THE TIPS AND TRICKS THREAD

[kleinluka]

This topic idea has been stolen from evillair's forums (http://evillair.net/forums/index.php). I liked the idea so much that I think we should have a thread like this as well where everybody can share their tips and tricks on how to create certain effects or to explain certain techniques about creating game textures and shaders. I'll start. Please, serious submissions only. Any garbage will be deleted without notice.

Creating a uniform color theme for your texture set:

When I make a texture set I like having one big sheet where I put all my textures that I've done. All of them.

And then I can see how they look in a big set,... if any of them stand out from the others colorwise I go in and fix it. I strongly recommend this technique. It gives you a nice overview over your color palette. Here's an example of some textures I made for a map for Day of Defeat a long time ago... As you can see they are very desaturated but all of them have subtle color variation that I handpicked using the "big texture sheet technique" and then applied with a nice grime brush. This makes every texture feel like it is part of a larger whole and it rounds off your final scene and gives it a sense of completion.

PS: I know the traintracks with the crater suck

Creating a snowed in rubble texture step-by-step:

Some people have asked me how I did the snowy rubble in DoD's Northbound map. So here's a little step by step. It's quite simple.

The first thing I did was creating a base dirt texture that tiles in all directions and contains most of the surface detail that I am looking for. In this case, since we have to imagine that this dirt is lying underneath a whole lot of snow I want to make it look sorta muddy and wet so I use a rusty red color and mix in some blue hues to give it a slushy look. This will contrast well with the white snow that I am going to add next. If you are aiming for a realistic look make sure you use color sparingly and in subtle doses only.

The second step is to add snow. You can do this either by selecting certain areas of the dirt and painting over it in white in a new layer OR (what I prefer) find yourself a good source photo of snow and paste it ontop of your dirt and start erasing with a grime brush until you get the texture to look like the one on picture 2. If you don't have any good snow photos you can also use a photo of gravel or dirt and desaturate it and boost the contrast until you get something that looks like snow.

The next step is to add chunks of bricks to give the texture the look and feel of debris. You don't have to use too many bricks to do this, just add a few here and there, evenly spread them across your texture. and blend them in very well with the base dirt/snow texture that you have already created. Make sure that you really do place them evenly on your texture so that you don't have many bricks on one side of the texture, and less or none on the other... Since this texture is meant to tile this would make certain areas of it stand out and make the piece look repetitive ingame. Always make sure that you work in layers so you can erase or change the opacity of a certain detail later on in the process if you need to.

Once you have layed out your bricks, start defining them and make them look like they are not just glued onto the debris, but are stuck in it. You can do that by placing subtle shadows underneath some of them in certain areas and erasing the ends of some of the bricks to make it look like they are sticking out of the snow (see pic 4)

I hope this makes sense, it's late

[General Vivi]

nice i love it . ill try and post somthing helpfull in this spot .

[skdr]

klein rawks

[m4d1n]

thx for the work dude, i like it a lot!

[Lee3dee]

kleinluka: thanks for the tips. Im working on an art test right now, that requires realism, and this is very helpful. I've been keeping everything consistent with the a uniform color theme

[Minos]

ah nice tips luka. Where are the other mapcore pros to share their experience ?

[von*ferret]

Klein is the only pro here fo'sho

[Rick_D]

Thanks klein, look forward to seeing if anyone else can offer some great tips - unfortunately, I probably know nothing of any use to anyone

[fonfa]

[aevirex]

http://www.cgtextures.com/content.php?a ... _normalmap

This technique by Scott Warren shows how to (very efficiently) make *good looking* normal maps for photo textures in no time.

[Pericolos0]

that rock texture one looks alright but the bottom one just sucks tbh! If you want to learn normal mapping, learn working with a 3d or sculpting package to make them, can't repeat it enough!

[Sindwiller]

http://www.cgtextures.com/content.php?action=tut_normalmap

This technique by Scott Warren shows how to (very efficiently) make *good looking* normal maps for photo textures in no time.

I prefer this method: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/gerald.hun ... nfhwtw.htm

It's faster and the result is better imho

[BioPulse]

Awsome stuff, you guys have any more basic tutorials on texturing? Like where to start if yóu want to get into to texturing, i've been wanting to learn it for a long time now but i never can find a good way to start