Creation of materials and textures for 3D models. Creating a texture for the finished model
In this tutorial we will learn how to create our own textures in the program Adobe Photoshop. Then they can be used to design the background of websites, as textures for 3D graphics, etc.
But there are some pitfalls", which make creating textures somewhat difficult. The fact is that when shapes are used to create textures, it is difficult to smooth out the places where they join each other. And if a discrepancy is visible, then the quality of the texture will not be the best.
In this guide we will try to solve this problem.
First, create in Photoshop new document size 100x100px. Select a brush (B) of your choice and draw something like this:
Now let’s convert the drawn figure into a pattern using the Edit > Define Pattern... command and call it “texture”. Go to the command Image > Canvas size and set new size 400x400px.
Let's fill our entire canvas with a new pattern using Edit > Fill...
You should get the following:
As you can see, the patterns do not completely fit together. Therefore, a full texture is not obtained. I would like to :)
This problem is solved by using the Offset filter. This filter moves the image by the specified number of pixels. IN in this case the image moves within the outline, while the outline itself remains in its original place.
The effect of the Offset filter is similar to inserting an image into a path and then moving it.
Therefore, go to the command Image > Canvas size and again set the value to 100x100px. Then fill the image with our pattern Edit > Fill...
Let's call the Offset filter using Filter > Other > Offset with the following parameters:
As you can see, the horizontal and vertical pixels have moved almost half of the image:
Now all that remains is to connect the edges of the “broken” lines using the same brush with which we painted them. So select the Brush Tool (B) and connect the lines into one:
Now apply the Offset filter again (Ctrl+F).
I think that creating texture packs is quite easy, but many of our users do not know how to do this. So I’ll show you and tell you about it. I won’t be able to tell you everything at once, so only the first chapter for now.
1. What is required to create a texture pack
Archiver, for example, WinRAR. (You should have it, because how did you install Minecraft).
An image editor that supports transparency. ( Standard paint will not work, you need Photoshop, Paint.net or GIMP).
- Basic knowledge of this editor.
Another texture pack you want to use as a base.
- Head, hands and patience.
2. Let's sort the pack into pieces
I advise you to download the standard pack for your pack and use it as a basis. You can download it. Although you can take any pack.
Download, place it in a convenient place and see the image below:
The first archive on the left is what you downloaded. Let's extract its contents into the same folder, we'll get a second archive - this is the pack itself, which in theory should be installed, but that's not what we need it for. Extract the contents of the package to a folder with the same name. This is the third folder, and we will work with it. Let's take a look at its contents:
Achievement - in this folder two images: bg - these are textures for the achievements menu, icons - I don’t know its purpose, so they can be deleted.
Armor – located here textures of all types of armor. Moreover, under number 1 there is a hat and a jacket, and under number 2 there are pants and sneakers. And the power image is like the texture of a charged creeper.
Art – there is one image in this folder – kz, it contains the textures of all the paintings.
Environment – this folder stores images with textures of phenomena: rain, snow, clouds and light.
Font – this is where the font is stored. If you are playing with a cracker, immediately delete this folder.
Gui is an important folder, there are many important images here. Items – item textures, icons – interface icons, gui – panel quick access and buttons, background – background for the menu, unknown_pack – icon for a pack without an icon, slot – images for the statistics menu, allitems, container, crafting, furnace, inventory, trap – game menus. There are also two unused images crash_logo and particles, they can be deleted.
Item – in this folder you can find textures for arrows - arrows, chests - chest, largechest, boats - boat, trolleys - cart, signs - sign and animation of experience spheres - xporb. But door is not used, can be deleted.
Misc - here we have this: dial - an image for a clock, explosion - an explosion animation, mapbg - the texture of a map in your hands, mapicons - icons for a map, particlefield - a starry sky, pumpkinblur - an image that blocks your view when you wear it on your head pumpkin, shadow – shadow texture. You can easily change them, but the rest of the images do software functions, so they must be changed very carefully, or better yet, simply deleted.
