[Question] Advanced texturing - Scuff marks

[CaptainKipard]

I'm trying to retexture my hub set in Porkjet's SP+ style. I'm painting the white scuff marks of the panel edges manually with a mouse, but it's really slow and tedious work.

Is anyone aware of a way to automate this while keeping a similar hand-drawn quality like in this image?

Edit

I'm using GIMP

Edited October 10, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[comham]

I also found this very annoying, afaik there's no easily available way to automate it, although it seems like the kind of thing someone could write a plugin for. For my buildings used bac9's decal shader and had a second mesh with the "dirt" decals on top of the regular one.

[nli2work]

I'm pretty sure there are similar tools in GIMP; but in PS I make selection out of the seams, go into quick mask mode. That lets me manipulate the selection mask as if it's a normal layer. I can paint, erase, run filters etc. Run some filters like fragment and pixelate on the mask; then switch back to normal mode. that gives you a selection with imperfect edges, then you can paint in the selection with a dirtied up brush to give you a quick lay-in for this type of scuffs.

you can also use the selection to copy/paste grunge textures from photos and manipulate them further with layering and filters. cgtextures.com is a good place to go; free account gets you 15 megs worth of very good high res texture source photos, per 24hr period. free of license restrictions.

after you get a look that's 80% there; you can go in with a small brush to kick out some strong high lights like at the corners of the panels.

Edited October 10, 2014 by nli2work

[hoojiwana]

You're not going to get the same quality level with something like that automated. It looks like Porkjets textures are intended to refine the shape of each panel in the texture by setting up directional highlights, rather than being used as scuff marks or similar like in your texture. There is also a tiny gap between the highlight and the dark panel-gap lines, which helps make the edge look rounded. I also suspect he paints at a higher resolution than the final product.

You can see longer scratches and worn paint that aren't related to the panel edges elsewhere.

[CaptainKipard]

For my buildings used bac9's decal shader

What does that mean?

I'm pretty sure there are similar tools in GIMP; but in PS I make selection out of the seams, go into quick mask mode. That lets me manipulate the selection mask as if it's a normal layer. I can paint, erase, run filters etc. Run some filters like fragment and pixelate on the mask; then switch back to normal mode. that gives you a selection with imperfect edges, then you can paint in the selection with a dirtied up brush to give you a quick lay-in for this type of scuffs.

you can also use the selection to copy/paste grunge textures from photos and manipulate them further with layering and filters. cgtextures.com is a good place to go; free account gets you 15 megs worth of very good high res texture source photos, per 24hr period. free of license restrictions.

after you get a look that's 80% there; you can go in with a small brush to kick out some strong high lights like at the corners of the panels.

I should be able to replicate this in GIMP, but I don't think that this will give me the effect I want. I tried irregular paths for brush strokes, and randomised brushes and selections before, and it's just not the same. It still looks artificial. I'm doing this by making short repeated strokes in the vicinity of the seam, so it would have to be something like that.

I'll try some artistic filters.

It looks like Porkjets textures are intended to refine the shape of each panel in the texture by setting up directional highlights, rather than being used as scuff marks or similar like in your texture.

Both are true really, at least in the texture I'm looking at (the long fuselage). I'll be adding a normal map so the highlights are not necessary.

Edited October 10, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[hoojiwana]

Both are true really, at least in the texture I'm looking at (the long fuselage). I'll be adding a normal map so the highlights are not necessary.

The SPP parts have normal maps as well as painted edges, skimping on creating texture depth because you have a normal map isn't going to end up looking as good.

[CaptainKipard]

The SPP parts have normal maps as well as painted edges, skimping on creating texture depth because you have a normal map isn't going to end up looking as good.

I can only see two rather simple normal maps applied to the cockpits.

[hoojiwana]

I can only see two rather simple normal maps applied to the cockpits.

I'm looking at the original mod version, that has normals for most of the parts.

[nli2work]

filters alone won't give you what you need. but combined with manual painting and strategic sampling of photo sources will give you very natural looking results and much quicker. But then again, if the style you want is the hand painted look, well, no way to get there other than hand painting. And a small tablet will make the process go much quicker and painless as well.

Edited October 11, 2014 by nli2work

[ximrm]

There's a quick and easy solution if you use things like crazy bump/shadermap/pixplant etc.

Load the texture, in the specularity or displacement tab, play a bit with the slope and noise sliders, save the map and mix it later is PS or GIMP with your original map.(overlay/multiply etc. with lower opacity value)

This should at least give you a base to work with. You might want to erase some parts along the edges, depending on what you want and the layout of the uv-map.

If you don't get the desired result, you'll just need to add a filter to those parts.

It's a quick alternative to painting by hand and always worked well for me.

[CaptainKipard]

There's a quick and easy solution if you use things like crazy bump/shadermap/pixplant etc.

Load the texture, in the specularity or displacement tab, play a bit with the slope and noise sliders, save the map and mix it later is PS or GIMP with your original map.(overlay/multiply etc. with lower opacity value)

This should at least give you a base to work with. You might want to erase some parts along the edges, depending on what you want and the layout of the uv-map.

If you don't get the desired result, you'll just need to add a filter to those parts.

It's a quick alternative to painting by hand and always worked well for me.

This is a little vague.

[nli2work]

the main gist of my method is getting a irregular and natural looking selection of just the edges, after which I can filter, stamp, do whatever; and finally touch up by hand.

Another thing you can try is ramping up the contrast of the AO map, that should give you a selection of where the larger sections meet (and generally where more wear occurs).

Can also can try creating cavity map out of the normal, it's a part of legacy nDo (similar to xNormal, but just a script plugin for PS), you might be able to run it in GIMP with the thing that lets you run photoshop scripts. the result is sort of like a bump map, and you can pull a selection of the edges and the troughs of the seams out of the cavity map.

