The Open Part Mod - Week 23/5 - Project started - Texturing

[CaptainKipard]

Please, read this post first. Rules changed.

That looks very nice Ven but B is in violation of the rules. There are 2 is one main problem with doing it like that.

a) B shows AO where it doesn't belong (The ring around the pipe clamp thingy)

Overlapping UVs this way gives you an advantage in texel density, which unfairly makes your texture look better. I'd like everyone on the same level.

Other than that it already looks better than stock. I'm looking forward to the final result.

I feel like I'm falling behind.

If you can then commit to do doing an hour every day and break it up into specific tasks. If you've already done AO, then today add some colour and a background texture.

Edited May 26, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[CaptainKipard]

Today I'm working on the foundation of my texture.

Image #3

I downloaded a scratched metal texture from a free website, and decreased the contrast so it's not as noisy. Disregard AO for the time being.

Image #4

Applying this simple texture results in visible seams. I need to fix this.

Image #5

Doing this requires Texture Paint (or equivalent tool in whatever app you're using).

You need to save your background texture as a copy with a different name. This will be your stencil.

Make sure your base texture is active in the image view window for the mesh you're using.

I've circled the settings that are important to me, but you can experiment.

The Texture in Texture Paint settings should be your stencil texture and NOT your base/colour texture.

Then just paint on the model on the seams using the stencil, and when you're done save the colour texture in your Image view and import it as a layer in your texture source file.

Image #6

No more seams!

Image #7

AO should be a new layer in multiply mode above the base texture. This is the result. A nice foundation.

This took me about 30 minutes, but if you know what you're doing you can do it in 5.

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Edited May 31, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[frizzank]

A couple of texturing hints from Uncle Frizzank. You can use symmetry to reduce the amount of work you have to do.

You could just make one of the 8 sides of the cage with the sphere, and unwrap them on their own. They are going to look exactly the same on the texture, or at least really close.

Put the non symmetrical parts on it as well.

Now you should have 1/8th of the uv work to do and almost 8 times the texture space. It's a win/win. After you do your light baking you copy the symmetrical parts around (I use symmetry to get rid of the seams). and your done.

So your workflow for round or symmetrical parts should be model first. Split in to symmetrical sections and then UV. After that you recombine everything hole.

[CaptainKipard]

(I use symmetry to get rid of the seams)

How? Wont that make the texture look repeated?

[Robotengineer]

How do you use symmetry in blender? At least how for the unwrapping part?

[blizzy78]

How do you use symmetry in blender? At least how for the unwrapping part?

Like Cpt. Kipard described: Build a part (a single strut, for example), then unwrap it, then duplicate/mirror it the way you want the duplicates to be. All duplicates will share the same texture space then. (For the rules of this thread, you need to move the UVs to different parts of the texture.)

[CaptainKipard]

I'm starting to regret the "no overlap" rule.

New rule

Your UVs can overlap, but only for faces which would not receive different AO.

That means that for this model you will have to create two different UVs for the sphere. One with regular AO and one receiving shading from the pipe strut. That pipe strut was the real reason for that original rule, but I think I overreached.

Also I'm not a huge fan of repeating textures, but I should have left that choice for the contributors. Sorry.

Anyway, I hope this will make things easier. I'll continue with my existing layout because I already did too much.

Edited May 26, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[CaptainKipard]

Today I'm working on adding some colour to the foundation I made yesterday.

Image #8

Firstly I need to know where to apply those colour. Blender allows you to export the UV layout in SVG format, which can then be imported into GIMP as paths.

Images #9, #10, #11, and #12

In my experience (and I have no professional training) there are three main way of applying colour to a texture. They are done using the various Layer Modes.

• Multiply (#9). This is to make an existing texture have a different colour while keeping the the noise underneath similar. This is good for making the texture look like it's made of a particular material, like the copper pipe.
  
• Overlay or Hard Light (#10 and #11). This is to make a surface look like it has paint on it. I used this to "paint" the tank grey, and add the stripes.
  
• Normal (#12). This is best for adding something that's meant to be a decal, like the warning labels.
  

All of these should be between your AO Multiply layer and your background layer. You can obviously experiment with other layer modes for colours, but I think these three are the most important.

I should mention that the less UV overlap you have, the more varied your texture can be. My way of unwrapping allowed me to add two different warning labels and leave all other sides grey.

Image #13

This is the result. I literally did nothing except what I described here. It's starting to look good, but there are still three main things to do.

This took me a couple of hours but I spent most of that time experimenting with what looks best. If you have everything planned out this can take as little as 15 minutes.

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Edited May 31, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Robotengineer]

I've made some progress while the forums were down. The texture this time will be a lot better. Should have progress to show later.

[CaptainKipard]

Today: Weathering

Image #14

First I need a stencil with which I'll paint a rough mask. I looked for a metal texture with lots of scratches, and edited it to be greyscale, with a white background and prominent scratches.

