Intermediate Texturing - Panels and Edge Damage

[CaptainKipard]

Intermediate Texturing Guide - Panels and Edge Damage

If you want a fullscreen album then here is a direct link to it on Imgur. You can Alt+Tab between the text below and the album if you open the album in a new browser window.

Not for absolute beginners.

The guide assumes you're familiar with basic 3D and texturing concepts and that you're comfortable with Blender, GIMP and Inkscape or other equivalent programs.

Having said that, I tried to make the guide clear enough so that you can google things if you need to.

Feel free to ask questions, point out errors and share your knowledge to help me improve this guide.

Preparation

Image #01

First unwrap your model. The aim here is to make the texture quite crisp, so it's best if you snap vertices to pixels. Give your islands about 10 pixels of space between them.

Image #02

The foundation of your texture will be clean-ish metal. You can find one online. Find a texture that large enough to give you 256px per metre. Decrease the contrast, so it's only a little bit noisy.

Image #03

Next create your mask which we'll use later to randomise the damage a little bit. Find a texture with a lot of small scratches.

Image #04

Edit the levels using the top three handles to increase the contrast. Desaturate.

The Panels

Image #05

Import your UV layout as a path. If you don't know how, then read this tutorial first.

Create a new Layer for your panel seams. Using the Pencil Tool draw straight 1px lines where you want your panel seams to be. You can leave some space between the panels and the UV edges if you want. It might or might not look better depending on the model you're making.

Image #06

If you want diagonal edges, then draw your diagonal line as normal, then add one line on each side, using the Pencil Tool at 33% opacity.

Image #07

Duplicate your panel seams layer. Apply Gaussian Blur. Use a setting of 20. This makes the texture look a bit less flat.

The Damage

Image #08

Highlight your panel seams layer. Use the Fuzzy Select Tool to select the transparent areas between the panel lines, as well as the transparent area outside of the panels. Make sure the threshold is low enough to not select the partially transparent pixels near the diagonal lines.

Shrink the selection by 1 pixel.

Distort the selection using the settings shown.

Click "Selection to Path" in the Paths dialogue.

Image #09

Create a new layer for your damage.

Select the Paintbrush Tool. Pick the hard brush. Set size to 1. Click "Apply Jitter". Set Jitter to 2. Make the colour white.

Highlight your damage path and your damage layer.

Click "Paint along the path" and choose the Paintbrush Tool.

Image #10

Repeat step #08, except use a "Smooth" value of 1. You should have two slightly different paths now.

Create a second layer for damage.

Select the Paintbrush Tool. Set size to 2.

Highlight your second damage path and your second damage layer. Paint along the path.

Use the Gimpressionist filter with the Crosshatch preset on your second damage layer. Lock the transparency.

Image #11

Fill the layer with the white color.

Image #12

Apply the mask you created earlier to the second "crosshatched" damage layer. Select the mask. Bring up the Levels dialogue and use the top sliders until you get the amount of damage you want. If you want you can also at this point paint some random scratch lines on this layer. The mask will make the lines look broken up and the scratches will look a lot more natural.

Image #13

Go back to your first damage layer. Pick a tiny white jittered brush and fill in the corners.

Finishing

Image #14

Using only a copy of the original panel lines layer and a background, create a normal map.

Image #15

Using the damage layers, panel lines layer and a background, create a specular map.

Image #16

You can add a multiplied layer with some colour for your panels. You can also play around with the amount of damage by either decreasing the opacity of the layers or by applying a random mask, or modifying the existing one.

Image #17

Finished product in Blender with all three maps applied.

Edited December 9, 2015 by CaptainKipard

[lo-fi]

Thanks for this, I'll be having a go myself

[CaptainKipard]

I wish whoever gave this such a poor rating would at least say what is wrong.

[Beale]

I wish whoever gave this such a poor rating would at least say what is wrong.

I really don't know how anyone could.

This is a great tutorial.

I really think I will take a look at some of my old Panel Designs (I'm a Photoshop user, but the general method could be adapted).

