Introduction
This tutorial demonstrates one of many different styles to texture a model from start to finish.
Tools Needed:
- 3ds Max or Maya (This tutorial is Max based)
- Photoshop
- Hopefully, for practice, you already have a model with uv's ready for texturing.
Step 1
First, I use texporter and psd path unwrapper to get my initial texture. |
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Step 2
Next, I use the minimum filter to get a good initial bleed between colors. Minimum is found in the "Other" tab in photoshop's filters menu.
If you are using a 512 texture sheet, then set minimum to 3 and you are good to go. But, feel free to play around with it to see what you like. |
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Step 3
Next, I lay down my base colors. I keep all similar colors together on seperate layers for easy selection.
I try to go a bit darker than the colors it will eventually be. Also, I work with my textures at 100% illumination.
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Step 4
Then I proceed to make a light map using the skylight and setting the renderer to light tracer. Hit "0" (zero) to open up the render to texture dialog. There are many tutorials that teach how to bake a light map, so I won't go too into this.
Make a light map and take it to your texture and set its layer to overlay. |
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Step 5
Next, clean up the light map with the smudge tool. Get rid of any hard lines that you don't want. Try to get the most obvious seams out, but for the more tricky ones, we will deal with these later.
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Step 6
Next, I proceed to start blocking in shadows where I want them and to start feeling out shapes. I also like to think about putting dark areas in places dirt would collect. In other words, I am making my valleys now. In the next step I will make my peaks by starting to pull out shapes with highlights. I am doing this all with a single layer set to overlay. Using dark brown on the body area and black set to overlay on the accessories.
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Step 7
Now I am starting to define shapes by "Pulling" them from the shadows. Using the first brown as a midtone, I use a peach color set to overlay to bring out the highlights. Next step, we are going to start getting tighter with our details.
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Step 8
I like to work on specific pieces at a time rather than the whole thing all together. I handle final balancing of the textures later down the line. On the wood, I just made some lines, beveled, and embossed them, noodled around a bit more to loose that "bevelled Embossed Look" and I am still sort of working on it...
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Step 9
Now, I know it seams that I did a lot between steps 8 and 9, but it really is just trial and error. Mess with your layers and find what looks good on your model. Use photo overlays combined with filters to get nice noise going on in your textures and remember, just have fun! 
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The End
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