Mob – here are all the mob textures, you can change or delete them.
Terrain – this folder contains the textures of the sun and moon.
Title – here are images for design: mojang – developer’s logo, mclogo – game logo in the main menu. I still don’t understand why black is needed. But bg is an interesting folder that contains panoramas of the game that serve as the background of the main menu. You can make your own panoramas from screenshots, just be careful with the names and sizes.
Pack – pack icon in the pack selection menu.
Pack – text file, the text of which will be written under the name of the pack in the menu selection of packs.
Particles – this image contains effects: smoke, splashes, etc.
Terrain is the main image of the pack; the textures of all the game blocks are collected here.
3. Drawing
Open the folder into which we extracted the contents of the pack.
First, let's open terrain.png, as I already said, this is the basis of the pack.
I use photoshop. You can also use other editors that support transparency.
Let's make a change. For example, I never liked the texture of cobblestone, so I change it. Please note: I moved the texture to new layer, this is so that I can erase it, and I also selected the texture, this is so that I do not go beyond the boundaries. Although these are the subtleties of mastering Photoshop, and do not apply to the creation of packs.
I also changed the glass texture.
You can change not only terrain.png, let's open items.png from the gui folder.
I want to change the texture of the scissors.
Let's give the pack distinctive characters: open pack.png and pack.txt.
I changed pack.png quite a bit - the pack icon, but you can do whatever you want there, insert another picture, for example. Well, I added my own inscription.
4. Check
Let's finish the pack and check it out. We add the contents of our folder to a new zip archive, the name of which will be the name of the pack.
Here are the contents of my pack:
I added all the folders and all the images. In general, you don’t have to add everything, you only need to add what you changed. Please understand that if you remove an image from your pack, it will be used in its place. standard image. And if your image does not differ from the standard one, then why add it, it will only add “weight” to your pack.
We copy our pack to the texturepacks folder, which is located in the game directory. There is no need to patch our pack, so we immediately turn on the game. We go to the texture pack menu and here is our pack:
Loading the world. Here is my house, and as you can see, the textures of the cobblestones, glass and scissors are exactly the way I painted them.
That's it. Your simplest texture pack is ready. You can, of course, start making your own pack now, but you would benefit from the following chapters of the tutorial.
In the following chapters of the textbook:
- Creation of higher resolution textures.
Creating your own water, lava, fire and portal textures.
Tips for painting textures.
Answers to your questions
P.S. This article was still written at 15:00. But my browser crashed and the text of the article was lost. The second time I wrote an article in Word, at 17:00 the article was already ready, but Windows crashed, the computer rebooted and as a result, all the text was lost again. I think someone at the top doesn't want me to add this article.
Everything ingenious is simple!
The main goal of this article is to show some texturing techniques and rules that will take your textures to the next level of quality. All the tips you will read in this article are not the only method for solving problems, but judging by my many years of experience creating textures, I can say that these methods work in the best possible way(quickly and efficiently).
1. Expressiveness of the material - what is it?
Concept expressiveness of the material I will use it very often.
Demonstration of the NOT(!) expressiveness of the material.
But in general, in the end, it doesn’t really matter whether the texture itself looks good or bad, as long as it looks great already finished model.
However, great way to check the quality of the texture is to look at the layout and note for yourself whether you can recognize which material is where (metal, stone, rubber, etc.) or determine which part of the model is deployed here.
But if you are working on modern materials or materials of a new generation (NextGen materials), then this is not always possible. However, if you can still recognize the material, then there is a great chance that the material will look great on the model. But if the material cannot be recognized, then there is a good chance that you will be looking at a bunch of random colors and pixels, but in fact it should be metal.
(Using photos as textures can easily fix this, but more on that below.)
Besides good diffuse map (diffuse map) Also great value has quality reflection maps (specular map). There are many tools that will create a reflection map for you, but they don't provide necessary control. Especially when you're working on different materials, placed on the same texture, or with bright text.
