Face Texture ion Jedi Knights

[Akkarin]

Hi all,

 

in modern games the lightning is on the face is rendered and not printed on the texture of the face for example. I recently made my first model from scratch and painted the texture of the face in zbrush, but in game the texture looks bad compared to standard or the good models from here.

 

So my question to the texture artists here, how do you bake the textures in zbrush with the shadow and normal and bump maps so that the model looks good in jedi academy?

 

Thank you!

[Tempust85]

From memory, green channel from world space normals, ao & cavity maps mixed into the diffuse.

[Akkarin]

Thanks DT, I will try this.

[Psyk0Sith]

This old engine requires old school approach to texturing so don't forget to do some final tweaking in 100% diffuse state (and don't just throw a black / dark blue AO on top and call your shading done). If it looks like cement in zbrush, it will also look like cement in retro game engines.

[Noodle]

This old engine requires old school approach to texturing so don't forget to do some final tweaking in 100% diffuse state (and don't just throw a black / dark blue AO on top and call your shading done). If it looks like cement in zbrush, it will also look like cement in retro game engines.

 

Any advice for a newb at texturing that really wants to learn how to do good stuff in this game? What are the important things most people miss when texturing? 

[Psyk0Sith]

In a nutshell, texturing is a layering process. Absolute beginners will usually "paint" pure colors and call it done, which is actually only the first step. Others will use unaltered photos with some level of success but never really tie everything together (tone mismatch between areas, lack of shadows where they should be and highlights that have no business being there).

 

Always get real life references of what you want to texture. Pretty much everything has specularity (with different intensity depending on the material) so try and understand how light would affect the look of the object in a default lighting source (usually from the top down). For JA it makes sense to use photo sourcing but when you do, you have to remove the conflicting highlights / shadows from your sources. i.e.: when you want to texture a face without a proper 3/4 view you'll get a dirty looking skin if you don't alter/paint the source material. The goal is to blend everything together without it being noticeable. Preview your texture on the model in 100% diffuse because you want to make it look as it should without a game engine's lighting and shading.

 

Don't use black color to shade organic materials, always go for a darker tone of an actual color, pure white can be used in some situations but it needs to contrast with the surrounding areas, if you are painting metal edges, a subtle pure white area can be useful but the rest of the highlighted sharp edge has to be contrasting.

[Noodle]

In a nutshell, texturing is a layering process. Absolute beginners will usually "paint" pure colors and call it done, which is actually only the first step. Others will use unaltered photos with some level of success but never really tie everything together (tone mismatch between areas, lack of shadows where they should be and highlights that have no business being there).

 

Always get real life references of what you want to texture. Pretty much everything has specularity (with different intensity depending on the material) so try and understand how light would affect the look of the object in a default lighting source (usually from the top down). For JA it makes sense to use photo sourcing but when you do, you have to remove the conflicting highlights / shadows from your sources. i.e.: when you want to texture a face without a proper 3/4 view you'll get a dirty looking skin if you don't alter/paint the source material. The goal is to blend everything together without it being noticeable. Preview your texture on the model in 100% diffuse because you want to make it look as it should without a game engine's lighting and shading.

 

Don't use black color to shade organic materials, always go for a darker tone of an actual color, pure white can be used in some situations but it needs to contrast with the surrounding areas, if you are painting metal edges, a subtle pure white area can be useful but the rest of the highlighted sharp edge has to be contrasting.

 

Many thanks! So it'd be wise to use "flat" sources when doing the texturing and then use the burn/dodge tool to add shadows and highlights, right? 

[Psyk0Sith]

If you don't know already how to do it, i strongly suggest you learn how to create AO bakes from a low poly model using Xnormal. It will make your life easier and give you a non destructive workflow that is closer to reality since the shadows won't be random.

 

Source preparation:

You can use the heal brush to get rid of unwanted details and some highlights, use image>adjustments>shadow highlights with default settings to neutralize the shading, it will look weird but that's exactly what you want, a flat colored source for the color pass. Another way to get rid of highlights is selecting the bright areas and using an adjustment curve to control the spec intensity (sometimes changing the overlay mode to whatever works best), you can also use the content-aware fill.

Layering:
When you are done with the fixes and put down the color pass on the texture sheet, add the AO on top (multiply or whatever works best) and adjust the hue of the AO based on mat type. For example, skin shadows are dark red in hue, never black so that's one instance where you could change hue to yellow-ish red, until you get the desired look. You now have coherent base to expand on, you can start adding highlights as well as other details where they belong. Paint areas that need to blend together better, always work at low opacity on separate layers, the idea here is to add to the base and not make it too aggressive.

 

Dodge n burn:
You have to be careful with the dodge and burn tools, some apps will do a pretty crappy job with the default settings (photoshop is guilty of this) you can change the behavior by switching the tool's mode (near the strength slider at the top). For highlights i prefer to fill a layer with pure black and set it to color dodge...anything you paint in white in that layer will give you colored highlights, this is where having a tablet is useful because you can vary intensity with pressure (but smudge is still useful here to fade away strong highlights). The other benefit over dodge n burn is that it's non destructive, if something looks off, you just paint over the area in black and start over.

Last step is usually adding a levels adjustment to make your texture as bright as possible, if you don't take time to do this your textures won't be balanced properly and display poorly in game.

[Noodle]

If you don't know already how to do it, i strongly suggest you learn how to create AO bakes from a low poly model using Xnormal. It will make your life easier and give you a non destructive workflow that is closer to reality since the shadows won't be random.

 

Source preparation:

You can use the heal brush to get rid of unwanted details and some highlights, use image>adjustments>shadow highlights with default settings to neutralize the shading, it will look weird but that's exactly what you want, a flat colored source for the color pass. Another way to get rid of highlights is selecting the bright areas and using an adjustment curve to control the spec intensity (sometimes changing the overlay mode to whatever works best), you can also use the content-aware fill.

 

Layering:

When you are done with the fixes and put down the color pass on the texture sheet, add the AO on top (multiply or whatever works best) and adjust the hue of the AO based on mat type. For example, skin shadows are dark red in hue, never black so that's one instance where you could change hue to yellow-ish red, until you get the desired look. You now have coherent base to expand on, you can start adding highlights as well as other details where they belong. Paint areas that need to blend together better, always work at low opacity on separate layers, the idea here is to add to the base and not make it too aggressive.

 

Dodge n burn:

You have to be careful with the dodge and burn tools, some apps will do a pretty crappy job with the default settings (photoshop is guilty of this) you can change the behavior by switching the tool's mode (near the strength slider at the top). For highlights i prefer to fill a layer with pure black and set it to color dodge...anything you paint in white in that layer will give you colored highlights, this is where having a tablet is useful because you can vary intensity with pressure (but smudge is still useful here to fade away strong highlights). The other benefit over dodge n burn is that it's non destructive, if something looks off, you just paint over the area in black and start over.

Last step is usually adding a levels adjustment to make your texture as bright as possible, if you don't take time to do this your textures won't be balanced properly and display poorly in game.

 

Thanks a lot! I'll keep this as a guide for all my future texture work.