caponeart

2011-02-23T17:11:00.001-08:00

'Normals - First steps'

First of all one of my favourite tutorials for this is,

http://www.svartberg.com/tutorials/article_normalmaps/normalmaps.html

It's practically what I'll be doing here but will be breaking it down to it's core. If you want to find out more definitely check that out as well as the single greatest resource for understanding normal maps here,

http://wiki.polycount.com/NormalMap?action=show&redirect=Normal+Map#SGAHE

2011-01-23T15:59:00.000-08:00

'Hearse update'

Started work on this again...

2010-02-14T14:29:00.000-08:00

'Where did the tips go?'

A few people over the last few months have been asking if I'm going to be adding more tips to this blog. Short answer, not really, but the good news is I've decided to continue elsewhere. I'm now doing it over at gamasutra, to be honest most of the stuff I have there now is reworks of tips I've shared here before but I hope to be creating new content for it in the future. So if you missed the texture art tips head over there and bookmark it,

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/edit/blog

2010-02-14T13:18:00.000-08:00

First Vehicle (and life) - Update

I did start the texture some time ago but since then so much has happened with getting a new job and getting ready to move. Also, I've recently purchased a powerful PC at long last. Tragically, I won't be able to even build it until I've found somewhere to live. Also am getting a new monitor, one that doesn't change colour/lightness depending how you view it resulting in images that are too dark/light such as this...

2010-01-24T16:47:00.001-08:00

First Vehicle - Update

Going quite well, need to do some zbrush and a few extra normals here and there and I'm done.

2010-01-12T05:34:00.000-08:00

First Vehicle

Working on a old fashioned Hearse. Right now am adding a few little extra bits and bobs before getting it ready for high poly baking and zbrushing.

2009-11-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

Zbrush Practice

Generic damaged pillar. Trying to use methods learned from tutorials such as using Surface Noise Feature, new LazyMouse tools and various polycut tools.

2009-11-02T15:33:00.000-08:00

Random : no20 'More painting'

Made variation of the previous painting and tweaked it some more.

2009-10-29T06:16:00.000-07:00

Random : no19 'Random Quick Painting'

Working with a tiny A6 tablet here where every stroke needs a few seconds to register, I really need a new tablet. I'm still painting away, miss this style of painting (similar to Overlord).

2009-10-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

Unearthly2009 : 'concept/blockout'

Working solo on this to give me something to do while inbetween jobs. The brief is to concept, model and texture a game environment that suits the word 'endgame'. So a setting of great setting for the entrance or part of a final level before encountering the 'main boss' etc. The area could result in the entire world being saved or doomed etc.

I picked a keyword/theme to base my concept around and this was 'leap of faith' where the hero has to run and jump into a hologram and a higher power will judge if they are to be transported to the 'end'. Seems a bit like a tacky B movie idea but it should be fun and the environment has a nice combination of modern design fused with natural ancient elements since this 'lab' was built over an powerful ancient ruin.

So far done a basic concept and used that loosely to make a blockout.

2009-10-07T08:33:00.001-07:00

Random : no18 'Garden'

Update on Garden piece that I'm currently working on.

2009-09-28T02:32:00.000-07:00

Education : no33 'Metal'

Some great insight into creating metal surfaces by an ex co-worker of mine, Peter Asberg.

Original source can be read on his portfolio site at http://environment-artist.blogspot.com/2009/10/creating-metal-surfaces.html

Creating metal surfaces

This is just a couple of things I keep in mind when creating metal surfaces. They are by no means set in stone, it's just a few things I've noticed might help when creating metal surfaces for next (well, current really) gen use.

The most common problem with normalmaps for metal is that it's easy to overdo it. Depending on the engine you are using, you might not be able to get sharp, crisp normalmaps unless you use fairly large texture sheets so for the most part, the fine grainy detail will have to be left to the specular. Scratches and such do work however and usually need to be in the normalmap to make it look convincing (just keep in mind that texture compression might ruin the really fine scratches, those that are just one or two pixels wide).

Below is a compilation of different types of painted metal surfaces:

As you can see, painted metal can look very different depending on what type of paint it is and what it has been subjected to. It's important to decide what type of paint your surface has been painted with since it will affect both the normal and the specular maps. Having a history in mind when you create the textures is useful since it will help you decide how to treat it. Is it an old surface with lots of scratches, new with a few dents, so old the paint has started to flake, was it painted without being cleaned up first so you have really lumpy paint, has it been polished often? Having a history will also make the object look a bit more interesting rather than "generic metal box #6". This is of course not mandatory, it's just a mental exercise that might help when creating the textures. I should add that having a history in mind works for any kind of texturing, not just metal surfaces.

