Tipps for Texturing a Model... Thread

So our team is kind of dilemma. We have a few models and they are pretty sweet! Only problem: How to texture them? I thought indieDB might be a nice place to get a few ideas on how to get started with texturing a model (already unwrapped ofc.) and how to get a realistic looking result (for surfaces like metal, plastic, etc.). Tutorials would be fine too! Thank you in advance to anyone who is willing to share some of their knowledge, without commenting "ugh, how is this my problem"!

Bake an AO map from your highpoly to your low poly then use photo sourced pictures of metals or fabrics to give it some life.

Or have a look at the masses of tutorials online.
Google.co.uk

I would use 3d coat, you can grab the demo, off steam.
This allows you to model, paint, uv and export all in one program and has photoshop like tools.
3d-coat.com

Thanks for the tipps! 3D-Coat looks pretty nice, are there any open source alternatives for something like that?

Blender, but its got a far... far!, steeper learning curve. (imo)
Blender.org

But once you DO get it, it's a very versatile program. I recommend finding a list of the hot-keys and memorizing them and what they do. They're at least half the interface.

If you're looking for good results and the engine supports it, you may want to look into Physically Based materials (link, link, link). That way your textures are based around the physical properties of the materials they're trying to represent, which can make the whole process generally faster and more consistent vs older shading models. There are also tools such as Quixel's DDO and Allegorithmic's Substance programs which can also make the texturing process faster (providing you have a few maps baked out first).

Thanks for the tipps everyone! We are using Blender at the moment, but it doesn't support texture paint or anything like that....Quixel actually looks really interesting and just like the kinda thing we are looking for

Edited by: Borzi

Borzi wrote: Thanks for the tipps everyone! We are using Blender at the moment, but it doesn't support texture paint or anything like that....Quixel actually looks really interesting and just like the kinda thing we are looking for

DDO is also now free and nDo2 (old versions) 3Do comming soon..., however these work better as cryrid said when you already have a base to work with.
Blender does support texture painting, see here.
Vimeo.com

True...but yeah its best do it with unwrapped maps etc. as it gives a more realistic look (from what I have seen).

Edited by: Borzi

I've used Blender (2.49b) texture painting quite a bit and found it very versatile. I can't compare it against commercial programs but between the texture painting and baking textures I've done some pretty neat stuff. IE yesterday I took a fractal graphic I made in Gimp & wanted it on a UV map on a cube so I used the baking feature to bake my texture that was applied to a sphere to the cube & it's UV map. Now the texture wraps around the cube nicely, very little thinking on my part involved.

Hmmm...that's pretty interesting! Anybody know if dDo is compatible with Blender? I am actually considering buying the freelance license for 99$ (or pre ordering it). Seems like its worth the low price.

Borzi wrote: Hmmm...that's pretty interesting! Anybody know if dDo is compatible with Blender? I am actually considering buying the freelance license for 99$ (or pre ordering it). Seems like its worth the low price.

Ddo works with color maps, not models. So you save out a texture with different colored uv-islands. Each of the colors signifies a certain materials, e.g. wood, metal, stone, which you can then tweak in Ddo. You can try it out for a whole month. I did that and decided to skip it.

And I truly think you should learn how to make a texture the traditional way (painting/overlaying in PS/Gimp) and learn the different maps and what they do (specular, gloss, normal, displacement/height, diffuse). If you jump into Ddo right away, you will fumble around and make random looking textures, because you'll have no clue of what you want or how to get there. Truly this program can give you decent base painting for your textures and it lets you apply high-frequencey as well as low-frequency detail, BUT I have seen people do the most horrible textures with Ddo, too (saw some wooden crates that looked like blackened metal.)

Like people said here from the start: check youtube, check polycount, check google! There are tons of tutorials involving texturing, and if one is too difficult, do another one first! And no program, no matter how sophisticated, will replace individual style and knowledge of color and design. This is a process you only learn through trial and error. Here is a link:
Wiki.polycount.com

Edited by: SinKing

Someone wrote: Anybody know if dDo is compatible with Blender?

The results of it will be compatible with any program, but the usage itself requires Photoshop. On the other hand the Substance programs work the same way but are completely standalone (and even offer an alternative to Photoshop in some regards). The 50% sale ends today as well, if that offers any sway.

To play devil's advocate and defend these programs, I would say they can (and should) be used as learning aids as well. By offering realtime feed back you can easily study what different roughness values mean to the end result, if you wanted to. You could also study any template material provided to get a better idea of how they were created and why they are using the values that they are - to learn what makes wood look different than gold. Ultimately laying down a brush stroke or overlaying two layers/nodes will have the same result either way, and will involve the same artistic journey. They're just tools in the end, and what really matters is how they are put to use, and by who. Starting off the traditional way will offer no inherent ward against bad results as you'll find mountains of bad Photoshop textures when (like Sinking said) the artist has no sense of style or desire to study and learn the material properties involved.

SinKing wrote:
And I truly think you should learn how to make a texture the traditional way (painting/overlaying in PS/Gimp) and learn the different maps and what they do (specular, gloss, normal, displacement/height, diffuse). If you jump into Ddo right away, you will fumble around and make random looking textures, because you'll have no clue of what you want or how to get there.

Haha we are not complete noobs in the art of texturing, we are just not very good at it (I suppose I didnt phrase that properly in the top article) xD Hence why I think dD would be a pretty cool addition to our tools.

Edited by: Borzi

You can also try Recon Model Viewer, a 3D Asset viewer/editor. It is a FREE tool.

Find it at www[dot]covertengine[dot]com

Edited by: bostonvex