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TeXture Discussion
- Thread starter Alistair
- Start date
Same here, only I got annoyed by the American accent and as pointed out by Stroker, we may not want another workflow imposed on us. Some things can be done so many different ways...
Nice example Moth, one or two small issues as far as a texture for a game are concerned, but if you're not a texture artist you may not be familiar with certain constraints so no complaints about the work, just to be clear
I think I'll put down some general guidelines for you Alistair so you can apply them however you need.(gonna have my dinner first )
Nice example Moth, one or two small issues as far as a texture for a game are concerned, but if you're not a texture artist you may not be familiar with certain constraints so no complaints about the work, just to be clear
I think I'll put down some general guidelines for you Alistair so you can apply them however you need.(gonna have my dinner first )
Talking specifically about textures for games, the most important thing (almost always) is for them to tile seamlessly. There are some detail type textures where it doesn't matter, or if the texture is designed to create a specific look, but in general having them tile in either one or both directions is a must.
Having said that, getting tiling textures isn't all of it, having a tiling texture with 'artefacts' that show an obvious repeat is just as noticable in a game engine.
This is where we get a bit heavy on images... I think I'd best thumbnail them.
Having said that, getting tiling textures isn't all of it, having a tiling texture with 'artefacts' that show an obvious repeat is just as noticable in a game engine.
This is where we get a bit heavy on images... I think I'd best thumbnail them.
thanks toxinToXin said:
You see, im good at making textures.. thing is is i really need to learn more about them.... i want to get EVEN more organic than I have already gotten 
I'll post some examples of fully tilable textures that I have made (a few out of almost 100)I like them, Alistair! Especially the top one. :}
Some quibbles... The textures you posted give the impression that the grooves are carved into the stone. You may wish to try adding grouting or mortar to make your textures more realistic.
Keep posting your work.
Some quibbles... The textures you posted give the impression that the grooves are carved into the stone. You may wish to try adding grouting or mortar to make your textures more realistic.
Keep posting your work.
I agree with that, but I also have this to add - the marble 'pattern' is consistent between adjacent segments, ie. it follows through from one to the next, sort of disrupts the effect that they are individual pieces.
Thinking out loud, without having to do a lot of work to split them up, a displacement map of the underlying marble would breeak them up a treat whilst maintaining the macro texture tiling.
Now I've seen an example Alistair, you know about the 'power of 2' rule with regards to textures for games.
For anyone else who doesn't - rule 1 : game engines and hardware rendering from them requires that textures be power of 2, ie.
32x32, 32x64, 128x128, 64x256 etc. or permutations thereof, up to 2048x2048 which is the maximum that UT2003 can handle (probably the most advanced engine until DooM3 is released by idSoftware)
without getting bogged down, it's best to stick to 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 in either dimension because of a 'quirk' in the rendering hardware. This is where Moth would have a problem with his texture at 320pixels.
Thinking out loud, without having to do a lot of work to split them up, a displacement map of the underlying marble would breeak them up a treat whilst maintaining the macro texture tiling.
Now I've seen an example Alistair, you know about the 'power of 2' rule with regards to textures for games.
For anyone else who doesn't - rule 1 : game engines and hardware rendering from them requires that textures be power of 2, ie.
32x32, 32x64, 128x128, 64x256 etc. or permutations thereof, up to 2048x2048 which is the maximum that UT2003 can handle (probably the most advanced engine until DooM3 is released by idSoftware)
without getting bogged down, it's best to stick to 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 in either dimension because of a 'quirk' in the rendering hardware. This is where Moth would have a problem with his texture at 320pixels.
Cool!
So the same tricks I use to make clouds tileable will work with a texture? ( ie offset, transform horizontal flip, transform vertical flip.)
When I used my work as a pattern I saw it wasn't seemlessly tiling. The diagonal stripes seemed to be the main problem. Any tips regarding this, ToXin?
[/b]
Ahh, I was just getting to that.
The best and most coolest thing about clouds! excellent that you already noticed if you render clouds on an image that is say 256x256 or 512x512 it automatically tiles seamlessly. (check by using an offset of half the height and width)
As a corollary offset is excellent for checking WIP, just undo it after checking any stage as you go.
As for Diagonal stripes, I was just geting to that as well
your image, ignoring the size issue, doesn't tile horizontally and has some artefact problems...
I'm going to explain how I do stripes, not that this is any better than other ways that anyone can come up with. The same goes for any of the suggestions I'm going to make, all are either my own devising or rattling around in my subconcious from reading things on so many web pages that I've forgotten where I got the inspiration. So to all those who've shared their knowledge, credit and thankyou.
