..

added the original photo. colors originated from the source, but once i painted over it i never referenced it again - i would pick from what i had or add more.

I wanted to see the process layered on top of each other, I learned a lot from it, thanks! So I made a gif of it in case it would help others.

Originally Posted by Ashaman73

Sectaurs, wow ...
Ok, this one inspired me to start the following texture (still grayscale). Well.. currently it looks more like a flesh wound than rock..

I think you should try to harden those edges a bit, so it doesnt look like organic stuff.

Sectaurs, your example helped me alot. I would love to reproduce such textures, but I think that I need a few more decades of practise to create such great art.
In the meantime I have created this:

It is not finished yet, but the stylized direction should be clear. C&C are welcome.

Looks like cracked earth

@AShaman: I think you're lacking a sense of depth. Your texture gives the sense of a flat surface with cracks in it. Dygert's has a sense of more variation in height beyond the cracks. Looking forward to seeing more progress on this!

The lack of depth comes from the color, the strokes aren't following the lines and contours, so they're not faking or giving anything. Some of them are even 'floating' on the cracks, which looks very cheap and makes no sense function wise.

I would suggest doing either and overlay or multiply on your colors, or put them 'under' your cracks.

Cracked earth... lacking depth.. back to the canvas.

I'm really struckling to get a rock wall on a tiled wall... for one I have a problem with perspective. Nevermind, here's my next attempt



Feel free to C & C, I'm here to learn

what reference are you using? what kind of rock are you trying to make?

i think your previous attempt was more successful. you just need to keep working at it.


first step!

sketch the lines. get reference, see how rocks are formed, find your shapes. this is where your texture currently sits. i don't think the lines and cracks you have are working very well, though. they feel jagged and noisy and don't flow. no rhythm. try to avoid a lot of cracks that run counter to the rest of the rocks and end abruptly.

reference is key in this step. iteration should be fast. keep sketching until it feels 'right'.

second step!

define your large forms first. establish the rhythm of your texture. this can also be done incredibly quickly - in my paintover it took roughly 5 seconds and you can immediately tell where you're going with this. grab a light color, grab a dark color, and go nuts. blur your eyes, do the forms read? iterate on this until you're happy.

third step!

now it's all matter of pushing up your sleeves and painting. define the forms you just created. third step is vague and huge, but i believe in you!

super-fast paint-over!

Back again with an update. My next attempt with some in between steps and two ingame screenshots:



Ingame:




I've tried to regard all tips sofar. I'm still struggling to find a references which meet my stylized vision, therefor I took the already posted diablo3 screenshots as reference (brown rock). I started with a general flow, went over to paint in the edges and more details and finally do a wild re-coloring (-> JFletchers tutorial).
Thought I need to clean it up and add some more details, but sofar I'm quite happy with the look.

Still, comments and critiques are welcome.

i think it looked better in step 6 before you did whatever you did to destroy the color and values in 7. there are better ways to make it brown without losing all the information you painted previously.


this thread should probably be moved to p&p

This could be of some mild help !