marque_pierre

That's an idea. Only rendered it with a quick skylight and lighttracer + default black background in max.

Thanks Sniper. Just got tired of the semi World of Warcraft style I had done for ages... Example:

Yes, the transitions and so on on the sand and the water on the island needs work and so on... What I am trying to do for ground textures is using big bold abstract patterns like the ones from the early 60's women's fashion...

Never really thought of a dynamic animation, perhaps something more static, such as a flyby thing... At the moment I am thinking about animated materials and lights... We'll see... Thanks for the attention.

Yeah... So I'd personally like to be able to look back some day on having done 1001 different texture styles... So this is a new style I am working on... Essentially it is trying to get completely away from all realistic details and instead have abstract patterns trying to communicate what the materials are... These shots are of course very WIP... The colour maps are easy enough, but I am having a hard time trying to figure out how I am gonna pair that off with spec and bump maps... C&C is more than welcome...

Hi there... 's been a while... Anyway, just wanted to share something I am working on. Don't ask what it is, and where it is gonna go, because I don't know. I just wanted to clear my artistic palette by forcing myself to do something completely new and fresh (for me at least...). This world has seen enough grimy spacemarines or military compounds, so... without further ado. C&C is more than welcome!

That blue on the toilet door is way too saturated and the white is too bright. Cut that back a bit, and you got a winner.

Then do the plugin and then sharpen it up yourself. I remember an artist column article in Develop about painting your own normal maps in the channel palettes...

evillair consider that the mortar between the bricks might have more chances of shining, since there will be crystal like particles in the mix. So adding a slight noise map to the mortar lines might be an idea. Just a suggestion.

Talk about biting bullets. Well, I got in on the tail end when NW was a very promising mod for HL1. Today it is a different beast altogether. I am in two minds about it now. It appears that every lab must be like your bog standard corridors from Doom3 with grey/brown grungy visuals no matter where, when and what the setting is. That is so not what I am about. Yes, I am officially on NW, I guess...

Ahhhhhh dammit! Might as well start biting the bullet then. :roll:

Guys... I am a little confused here. Bump maps versus normal maps. I have been using bump maps since for ever, and I love them. Normal maps is a different beast. New kid on the block, can do more and some of the same stuff as your old fashioned bump map. A lot of the talk I hear, is that normal maps have completely replaced bump maps in games engines. And you even have Photoshop plugins from nVidia that will convert a traditional black/white bump map to a normal map at the click of a mouse. Is it over for bump maps?

Well, it is a gradual thing. You know grey reflects a little bit, white the most. Just like a bump map. I don't know if Source supports it, but I remember seeing things in HL2 which could (to my limited knowledge) only be attributed to something like specular maps. Mind you, these babies have been around since bump maps became a part of DirectX, so... I mean, they are in World of Warcraft for example. Hardly high tech/spec stuff...

Specular maps control where specular highlights occur on your materials. So a completely black specular map would give a material that never ever shines. Completely matte. White gives of course a very shiny material. There are many great uses for them. Imagine a scratched body of a car. Where the scratches are the material underneath will be revealed, which most likely has a completely different ability to shine than the car paint. And so on... Bump and spec are my favourite maps. If you carefully paint them first, you can get away with a lot of errors on your colour map.

Damn you guys. All you can talk about is modelling! I am a texture artist, the modelling bits are selfexplanatory, but the texturing is driving me crazy. See the cracks between the planks? There is something not right about them! But I can't put my finger on it...

A keel yes. We need that. This is for an environment based on a third world country river setting. So the boat would be pushed forward by a long stick, rather than rowed or propelled by a motor. But we need some more details. However this is just a small piece for the background.

Yeah, so... Anyway, another project of mine, for my masters degree (feel really important saying that... :roll: ) is to make an environment of my own design. As usual I want to focus on textures. But guys, be gentle, I feel that these days I spend 98% of my time doing everything BUT textures, and when it is finally texturing time, I have either lost my mojo or have too little time to do it right. Anyway, here is a ridiculously simple little boat. A dingy of sorts. We are aiming for realism. The planks are not quite there... There is some je ne sais pas. Please point it out to me. Preferably with detailed solutions too!

About the wallpaper. I like it. It really has potential. But as for wear and tear, I think you need to apply that to the wallpaper itself. Right now it has nothing of the desaturation of being exposed to the sun or general light, nor the yellowing of paper materials that comes with age. Which is out of balance with the general wear that is suggested by the holes in it.

Hmmm. I think I might be barking up the wrong tree here. Perhaps the future of texture art in gamerdom is not gonna play out this way anyway... Just want to be prepared, is all. :roll:

Okay, so how do you suggest one goes about learning to make shaders then? Any ressources out there, or just trial and error?

Dear Klein, You call yourself a texture and shader artist. And since you are our resident guy in the know, a few questions about the future is in order. I keep hearing from my buddies involved with next gen development that we will see a lot of procedural shaders instead of textures in next gen. Any truth to that? And since making a procedural texture is very different from painting one or manipulating a photo into one, we need to start practising. Can you recommend any tools to pick up? Been looking at DarkTree for procedural textures. Do anybody use that in the industry? Basically I want to make sure I will not get left behind in next gen texturing, because of procedurals. Got any advice for us all Klein?

Half Life 2. Do anybody know the texture resolutions and the corresponding poly counts for the models? Yes, I have googled for half an hour now - better ask people in the know directly... I heard that the ordinary characters, like combine and such were 3000 polygons. What about the texture resolution for that? Was Alyx not like 8000 polygons? What about her textures? I need to prove a point to my lecturers. I don't wanna model no 3000 poly thing and texture it with a crummy 512 map...

*Gulp!*

Thanks for the suggestions. This is some high energy abnomal physics kinda lab, as far as I could gather. Well, Nightwatch seems to be very much alive to me. But I wouldn't mind becoming mythical too, so... a myth it is then.

For Nightwatch I working on some textures. Hi tech labs, oh yeah, we all have played in them to death, but what do they really look like? Anybody got some reference images?