07-11-2006, 04:53 AM
Alright, Well this will be Semi-tutorial on how to make good if not perfect textures that look professional and artistic.
Lets begin by defineing what a Texture is. A texture can be many things, like a Color map, a bump map, a normal map, specular map, displacement map, but we will focus on mainly color maps. We all want the best looking textures and make them look awsome in-game, but where do we Start?
Well lets begin by using your digital camera (if you have one), or regular camera and scanner. For any texture to be useable, follow these guidelines when taking a picture:
- Never use flash unless you must, Flash causes a Hi-light Burn on the photo and is pretty hard to remove in Photoshop.
-Try to use Cloudy days as picture days, because cloudy days offer the light you need without the Sun's light causeing bad shadows that when you use in a texture will look prelit, but you want a hi-light and Shadow free texture.
- This is not necessarily a Photo taking hint for textures but I find it VERY important. A 1024 X 1024 is four times bigger than a 512 X 512. Dont believe me? Well look at it like this, imagine a Grid and there is 1024 on one side and 1024 on the other (measuring in Pixels). now you take a 512 patch of ......paper, and place it on the grid. it will take up 512 by 512 pixel size leaving 1 space above the 512 piece of paper and another pace to the side of it.
Heres a preview:
1 0 2 4
* _ _ _ _
1 l512 l
0 l512 l
2 l 512 l
4 l 512 l
(above)This is a bad example
Well enough fpr today ill continue this tommarow.
Edit: Chart came out Wierd, doesnt allow spacing?? ill put A Jpeg tomarrow.
Lets begin by defineing what a Texture is. A texture can be many things, like a Color map, a bump map, a normal map, specular map, displacement map, but we will focus on mainly color maps. We all want the best looking textures and make them look awsome in-game, but where do we Start?
Well lets begin by using your digital camera (if you have one), or regular camera and scanner. For any texture to be useable, follow these guidelines when taking a picture:
- Never use flash unless you must, Flash causes a Hi-light Burn on the photo and is pretty hard to remove in Photoshop.
-Try to use Cloudy days as picture days, because cloudy days offer the light you need without the Sun's light causeing bad shadows that when you use in a texture will look prelit, but you want a hi-light and Shadow free texture.
- This is not necessarily a Photo taking hint for textures but I find it VERY important. A 1024 X 1024 is four times bigger than a 512 X 512. Dont believe me? Well look at it like this, imagine a Grid and there is 1024 on one side and 1024 on the other (measuring in Pixels). now you take a 512 patch of ......paper, and place it on the grid. it will take up 512 by 512 pixel size leaving 1 space above the 512 piece of paper and another pace to the side of it.
Heres a preview:
1 0 2 4
* _ _ _ _
1 l512 l
0 l512 l
2 l 512 l
4 l 512 l
(above)This is a bad example
Well enough fpr today ill continue this tommarow.
Edit: Chart came out Wierd, doesnt allow spacing?? ill put A Jpeg tomarrow.