Texturing tips for low poly models?

Posts

• vfxart1246 PNWPosts: 267Member

  November 2006 #2

  

  First I guess I'd ask what kind of texture you want... you can do UV or procedural stuff, but if you decide to do UV/bitmap textures, you have more choices: make tiling maps that represent surface properties of panels, etc. and smaller ones for decals of specific areas for detail, or you can produce a single image or series of images that contain all of the information. You can also produce three maps per area, a diffuse or color map, a spec map and a normal map (and you can use the blue channel in the normal map as a cheap 'occlusion' map in Photoshop) if the engine supports it. At work I used to do fully painted UV maps, now it's a combination of diffuse and occlusion maps along with a spec and normal map.
  
  I don't know anything about the app you're using, but hopefully you can break the surface down for UVs? Or planar project a map on to the work and then work with verts and faces to get your scaling right?
  
  As for HOW to do all of this... decide which sounds less painful...: create the art, project it on, adjust verts and faces, or flatten/rip/base/etc UV page, render base page with UV outlines, open in Photoshop, paint away.
  
  Think long and hard about resolution. A co-worker just rendered a full size airship with a single 256... so you don't have to go insane on res. I would go 1024 largest if this is going to get really damn close to camera. You said RTS, so maybe 512 max.
  
  You may get some advice about using photos... I'd avoid that at all cost. Use the information in the photos, not photos themselves. That's a whole other ballgame though.
  
  Assuming that you're with me this far, can post more specific stuff later on...
• esaptonor0 Posts: 0Member

  November 2006 #3

  I require it all in a single image, but i can have a different image for each type, eg 1 for diffuse, 1 for spec, 1 for normal map
  Anim8or does not appear to be able to do what you said in terms of putting the map onto the model...i just select a face, then click uv, then proceed to line up the texture to where i want it on the face.
  
  I think i have that stuff pretty sorted, unless there is an easier way or something....its the actual creating of the texture and making it look good that is the problem. I want it to look as good as possible, so 1024 seems like the logical choice....games these days are using 2048 for actors, and a ship is as important in this game...but 1024 seems good.
  What are the secrets to getting a texture to look good? to actually look realistic like every single ship in the gallery seems to have! I was getting frustrated as no matter what i did, the texture didn't look that good when it was on the model. It looked papery sometimes and it just didn't look realistic. So any help in the creating of the texture department would be very much appreciated.
• esaptonor0 Posts: 0Member

  November 2006 #4

  oh come on, every single on of you who has made a ship must have made a texture for it somehow..and everything in the gallery looks awesome, so whatever you are doing it is working! so somebody please tell me how you guys do it? Is their a particular style of texture that tends to look good?
• [Deleted User]2 Posts: 3Member

  November 2006 #5

  my knowledge of textures falls WAY short being able to help you out here but you seem to overlooking the obvious: in the gallery you mainly see high-poly meshes with good textures and a whole lighting setup.possibly even some touch-ups in PS or whatever. any low poly mesh will have difficulty keeping up, no matter how good the textures...
• esaptonor0 Posts: 0Member

  November 2006 #6

  well yeah i did consider the fact that a low poly mesh doesn't help, but i want it to look as good as possible, and for that i need an awesome looking texture...and for that, i need some advice on how everyone does it.
• JeffrySG321 Posts: 477Member

  November 2006 #7

  

  If you go to the bottom of the page HERE on my website, there is a link for the Advanced Aircraft texturing. It's a link for a great tutorial from Military-meshes.com. You'll need to register with military-m to view it I believe but it's worth it. This is one of my favorite texturing tutorials around. There are also some great free texture links on my page as well.
• esaptonor0 Posts: 0Member

  November 2006 #8

  thanks, ill look into it