A common mistake is to create a normalmap that has a lot of noise in it but this makes the surface look more like leather/elephant hide than metal. If the texture is a 2048 instead of say, a 1024, the noise might have looked more like the grainy paint above but in most cases, it won't look like convincing metal. What I would do is to tone the noise down considerably and just keep the scratches where the paint has been scratched away to reveal the metal. What we need to keep in mind however, is that scratches that are just a few pixels wide will most likely look lumpy and not very pretty once the texure has been compressed. So keep larger scrathes, dents etc in the normalmap but be careful with the finer detail.

In addition to that, a specular with fairly high contrast can work well since paint is usually fairly matte and non-reflective (there are of course exceptions, it is as always down to what type of surface you want to mimic) whereas scratches can be very shiny since the metal surface beneath the paint shows through. Another little tweak can be to make the diffuse colder. Sometimes a texture can have a fairly warm feel, with brown and almost light orange tones as a base which can make it feel slightly wooden. By simply changing the hue on the base colour layers so they are more blue-tinted it can feel more metal-y. It's a cheap trick but it works. It is also important to tweak the specular curve of your material since the way a game engine renders the light shining on your material can have a large impact in addition to your textures.

When it comes to the specular, it's almost better to put a lot of the fine detail there rather than in the normalmap for the reasons outlined above. Some detail needs to be in the normalmap and mimicked in the specularmap, such as scratches while otheres shouldn't be in the specular at all. One such example is if you have a plain metal surface that has been dented. Again, this depends on what kind of effect you want. If it's a recent dent, there won't have been time for dirt and dust to collect so it hasn't become dull yet. If it's an old dent, it will be less shiny than the surrounding areas since it won't have been cleaned as well as the rest of the surface. And just to add to the confusion, some things should be in the specular but not the normalmap such as oily surfaces, grease marks, handprints etc. This is where the idea of having a history of the objects comes in handy again. Has the object been manhandled a lot, dropped, left to stand in an oilslick etc. All these things combine to make the surface look interesting and if you put the right detail in the right map, it will look fantastic.

Of course, metals need to reflect something so having a good reflection map is the last piece of the puzzle. Here is where it can come down more to what looks good than what it would realistically reflect. Unless your surface is very clean you can get away with using a reflection that doesn't have anything to do with the setting. As long as it looks good, that's all that matters. It's also down to memory usage. If you take a cubemap for example, it's made from six separate images so the memory usage is fairly large for just a single cubemap. If you can reuse one cubemap on many surfaces you'll save memory which can then be spent on other things, such as higher resolution textures on selected objects. As always it's a trade off between what looks good and how much memory you have left for the shiny stuff. That's also why slightly dirty, painted metals is a bit easier to cheat with, you won't get a clear image of what the reflection looks like. Clean environments are always harder to get to look good and interesting in my opinion. By the way, a very good example of succesful clean environments is Mirrors Edge, it has great usage of lighting and a very clean style. Well worth a look for the visuals alone (apart from some of the fighting sequences, it's a good game in my opinion).

Since this whole text is about metal surfaces, I have to mention Dead Space. It has a very well designed look and the way they use specular and normalmaps in that game is almost exemplary of how to do metal surfaces right. The normalmaps are clean, crisp and there is very rarely any noise in them. It is a very well made game, excellent design on pretty much all levels. Great atmosphere, lighting, texturing and a good story with good voice acting. Speical mention goes to the integrated HUD and the sound design as it is, in one word; amazing. Playing it with headphones late at night was an expereince I won't forget any time soon. As an example of Dead Space texturing (and a cheap way to get more images into this post), here are two screenshots that show their restrained normalmaps and nice use of specular. It looks a lot better in motion, and the lighting is pretty much all dynamic so you'll see some really nice effects all through the game

2009-09-21T13:17:00.000-07:00

Random : no17 'specular colour'

Was playing around with specular colour today. Not sure why, it needs a reflection map more than anything :)

2009-09-21T04:50:00.000-07:00

Random : no16 'Personal Training / mod work

Helped out with a mod here and made a door from scratch. This is the first asset which I've successfully zbrushed so that's something cool. Hope to do more of that very soon. Since showing this door to people a few have said it would greatly benefit from colour specular but my laptop cannot handle shaders with this feature. I really miss my super powered PC in the studio :( Might try and do a proper render instead...

2009-09-08T16:00:00.001-07:00

Random : no15 'Personal Training - Zbrush'

Getting to grips with zbrush with bricks. Half of these are 44 Tri, the others are over 200k.

2009-08-29T15:12:00.000-07:00

Random : no14 'Personal Training - Last Gen Building'

Update on this. Managed to use the allocated alpha map for dirt decals which really helps.