[Neeken]

Well... I was using PS and Maya. Wasn't quite able to get those nice damaged "lines". Might've been the crosshatch effect that I wasn't quite able to reproduce. Normal map went a bit crazy on me as well. But anything looks good in mental ray/vray ;p http://i.imgur.com/pDhfmRP.jpg

Normally I would go in and fix stuff by hand painting it with my tablet. But sadly, I need a new tablet :\

Love me some tutorials though, it's a good way to pick up smart workflows you wouldn't think about yourself. GJ.

[noonespecial]

I wish whoever gave this such a poor rating would at least say what is wrong.

There are always haters. This tut is awesome, regardless of the rating it has. Give it 1 or 0 stars, it's still awesome.

[CaptainKipard]

Thanks humans!

Well... I was using PS and Maya. Wasn't quite able to get those nice damaged "lines". Might've been the crosshatch effect that I wasn't quite able to reproduce.

The purpose of the crosshatch effect here is to quickly create a lot of short diagonal lines along the edges.

This can also be done by painting with a needle-shaped brush, with randomised orientation, jitter, and slightly higher-than-normal step value. This terminology is used in GIMP so maybe this wont mean anything to you. You can always start using GIMP or lookup the terms you don't recognise.

Normal map went a bit crazy on me as well. But anything looks good in mental ray/vray ;p http://i.imgur.com/pDhfmRP.jpg

It looks like it's inverted

Edited October 16, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard

[nli2work]

Well... I was using PS and Maya. Wasn't quite able to get those nice damaged "lines". Might've been the crosshatch effect that I wasn't quite able to reproduce. Normal map went a bit crazy on me as well. But anything looks good in mental ray/vray ;p http://i.imgur.com/pDhfmRP.jpg

Normally I would go in and fix stuff by hand painting it with my tablet. But sadly, I need a new tablet :\

Love me some tutorials though, it's a good way to pick up smart workflows you wouldn't think about yourself. GJ.

the scuffs can be simulated with directional motion blur on a high contrast noise map; or the crosshatch artistic filter.

the smudge brush can do it as well if you hold down shift and click on two points, PS will run a stroke between the two points, set the fade distance (in pixels) on the brush to make the stroke taper/fade off.

[Neeken]

Directional motion blur you say... Such an easy answer, yet so distant from my own thoughts.

I tried using the artistic filter, but it didn't really give me what I was after no matter how long I played with it. Maybe I didn't use it correctly. I don't use a lot of PS filters anymore (except for noise etc.), so I sort of forget them / how to use them creatively.

The last option is actually how I paint / highlight sparkly stars, which can definitely work as well.

My scuffs actually looks more like welds cause of the normal map making them stick out. They should actually be a fraction lower than the surface which hasn't been scuffed. I just did a lazy PS nvidia convert.

Edited October 16, 2014 by Neeken

[nli2work]

Directional motion blur you say... Such an easy answer, yet so distant from my own thoughts.

I tried using the artistic filter, but it didn't really give me what I was after no matter how long I played with it. Maybe I didn't use it correctly. I don't use a lot of PS filters anymore (except for noise etc.), so I sort of forget them / how to use them creatively.

The last option is actually how I paint / highlight sparkly stars, which can definitely work as well.

My scuffs actually looks more like welds cause of the normal map making them stick out. They should actually be a fraction lower than the surface which hasn't been scuffed. I just did a lazy PS nvidia convert.

depending on the normal map generator you might need to Invert the Green channel.

[Beale]

Quick go:

(But not quite vibrant of colours)

Came about with okay results! Thanks for the tutorial.

[CaptainKipard]

I'm glad you're so enthusiastic about okay results Now try to make the marks more random.

[CluelessModeler]

You have singlehandedly rekindled my love for modeling!

Very we'll put together and easy to follow!

Have all of my rep as a reward!

[CaptainKipard]

You have singlehandedly rekindled my love for modeling!

Very we'll put together and easy to follow!

This means a lot. Thanks. If anyone has any ideas for a tutorial let me know. I quite like making them.

Have all of my rep as a reward!

Thanks??