Edited October 11, 2014 by nli2work

[Dispatcher]

I agree that the best yield will be a combination of filtering (for speed) and manual work (to clean things up to look best). I always work with multiple layers, making sure that there is an original layer which I leave alone in case I mess things up. Besides filtering, I like to work with different image modes and levels of transparency, which often yields results which are unexpected, but desirable.

[CaptainKipard]

Ok here's what I came up with. It still needs cleaning up. All you see here is automated based on selections, masks and one artistic filter. I'm quite happy, although it looks more chipped rather than scuffed.

I'd like to write a little guide for this, but I think I need to experiment more with different circumstances.

Any further thoughts?

Edited October 11, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Dispatcher]

Its all about the look which you intend. IMHO, the texture does not look bad as is. I do suggest that sometimes its hard to tell if the results are good enough until they look good enough on a textured model.

Good luck!

[CaptainKipard]

Here's another shot with more defined edges and Porkjet's texture on the left for comparison.

[ximrm]

This is a little vague.

It's basically what nil2work said about the AO map.

Sry for being a bit unclear.

[nli2work]

Here's another shot with more defined edges and Porkjet's texture on the left for comparison.

http://i.imgur.com/RzYAlzx.png

It's looking good. Porkjet has larger brush strokes filling up the large panels; and few long scratches that cross multiple panels; the painted lights appears to come from the 4 corners of the image.

You can make a selection with the seams once more; this time use the clean selection and run a very thin and faint stroke of lighter color on the outside of the selection, that would give you the thin edge highlight you are looking for. after that it's a matter strategically erasing the chipping on the long edges, and the clean high lights where there is more chipping, to get a combined effect you want.

a lot of final look will depend on in game lighting. Given KSP's current extremely simple lighting setup; one directional + fairly bright ambient; Porkjet's style with painted-in lights works better. The game's directional provies the key; ambient fills in the shadows; and the painted lights fakes the bounce lights from the environment. But with a more complex lighting setup what you have on the right would work better combined with normal; specular; and additional maps. Of course it might all go out the window if Squad decides to switch to Unity 5 and we get PBR shaders to play with.

Edited October 11, 2014 by nli2work

[lo-fi]

Here's another shot with more defined edges and Porkjet's texture on the left for comparison.

http://i.imgur.com/RzYAlzx.png

I'd love to see a full tutorial. A very interesting discussion, though.

[CaptainKipard]

Ok I'll make one. It'll be for GIMP, so PS users will need to adapt it.

[Dispatcher]

Cpt. Kipard, getting back to your original post, you were asking about automating the process (I assume you mean something like batch processing). I believe PS has some capacity for that and I think that the Gimp does not. I don't know what OS you use, but is there a scripting application which you can use to ultimately control Gimp to yield batched or automated results? That's the only thing I can think of which might address your original question.

[Nertea]

This type of thing (manual highlighting and tweaking) is one of my favorite things to do when making KSP modesl, to be honest. I don't think I'd automate it if I could, personally .

I use small PS brushes with a fuzzy blobby texture applied to the tip to break it up a bit.

[Neeken]

Well, for this kind of work, or most types of texturing I guess, a Wacom tablet would change your world. I can't recommend it enough. Just get a cheap one. A Bamboo Capture is what I've been using. It's a bit bigger than their smallest tablets, but still relatively cheap. It saves sooo much time when doing detailing work. Just my 2c.

[CaptainKipard]

Cpt. Kipard, getting back to your original post, you were asking about automating the process (I assume you mean something like batch processing). I believe PS has some capacity for that and I think that the Gimp does not. I don't know what OS you use, but is there a scripting application which you can use to ultimately control Gimp to yield batched or automated results? That's the only thing I can think of which might address your original question.

GIMP uses Python, but I never used it. Anyway I'm only talking about using the available tools to procedurally create that damage. I'm mostly interested in techniques with the built in tools, or other scripts and plugins, which I could download.

This type of thing (manual highlighting and tweaking) is one of my favorite things to do when making KSP modesl, to be honest. I don't think I'd automate it if I could, personally .

I use small PS brushes with a fuzzy blobby texture applied to the tip to break it up a bit.

Not me. I prefer playing with settings, and doing things quickly, but......

Well, for this kind of work, or most types of texturing I guess, a Wacom tablet would change your world. I can't recommend it enough. Just get a cheap one. A Bamboo Capture is what I've been using. It's a bit bigger than their smallest tablets, but still relatively cheap. It saves sooo much time when doing detailing work. Just my 2c.

I actually considered buying a Wacom Cintiq a couple of years ago, but they were too damn expensive. Looking now it looks like even the smallest model still costs more than I'd like.

I've never used a tablet before, but I always suspected that screen-less tablets like Intuos or Bamboo would be awkward to use if you can't see where you're drawing. Am I wrong?

[lo-fi]

Ok I'll make one. It'll be for GIMP, so PS users will need to adapt it.

Thank you, appreciate it.

GIMP uses Python, but I never used it. Anyway I'm only talking about using the available tools to procedurally create that damage. I'm mostly interested in techniques with the built in tools, or other scripts and plugins, which I could download.

Not me. I prefer playing with settings, and doing things quickly, but......

I actually considered buying a Wacom Cintiq a couple of years ago, but they were too damn expensive. Looking now it looks like even the smallest model still costs more than I'd like.

I've never used a tablet before, but I always suspected that screen-less tablets like Intuos or Bamboo would be awkward to use if you can't see where you're drawing. Am I wrong?

I bought an Intuos a while back, it's surprisingly easy to get the hang of. Really nice bit of kit, and actually worth the price IMHO. Still doesn't make me any better at texturing