2009-08-09T04:56:00.000-07:00

Random : no13 'Personal Training - Last Gen Building'

Trying out an art test that asks to model a building from texture using under 5000 poly and texture it with a 1K texture map budget (diffuse, spec and alpha). Have done the building now and it's under 50% of the budget so will be adding and tweaking that.

About 60-70% into the texture pass now, being a bit over ambitious since I have a really bad setup at home. 1 monitor, laptop that cannot handle both max and photoshop at the same time. A6 wacom tablet. So that along with the budget is really limiting me here but that in itself is quite a refreshing challenge. Hopefully should finish this some time next week.

2009-07-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

Random : no12 'Personal Training - Character Modeling2'

Had a stab at creature modeling. Still need to think about the head!

2009-07-27T17:36:00.000-07:00

Random : no11 'Personal Training - Character Modeling'

Have tried character modeling in the past and have recently had a stab at it. Everytime without fail I end up in that loophole (no pun intended!) where you go around it again and again trying to clean up the topology but in the process messing up other areas.......and that's before I attempt the ears!

2009-06-08T09:09:00.000-07:00

Random : no10 'Why are so many of todays games grey and brown?'

Here is a link to a technical explanation

2009-05-12T14:06:00.000-07:00

Random : no9 '100 worst Videogame Box Art Covers'
My run down of what I find to be the most laughable, ugliest and most disturbing box art covers of all time. All of these are commercial games.

At 100 it's Safe Cracker 'The ultimate puzzle adventure game', not quite sure where the adventure is in opening a safe. Maybe they are dotted around the world. Check out the amazing motion blur noise photoshop effect for the metal background! Oh and the keyhole in the 'A'.

At 99 it's Arcade Pool. Join in and play with some guy in his bedroom with his invisible pool playing buddy.

At 98 it's Championship Pony. If you're going to stick a big horse head in the middle at least make it sort of correct. Seems a bit harsh insulting this illustration compared to what is coming up later...

At 97 it's the Xbox360 version of the Streetfighter 4 box. That's not Ryu! This is like one of those badly illustrated covers of the late 80's (only much much better).

At 96 it's Crabby Adventure, inspired naming skills going on here. By the way this is the first of many entries from Pheonix games, the absolute masters of bad box art covers. This cover is one of their most beautifully pieces of design work so far.

At 95 we have Ghost Recon jungle STORM! JUNGLE STORM! GO GO GO!! Apart from the 15 minute tea break in between battles that has been beautifully captured here with some kind of weirdly colour schemed cover.

At 94 we have the brilliantly named Gem'x starring a beautiful bunny girl in dire need of toilet relief. Those eyes! You'll later discover the eyes are a big factor in what makes a true disturbing box cover.

At 93 we have more eyes in Lady Cruncher. R U HUNGRY?

At 92 we have the splendid Super Bust a move cover. "I have a great idea for a design to our puzzle game. Baby, shades, baby has writing on head and red thing coming out of mouth..."

At 91 Diva Dancers. Scary face.

At 90 the fondly remembered Chuckie Egg. Not for it's cover however.

At 89 Bust a move's followup sets out to make a worse cover than the last and succeeds.

At 88 ULTIMATE Duck Hunting. Broken up on occasion with boss fights featuring over sized gigantic dog heads. Oh and aim lower mate, the duck's down THERE on the bottom right!!

At 87, the Power Ranger's grandparents in FinalZone 2?

At 86 Deal or no Deal. If it glows it means it's special.

At 85 Yellow haired Ken in front of orange background in Streetfighter EX2 PLUS. What's up with the arm and face? Thankfully the title hides all your other deformed limbs.

At 84 What's going on here then?

At 83 It's Battle Arena Toshinden. CHOP! Nice arms sir.

At 82 It's Dur Daragh! (what?) I can't wait to play it and check out that rock.

At 81 Phoenix Games with Hansel and Gretel. Banana hair!

At 80 It's Body Blows (Galactic!) Yeah, fighting game. Let's stick some of the characters on the box and leave it at that. Oh and let's stick on an absurd surreal thing on the bottom right.

At 79 Ico! The European cover remains one of the most celebrated covers of all time. The American cpver has him clench a stick in his hand with a scowl that suggests 'Back off bitch! or I beat yo ass'. Talk about missing the point of the game.

At 78 Bionic Granny shown with her two spooky children. It should be the granny running away from THEM!

At 77 Party Babyz. Who thought babies were a good thing to put on a cover?

At 76 Crescent Century hits us hard with this photoshop trickery.

At 75 Spiderman Web of Shadows indulges in some tattoos and shows them off with pride.

At 74 Galdregon's Domain! Featuring girl floating from a cup and a bare naked chest prat. The best bit however is the sticker on the right that tells us that the game is of a 'Utter Brill Quality'. Half naked males is quite a trend in early box art as you'll soon discover.

