What I am asking, is how can I learn how to paint textures. Sure I can learn how to make textures, put them on models. But what about painting shadows and details? Where do I learn the basics to texture painting.
I just learned digital painting and finished the foundation courses about 2 weeks ago. I have lots of practice before I am ready to move into the next stage of game asset creation. Now I have a question as to where I can learn the basics to making textures for models.
I learned about textures from CGCookie, but they never explained what it takes to actually paint the textures. Is there a book I can get from amazon. What is the subject’s name?
Hello,
you can paint textures with photoshop or even with paint. then you can use blender or 3ds max to create a model that gets the texture attached. There are several tutorials on youtube.
Shadows from models are produced by unity. You don’t actually have to paint the shadow on the texture.
Is that what you wanted to know?
i am guessing you mean stylized hand painted textures, not the realistic textures ?
because for the more realistic textures you usually bake down a lot of stuff from a highpoly model.
I already learned how to make normal and bump maps. So being able to make low polygon models look like high polygon models is something I learned how to do. What’s missing from the tutorials and paid videos is the actual paint job. I learned how to do digital painting, but how do I go about painting a 3D model. What are things to avoid, what things are OK. Do I just pick a single color and paint it letting the game engine do the rest of the work? I tried that approach but it looked bad. I tried taking photograph images and using that as a paint brush to paint models. It didn’t look correct, something is wrong with it. I can’t find any course or book on just the topic if textures.
Youtube videos will mess up your skill. It can degrade your knowledge.
I hope I’m not misunderstanding, but unless you are looking for a specific handpainted style, texturing of shadows and small details is not often done by hand.
If you bake an ambient occlusion map from a highpoly model, you have most of the shadow detail that you will need, e.g. from internet:
So then this is combined with textures of e.g. metal, rubber etc (which you can get from photographs (e.g. textures.com) or texture stores (substance source, gametextures.com) for the different parts of the model.
If you’re looking for advice on a handpainted style in particular, someone else might be able to help, but that’s not in my repertoire.
You will need to find a texture that does not have any large-scale lighting or shadows, and preferably one that tiles seamlessly.
For example here is a good metal texture (although it may not look like it at first):
and here’s a bad one (will look horrible):
Because the light has to be created dynamically in the game, driven by separate specular/glossiness or roughness/metallic textures. Whereas the light on this texture will not change when the light in the game changes.
Thank you for showing me the metal textures. And thank you for telling me about the bump maps.
I have not read the book, but the fourth edition of 3D game textures found on amazon looks like the information I am looking for. Maybe next month when I have a little bit of money, I can get it. The 3rd edition looks like it no longer has valid information. It also looks like it’s missing everything that I am looking for. But it’s only 4 USD. :c
I’d suggest a free trial of Substance Painter, and they have tutorials that will walk you through step by step of texturing assets. This includes the “color” channels as well as many others you will learn about. To pick up the correct vocabularly so you can better communicate about this stuff, I’d suggest browsing the polycount wiki which will provide a good overview of the common workflows for game asset creation.
I wouldn’t necessarily go to books as they get outdated quickly. Something else you may try is pluralsight.com. That is a monthly subscription for video tutorials, but agian you can try it for free.
But my primary recommendation would be the free trial of substance, which you’ll be able to use for like 30 or 45 days, and their tutorials are top notch.
And don’t be afraid of watching youtube videos. There is lots of great stuff out there. In fact, for a few subjects I have found the very best instruction anywhere in the form of free youtube videos.
Somebody might show you an inefficient way or outdated way of doing something, but it’s not like you are going to be seriously screwed up as there isn’t a “right” way and a “wrong” way to texture your models. Just efficient and effective or less so.
If you go to the substance website, they’ll give you this model for free and you can follow along step by step. I think they do a good job of explaining the functions of the different channels for a beginner, but if the terminology is holding you back, get up to speed with that at the polycount wiki or just google game asset texturing.
