Klavs' Simple Texturing Tutorial

[Klavs81]

By popular demand, Klavs' Texturing tutorial! Randomly comprised and typed in tourrette's style disjointery!

Note, Does anybody else work with Carrara 5? It's all I can afford, and I always seem to have to figure out how to do things on a shoestring budget.

Any-woot...

I do straight texturing, no fancy uv maps or unwrapping, which is easier to do on simple shapes like the aurora.

1. Grab a large wireframe or simple shaded image of the top of an object. Make sure the camera is in isometric perspective to avoid issues later.

2. Place the object on a canvas EXACTLY as big as it is, with no border space showing.

3. Create a new layer and go nuts drawing panel lines and such, keeping in mind any holes you have cut for weapon doors, cockpits, windows, ect. Reference existing aircraft pictures and even industrial equipment for inspiration in placing panel lines. Consider things like access doors handholds, joints, stealth (less right angles!) radiators, chaff and flare despensors.

I try to never add something to my model unless I can explain what it does in my mind. I also draw on my experience as a pilot and as an engineering student for this.

Keep in mind that people will have to WORK on this thing, especially if it's futuristic, try to put access points low to the ground or on top of a flat surface for easy maintinence. Of course, your ship could always be designed by Beechcraft, which would make it impossible to do easy maintinence on ANYTHING. Speaking from my time as an aircraft maintinence provider, nothing against the Beechcraft corporation, but King Airs are really hard to work on!

4. The panel layer is now your bump map. Save it and save it again as a backup. (I always overwrite SOMETHING during texturing and it helps me to have backups.) Throw it into your 3d program to ensure the texture fits correctly. If not, resize or move whatever you need to.

5. Color the one of your backup panel files. Using Photoshop's "multiply" instead of "normal" will allow you to overdraw color onto your black panel lines without oblitterating them. You can also reapply your bump map with a "multiply" filter if you accidentally overdraw your lines.

Go nuts! Add Placards, insignia, warning labels, kill markings. Save these in a separate layer in case you need to move them later.

6. Weather! Create a new layer and Accent your panel lines with some brushing here and there, flat areas without lines can be weathered, add more panel lines if you like. Consider how used your creation should look. In this case, the aurora is a well maintained hangar queen, so I tried to keep things subtle. Add scratches, staining whatever you like. MANY SUBTLE LAYERS will look better than one layer of harsh weathering. Consider that the ship may have been dirtied and not completely washed or damaged and repaired MANY TIMES.

7. Shine map. Take your finished color map (after backing up, of course). And set it to greyscale. Alter the contrast untill you have a good disparity between the weathered parts and the unweathered parts. You can reapply your panel lines again to make sure they aren't going to appear glossy. I like to set BLACK things to be non glossy, so I try and go back and reapply all the markings from my previous layers like numbering, kill markings, ect in BLACK so they don't shine too much. If you can't get the exact shape of the insignia, consider just airbrushing the smaller ones black, no one will really notice that there isn't any shine between NO and STEP.

It's up to you to make sure you're shining where you need to be, and not where you don't want to be.

Apply the shine map however the heck your program works, and tweak!

[Maximumtrini]

Thanx dude.

[Coolhand]

Great tutorial Klavs, pretty much the same technique I use to make textures. Thanks for posting it, i'm sure it'll help many members.

[efritsch]

Thanks for the tutorial! I just hope I can follow it and make things look as good as you have!

I just realized that this tutorial is on a flat wing. How is this going to work on a curved object?

And another question: When you save the panel layer, do you save the underlying render as well? Or are you just saving the panel lines?

[Klavs81]

Ef, this technique works great on most every type of curved surface, as long as you take the curving into account. Keep in mind that on a direct texture application, surfaces perpendicular to the "straight on" texture will appear blurred, so you might want to separate those polygons and create another straight on texture for them. I'm not really going to get into uv mapping since I don't know anything about it. But for shapes like your wip ship, a top view map should work just great. You might also consider one for the bottom surfaces, which I just separate into a another object and use the same technique.

You can either keep the underlying render as a reference or obliterate it. I usually keep the original render around, in case I need to work backward for something.

[Lt. Cannonfodder]

Nice tut klavs.

Originally Posted by Klavs81

6. Weather! Create a new layer and Accent your panel lines with some brushing here and there, flat areas without lines can be weathered, add more panel lines if you like. Consider how used your creation should look. In this case, the aurora is a well maintained hangar queen, so I tried to keep things subtle. Add scratches, staining whatever you like. MANY SUBTLE LAYERS will look better than one layer of harsh weathering. Consider that the ship may have been dirtied and not completely washed or damaged and repaired MANY TIMES.

Any chance of explaining this bit in more detail? Pretty much all texturing tutorials skip over this part all too quickly, and weathering is just the part where I always have most trouble with. Any tips here would be really appreciated

[efritsch]

Originally Posted by Klavs81

You can either keep the underlying render as a reference or obliterate it. I usually keep the original render around, in case I need to work backward for something.

So I just use the panel lines in 3D Studio then?

[Coolhand]

after you've mapped a part you can add a uvunwrap modifer, click edit and then go to the tools menu, from here you can select 'Render UV template' this is the best way of giving you an image to start painting over, imo.

[Klavs81]

Ef, I'm not really familiar with 3DS, but if you can use the panel lines as a bump map, then yes, do it.

Lt. C, try this. Weathering Model Aircraft by David W. Aungst

and other online stuff for the whole "weathering" thing. It's really just a matter of trial and error to see what works.

A lot of the stuff that works on physical models works great on CG, as well.

[Larsen]

^true... my physicalmodelmaking background has helped me enormously when making textures... never hurts to actually know how surfaces react and look in real life

Nice tut man... simple easy, and to the point