This leaves Photoshop as the only great tool for creating reflection maps. Using it you can make a mask that will exclude areas where the reflection map is not needed. And if you have white text on the texture, then using a mask you can dim the brightness of this text on the reflection map.
Above is a picture that shows how you can create a reflection map for a simple texture with two materials: concrete and metal. Each material has its own level correction (Levels 1 and 2) with a mask. You can also use Brightness/Contrast instead of adjusting levels, but using levels gives you more control over the picture. And on top of the adjustment layers (Levels 1 and 2) lies Hue/Saturation so that the reflection map becomes black and white.
2. Base material
When creating a texture, it is good practice to start working with a base material. If you are creating a metal material, then first create a uniform (preferably repeating - tiled) texture, completely filled with metal. If the metal is needed damaged, then the damage can be painted on top of the base material.
Be sure to keep the base textures. This way, if you need to create a metal material again, you take the base material and create a new one based on it.
This is very convenient if you are working on a number of typical objects or buildings. So, starting with a base material for each type of material in your texture can create good material expression. Once each part has its own material, you can start adding details.
3. All the beauty is in the details that are invisible at first glance.
High-quality texture on a low-poly model.
This is what a lot of people miss when creating textures - small details. They are not visible at a quick glance, but greatly increase the interest and liveliness of the texture.
Depending on the style and theme, you can use both minimalism in details and textures that are extremely rich in details.
Your job is to give the viewer an object that looks awesome. Subtle details are perfect for this task, and these details can be anything. Stickers, leftover paint, rivets, bolts, some scribbles with a black marker, dirt, grease stains, whatever.
But the main point is to make it all discreet/inconspicuous. If you overdo it, the effect will be the opposite and the picture will deteriorate.
The object in the picture below is very good example creating parts in the required quantity. As you may have noticed, the diffuse color is immediately loaded with details and most of them are invisible at first glance. The object contains pieces of film, stains, stickers with text, scratches, rivets, labels, etc. It is these details that give the twenty-two triangles of the model a realistic look.
4. Make your textures clearer.
Be careful. Some love clear (sharp) And sharp(crisp) textures, while others leave them a little blurry.
Personally, I prefer sharp textures, so I always apply a sharpness filter (Unsharp mask in Photoshop) to the entire texture as a final step.
Essentially, I just make a copy of my entire texture and make that copy the topmost layer. Then I apply the Unsharp mask filter to this layer (despite its controversial name, this filter will make your texture sharper).
I prefer to use a filter instead of Sharpen Unsharp mask- with it you will 100% not spoil the texture. In addition, the Unsharp mask gives additional control over the final image.
There is a great temptation to make a very clear texture, but this can lead to all sorts of artifacts in the picture.
The first picture (normal) is the original texture. This is how it looks in Photoshop without any adjustments.
The second picture is the original with the Unsharp mask filter applied at 70%. The paint details and scratches came out very well.
True, now the highlight on the horizontal edge has become very expressive, but it can be dimmed a little. (You need to do this on the original texture and re-apply the Unsharp mask filter. In this case, you will have a completely clear texture in the output and save it as perfect order your.psd file).
The last picture clearly shows artifacts that you definitely don't need. It clearly dominates here white, as well as bright orange pixels on the sides of the paint, etc. This should be carefully avoided.
5. Be careful when using photographs.
Carefully avoid using photographs when creating your textures. Read about the reason for this in one excellent article. It is very rare that you have the opportunity to use part of a photo directly in a texture without adding/removing details or adjusting the photo to UV.
I'm not saying it's impossible. Some texturizers are very good at this. But for the most part, using photographs for textures is the prerogative of beginners. But it would be better for them to look at other techniques for creating basic textures.
6. Use Photo overlays.
Even with tip #5, using photos isn't always a bad thing.
Photos are a great way to add small details. Those. details such as small pores, which dilute a simple uniform fill and make the model less cartoonish.
The best way to demonstrate what we're talking about now is to show the texture with and without photo overlay.