Now, lets say I want some stripes on a 256 square texture:
I divide up my 256 by some even number of imaginary columns, following the power of 2 rule for ease...
I made mine 16, filled a vertical selection measured out using the info tab with an 'almost black', moved the selection over by 16 and filled it with a light orange. The layer then contains a vertical stripe of black & orange, 32 wide in total.
Now, selecting this layer and defining a pattern... makes creating a striped layer quick and easy, plus once you've defined the pattern you can use it over and over.
Fill a new layer with the pattern making a vertical stripey layer, then distort>shear, pulling the top and bottom points to create angled stripes
Once I've got the stripes, that wrap around horizontally btw, I can frame them up using a layer above them, use a layer mask to crop them to fit a shape etc.
One of my facourites is to split the blending sliders and use a clouds layer underneath to make the appear 'worn'....
The best and most coolest thing about clouds! excellent that you already noticed
if you render clouds on an image that is say 256x256 or 512x512 it automatically tiles seamlessly. (check by using an offset of half the height and width)As a corollary offset is excellent for checking WIP, just undo it after checking any stage as you go.
As for Diagonal stripes, I was just geting to that as well
your image, ignoring the size issue, doesn't tile horizontally and has some artefact problems...
I'm going to explain how I do stripes, not that this is any better than other ways that anyone can come up with. The same goes for any of the suggestions I'm going to make, all are either my own devising or rattling around in my subconcious from reading things on so many web pages that I've forgotten where I got the inspiration. So to all those who've shared their knowledge, credit and thankyou.
Now, lets say I want some stripes on a 256 square texture:
I divide up my 256 by some even number of imaginary columns, following the power of 2 rule for ease...
I made mine 16, filled a vertical selection measured out using the info tab with an 'almost black', moved the selection over by 16 and filled it with a light orange. The layer then contains a vertical stripe of black & orange, 32 wide in total.
Now, selecting this layer and defining a pattern... makes creating a striped layer quick and easy, plus once you've defined the pattern you can use it over and over.
Fill a new layer with the pattern making a vertical stripey layer, then distort>shear, pulling the top and bottom points to create angled stripes
Once I've got the stripes, that wrap around horizontally btw, I can frame them up using a layer above them, use a layer mask to crop them to fit a shape etc.
One of my facourites is to split the blending sliders and use a clouds layer underneath to make the appear 'worn'....
Going back to the clouds filter - pretty quick and hassle free way of getting a base to work from. I try to get to a stage where an observer can't tell which filters have been used, basically if a person with a knowledge of Photoshop thinks ' how was that done?' I'm onto something good.
For anyone who notices detail, I deliberately used an off black and orange rather than yellow and black.
This gives a bit more room for fine tuning, say using a burn layer or something. If you take the time to analyse game textures, the colours and hues are predominantly low saturation subdues tones. A prime example the palette for Quake2, oh so long ago... a specific palette od 256 colour for the whole game!
Taking this a bit further, I have my own little theory about why this is the case - all modern game engines have a lights engine in the compiling stage, basically the designers specify lights entities that then erm 'light' the level. So garish colours in textures combined with lighting would be horrendous. subdues de-saturated textures work because the lighting lifts them once the engine is handling a rendered environment. Its about subtlety and realism. Feel free to put me right.
This topic is starting to get me thinking in circles, ideas boucing out of one train of thought into a fresh direction... sorry if I'm driving you nuts, I have a headache myself ;\
For anyone who notices detail, I deliberately used an off black and orange rather than yellow and black.
This gives a bit more room for fine tuning, say using a burn layer or something. If you take the time to analyse game textures, the colours and hues are predominantly low saturation subdues tones. A prime example the palette for Quake2, oh so long ago... a specific palette od 256 colour for the whole game!
Taking this a bit further, I have my own little theory about why this is the case - all modern game engines have a lights engine in the compiling stage, basically the designers specify lights entities that then erm 'light' the level. So garish colours in textures combined with lighting would be horrendous. subdues de-saturated textures work because the lighting lifts them once the engine is handling a rendered environment. Its about subtlety and realism. Feel free to put me right.
This topic is starting to get me thinking in circles, ideas boucing out of one train of thought into a fresh direction... sorry if I'm driving you nuts, I have a headache myself ;\
Don't worry about it ToXin. I'm just happy you took the time to explain some of these things to me. What I know about game engines and textures wouldn't even fill an index card.
