12/8/08
An Opportunity to waffle about a technique I think I invented
As you may have noticed, I make 3d models. Well done. A big part of 3d modelling, especially in games, is the texturing. I want to take this opportunity to write down one of my techniques, in case I forget it later, it will be here for me. It is actually a really simple technique, but it is helpful for shading textures.
A big point in game textures is that they need to have multiple shades and shadows on them before they even get into the engine. This is usually pretty easy with simple textures, you can just draw a slightly transparent dark stroke over the part of your texture and there you have it, shadow. But when it comes to more complex textures, such as wood or stone, the simple dark stripe starts to look awfully tacky. So I managed to devise a simple yet effective way of keeping the details, but still making shadows. The prerequisites of this technique is that you have a base texture making application, such as MapZone, and a 2d image editor which supports the use of layers. I use the GIMP.
First of all, make the base texture. I'll use a wood texture I made in MapZone. Then, still in your texture maker, mess with the saturation and brighness/contrast to make a darker texture that still has the exact same pattern as the other one. A good idea is to make the bright one a little too bright, as it would be in direct sunlight, and the dark one just a tad too dark. You can always blend them later on to equalize them. Although sometimes it is more desireable to have one basic texture and then do a brighter, washed out version of it, and then a darker version of it. Also, you don't have to stop at these two or three colours, sometimes you may want a part that is completely washed out (I have used this for highlights on jeans) and another that is a completely different colour (useful for say, green rot on wood or something). My two wood texture examples are below, click on them to see the original size.
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So once you have your base textures, however many you want, import them all into your graphics editor. Have them all overlaying each other in seperate layers so that if you switch quickly from one to another it looks like the texture is just changing colour, and nothing else is happening to the image, no movement or flickering. Then, in the GIMP, put the lightest texture down on the bottom layer, and go into the other layers, ctrl+a to select all, and then delete the texture. Now in order to get the shades, you get your eraser and either hold alt, or select the 'Ant-Erase' checkbox, so that you will effectively be 'drawing' the texture. This way, when you are shading, you are un-erasing the darker or lighter shaded texture, and you are not sacrificing detail or quality for the sake of shading!
That's about it, here's a demo of an axe I textured using this technique:
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Told you it was simple! I'm sure someone else can put this to a better use than me, thanks for reading!