All you need to do is desaturate, and adjust levels.

Image #15

Starting with a white background I painted the mask to a new image using Texture Paint as before, very roughly. I fix it later.

Image #16

In GIMP you need to invert it. As a mask, the black parts determine what's invisible, and white determine what's visible. I edited everything to be more subtle in terms of size, dabbed away a lot with a dirt brush and increased the contrast a bit. The resulting mask is applied to a bright metal texture, which is placed right under the AO layer, because the scratches should affect paint and decals.

I keep a backup of the mask because I'll use it later for the specular mask.

Image #17

Result. I'm pretty sure I didn't place the damage in all the right places, but this kind of thing is way beyond me. It would take some kind of simulation to determine realistic damage placement.

This can be done in about 30 minutes conservatively.

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Edited May 31, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Robotengineer]

Here is my map, I have gotten some basic colour scheme ideas done, will try to do a decal, or some other sort of addition (maybe text).

This is just the UV, i have gotten the AO done and some other things, also are we going to write a .cfg and compile the part? Or just send the texture to you Cpt. Kipard?

[Daishi]

Image #17's looking pretty slick Cpt. Kipard - awesome work!

[CaptainKipard]

Image #17's looking pretty slick Cpt. Kipard - awesome work!

Thanks, coming from you that's actually quite meaningful.

I still have a normal map and specular mask to do, so it'll look even better.

Here is my map, I have gotten some basic colour scheme ideas done, will try to do a decal, or some other sort of addition (maybe text).

Have you tried adding seams? This looks like an automatic UV layout.

...are we going to write a .cfg and compile the part? Or just send the texture to you Cpt. Kipard?

I'll make a cfg and post it here.

Edited May 31, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Robotengineer]

It is an automatic UV, but I couldn't get the seams to work, and it's to late to start from scratch again. Also I know that the island margin may be a bit big, but it's the only way I can colour it without it bleeding over to other parts.

[CaptainKipard]

Today: Specular Map and Normal Map

This is probably the simplest part of this texture so I did them all in one go.

Image #18

This is the specular map. It's composed of the layers from the colour map. All you need to do is copy all relevant layers, lock alpha of each of the layers and bucket fill each layer with an appropriate grey colour. All colours need to be greyscale. For parts like the copper pipe, I kept the noise, desaturated and adjusted levels. Bright is very reflective, dark is matte.

Image #19

This is the bump map. It is made in the same way as the specular map, except of course colours have to be edited a bit. Bright is high, dark is low.

Image #20

This is the normal map. It is generated from the bump map, I made it subtle because scratches aren't very deep and decals aren't very thick.

Image #21, 22, 23

Maps applied to the model. Colour (#21), colour and specular (#22) and all together (#23).

If you have your layers well made, this can take about 30 minutes I guess.

That's all folks!

If you're going to make an actual part you need to apply the specular mask to a merged copy of the colour map and export as an image with alpha. I'm not doing that because that's not the focus of this thread.

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Edited May 31, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[darkside]

Something is wrong with my Unity, I can't edit materials. My PC crashed, after rebooting there were nothing in the Inspector. Everything else seem to be fine, material editor is the only thing affected. I even reinstalled Unity, didn't help.

So, while I can't show you my work in Unity, here it is rendered in Unreal Engine 4, just something to look at, not trying to make my submission out of it, that wouldn't be fair

It would look differently in Unity.

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[Robotengineer]

Does there have to be a normal map?

[Tiberion]

darkside: click on the white sphere Left of "New Material 1" - it toggles the texture fields.

I spent a few hours figuring that one out when I started out in Unity, heh.

[darkside]

darkside: click on the white sphere Left of "New Material 1" - it toggles the texture fields.

I spent a few hours figuring that one out when I started out in Unity, heh.

Thank you, it worked.

So, this is how it looks in Unity. Not nearly as shiny.

[CaptainKipard]

@darkside

That looks quite good.

@Robotengineer

Yes. Are you following my guide?

Edited May 31, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[Robotengineer]

Yes, I have a basic texture, still ironing out some details. Should be ready tomorrow.

Edited May 31, 2014 by Robotengineer
typo

[CaptainKipard]

It occurred to me that everyone will have a different model, so everyone will need to export their own mu files. With that in mind it doesn't actually matter what you call your textures.

I'll put together a config later this evening or tomorrow morning for everyone to include in their download. Remember to include the files specified in the OP.

[Robotengineer]

How are you making the normal maps in gimp?

Edit: found a good normal map generator.

Edited June 1, 2014 by Robotengineer

[CaptainKipard]

I linked to the GIMP plugin in the first post. You make a greyscale bump map and convert it.

[blizzy78]

You can also use Blender to generate the normal map automatically, as long as you have a second object that has the more detailed geometry. Blender then can calculate the difference and bake that into a normal map.