The best way to get a good effect is to go through all mixing modes (blending modes ) in Photoshop and choose the most suitable one for the pair: base material + photo.
Modes usually work well Overlay And Vivid Light. The result of other blending modes depends greatly on the image, but very often you end up with a burnt-out image. But one must always keep in mind the fact that the photo overlay should be barely visible.
These small details should be completely discreet.
Another thing to always keep in mind is scale of details.
If you need to add a small blemish in the paint, like in the second picture of the doors, then you should choose the scale of the details to be the same as the scale of your subject. If the scales do not match, then the viewer will immediately notice the catch, since these paint defects will be inappropriate.
For better effect I advise you to spend a little time on the overlay option Blend if(Mix if) for each layer.
This option is extremely useful if you have very light or dark areas in the picture that spoil the beauty. With Blend if you can smooth them out significantly. What if hold Alt and drag the slider, then it will split and you will get a smooth transition between what is mixed and what will not be mixed.
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When texturing various objects, it is very important to be able to create seamless textures. Our tips and tricks will help you avoid major mistakes and better understand the subject.
When texturing roads, walls or roofs, for example for video games, it is especially important to be able to create a tiled or seamless texture over the entire length of the geometry, since creating a texture for, for example, an entire brick wall can be quite a labor-intensive process. The peculiarity of this approach lies in the need to deceive the viewer, not giving him the opportunity to distinguish the beginning from the end of the texture.
What is a seamless or tiled texture?
A seamless or tiled texture is usually a photograph of an object, such as a brick wall, that can be repeated as many times as necessary without visible seams or breaks, with each corner of the image matching perfectly with every other.
If you have already photographed a brick wall and are trying to shade it onto the geometry, then nothing will work, since the left side of the texture will not coincide with the right. A correct tile texture is characterized by its opposite parts matching perfectly. To achieve this effect, you need to do a number of manipulations in Photoshop.
How to take a photo correctly
There are many websites with tile textures. In general, this is not bad, most of these textures will be ideal for your project, but in some cases you have to create textures manually by photographing surrounding objects. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, some ideal textures are not available for free download, they can only be purchased, which will significantly affect your budget.
Secondly, usually we, having a perfect idea of what we need, unsuccessfully scour the entire Internet in search of a suitable texture. In the case of a brick wall, it is much easier to walk up to the wall you like and take a photo of it.
If you do decide to photograph the desired texture, you need to remember a few important points.
First, you need to stand parallel to an object that cannot be viewed at an angle. It is necessary to photograph this object as directly as possible.
In the future, an object shot at an angle can cause quite strange distortions in the texture, which will be impossible to shade correctly.
An example of an incorrect perspective can be seen in the image below; due to the seemingly small perspective, the lower bricks look smaller than the upper ones. It will be quite difficult to make such a photo tiled.
When photographing textures, you must also take care of the correct lighting of the object. All kinds of glare should be avoided. When shooting outdoors, it is better to choose well-lit places without shooting into the sun.
Creation seamless textures
So, the photo is ready. It's time to open it in Photoshop and crop it into a square. For example, 1024x1024 or 2048x2048.
After this, using the Selection tool or the Layer Via Copy command, you need to select the right or left side images and drag new copy to the opposite part of the image.
In this case, a rough seam will immediately catch your eye, which must be fixed with any in a convenient way, for example, select the Eraser tool, reduce its Hardness and Opacity, and run it along the seam, which will make it less noticeable.
The same process must be repeated for the top and bottom parts of the image. When trying to blend the resulting texture, minor seams still appear. This can be easily fixed using the Clone Stamp tool or any other similar tool. The process may vary depending on the photo, but only slightly.
Removing seams using a toolPatch
You can also say goodbye to seams using the Patch tool, in which you must first select the desired area of the geometry and then copy it to another, for example, to an area with a seam. In this case, Photoshop will ideally erase any boundaries between these areas of the image.
This approach is best used for abstract photos such as asphalt or grass.