I love the feeling when the Muse is flowing and ideas bounce here and there. It doesn't drive me nuts at all.
Regards.
Very briefly about 'artefacts'...
tiles ok, 256 square...
Tile it four times, start to notice a 'pattern'
Imagine it on an open expanse, say an outside area in a game...
Refer back to Moth's texture that I illustrated tiled alongside itself - the 'damaged' areas stand out as do the detail around the 'rivets'. The rivets themselves are ok because they would appear to be uniform anyway!
I know this is a little extreme as an example, but the point is that some features within an image may not stand out, until you see it tiled over a wider area. (in a game engine, outside areas, rocks and metal corridors etc. are suceptable to this effect, even more so if the engine uses Mip-Mapping)
Refer back to Moth's texture that I illustrated tiled alongside itself - the 'damaged' areas stand out as do the detail around the 'rivets'. The rivets themselves are ok because they would appear to be uniform anyway!
I know this is a little extreme as an example, but the point is that some features within an image may not stand out, until you see it tiled over a wider area. (in a game engine, outside areas, rocks and metal corridors etc. are suceptable to this effect, even more so if the engine uses Mip-Mapping)
thats most sick example i've seen... its..... wow really noticable that its tiling [stuned] lol. I'm working on that... my game engine allows us to use four textures that each tile another in all directions.. so its not just one tile but like 4... so its not as noticable
I can't help it. I just gotta talk a little bit about that video. Well, at least the beginning that I watched.
First, don't use a pure black or white background. Pick something neutral, preferably kind of close to the general colour of the model. Pure black or white will play tricks on your eyes.
Second, have some extra space around the elements that your are painting. In the video, the guy cuts the elements right up to the edge - don't do this. Again, this will help lessen tricks being played on your eyes. Also, you might get artifacts when the object is rendered in game (I think this has to do with mip mapping, but I'm not entirely sure).
Tiling!
Tiling in big, open spaces is a problem. The only solution I can think of right now is to stagger several textures.
Let's say you have a big field of grass and it tiles really bad. If your geometry allows for it, use several grass textures and rotate a few of them here and there by differing degrees. Actually, you might be able to get away with one texture that is rotated arbitrarily through out the playing field. If you have several grass textures, then don't use them in the same pattern and toss in some rotating.
But avoiding tiling in open spaces is more difficult than that. It seriously requires planning in the geometry department. Once you get the hang of that, then concentrate on getting geometry and tile sets to work well together.
First, don't use a pure black or white background. Pick something neutral, preferably kind of close to the general colour of the model. Pure black or white will play tricks on your eyes.
Second, have some extra space around the elements that your are painting. In the video, the guy cuts the elements right up to the edge - don't do this. Again, this will help lessen tricks being played on your eyes. Also, you might get artifacts when the object is rendered in game (I think this has to do with mip mapping, but I'm not entirely sure).
Tiling!
Tiling in big, open spaces is a problem. The only solution I can think of right now is to stagger several textures.
Let's say you have a big field of grass and it tiles really bad. If your geometry allows for it, use several grass textures and rotate a few of them here and there by differing degrees. Actually, you might be able to get away with one texture that is rotated arbitrarily through out the playing field. If you have several grass textures, then don't use them in the same pattern and toss in some rotating.
But avoiding tiling in open spaces is more difficult than that. It seriously requires planning in the geometry department. Once you get the hang of that, then concentrate on getting geometry and tile sets to work well together.
The tiling issue, in brief from what I know(which isn't much)
Yes Alistair, you've got an advantage in having what are referred to as 'random tiling texture sets'
I know a couple of game engines that used this principle, but the random tiling of a set of up to 10 textures ina 'family' was only done by the software mode - hardware rendering, which is what most people had access to and now everyone does, only used the first texture in the set... I don't know if this holds true for the latest game engines.
More about this later to answer Mark's question. I didn't have time last night [honesty]
I also agree with Stroker, I found during quite a lot of that video I was talking to myself saying ' don't do it that way...' I've only watched the first few minutes as well.
Yes Alistair, you've got an advantage in having what are referred to as 'random tiling texture sets'
I know a couple of game engines that used this principle, but the random tiling of a set of up to 10 textures ina 'family' was only done by the software mode - hardware rendering, which is what most people had access to and now everyone does, only used the first texture in the set... I don't know if this holds true for the latest game engines.
More about this later to answer Mark's question. I didn't have time last night [honesty]
I also agree with Stroker, I found during quite a lot of that video I was talking to myself saying ' don't do it that way...' I've only watched the first few minutes as well.