At 73 Ninja Rabbits! (more like ninja rabbit) a game about ninja rabbits that comes with free 'ninja combat'.

At 72 no.

At 71 Deeeeep Feeeear check out the spoooooky hand (and the red 'thing' in the middle)

At 70 take the eyes! Vigilante's box art made people feel warm inside for buying it.

At 69 come and party with Cheggers, you know you want to.

At 68 it's the return of Phoenix Games's box art covers. Crazy Golf, This cover was done by their best artist, at least this one will not give children nightmares.

At 67 it's the slightly creepy Ballyhoo cover"

At 66 it's Spaaace Roooogue (by Paul Neurath). Every boy wanted this game so they could feel just as cool as that dude on the cover.

At 65 we have Suspended. Now I feel bad since this was actually a creative cover at the time. It was a sculpture with depth as a cover but it's all wasted effort if it makes children cry themselves to sleep every night.

At 64 Virtual Kasparov! Yes! We have the Kasparov license! Let's stick him on the cover! Headbutting a huge horse head!

At 63 Valis 3. What on earth is that?

At 62 Phalanx. The hyper speed shoot out in space. It's a game about space so why not have some old dude with a beard playing a banjo. His face, his face screams 'This is FUUUN!!'.

At 61 Legendary axe 2. TWO. TWICE. TWO AXES. Clever stuff here.

At 60 it's time for some Magic Meanies. 'Waah, I am a wizard. I have a giant apple on my shoulder. Just because I can. The other stuff? Oranges?"

At 59 it's time for Dalmatians 4 (4?!) Another entry from Pheonix games. Now they are starting their journey into the world of hideous cover art.

At 58 it's Final Fight 2. Featuring guys that are so awesome they just have to flex their muscles while doing drop kicks.

At 57 the Sega Master System box art revolution kicks in with Secret Command. You just know from those 3 little waves emitting from the gun that this game is going to be INTENSE. Shame the artist couldn't at least add an emotional roar to the soldier, or just a mouth in general.

At 56 It's Crazy caveman. Stop hitting that big stone with the title in it otherwise it will break and we won't know what the game is called!

At 55 It's Dark Century. Boom! It has a tank or something on a shiny chessboard (The mirror ball in the background proves this)

At 54 CHOP!! (again) Buy Guardian Angel and you'll be able to chop bad guys too.

At 53 What says 'This game is action packed!' more than a guy punching through a brick wall with his fist? How about TWO fists as shown on the cover of Brawl Brothers.

At 52 KAPOW! David Duchovny is on the loose in StreetSmart.

At 51 brown and unexciting silhouettes. Can't wait to get this one home.

At 50 Bad Company cover. What the hell is that on his head?

At 49 ROBODEMONS! Glowing sex toys, glass jars attached to knees, little weird midget things. Welcome to the lower 50 of worse game covers of all time.

At 48 Cheap Skate, in more ways than one.

At 47 Space Harrier. "OOOwww my chin!". Oh and remember, 'Twice the mega power!'.

At 46 Be just like these two kool kidz from the city (check the blue building in the background for proof of this) in RIVAL TURF!

At 45 This really was the cover the sequel to Xenon.

At 44 the pure emotion captured by this guy's face in the cover for Wire Head is what makes it.

At 43 Wonderboy in Monster Land has possibly the most freakiest face in game box art history.

At 42 Steam Express! Suprised there wasn't steam emitting from this piece of crap from yes you guessed it, Phoenix Games.

At 41 Phoenix Games again with Cinderella's Fairy Tale. Don't know what's going on here, nice placement of the big logo thing in the bottom right. They should just make them a bit bigger and then Phoenix Games would not need to do so much work.

At 40 Shock and awe for the solider on the cover of Socom.

At 39 Incredible illustration skills on the cover of Burger Time. Check out the scary egg.

At 38 Pheonix Games have created two Snow White games. This cover is the not so scary one.

At 37 River City Ransom. What on earth is he doing?

At 36 it is of course Hammerin' Harry. Featuring none other than that freak out of the Goonies.

At 35 yes. Ninja Scooter Simulator. Check out the spikes on the bike and the skulls! This is hardcore stuff.

At 34 Great Soccer. Imagine if today you got 'Fantastic FPS' or 'Brilliant RPG'. Oh and they couldn't even be bothered to do the rest of the character.

At 33 yet more breath taking character work from Phoenix Games in Legend of Camelot. Is that an egg in his crown or part of his head?

At 32 Neverworld. What?

At 31 Crackdown. Where to start? Laughable demon goat guy? Both expressions on the guys or that random out of place monkey in the bottom right?

At 30 Phoenix Games created a wonderful cover for Hot Shot, a game about a gun.

At 29 Phoenix Games with Snow White. Possibly the most disturbing cover for a kids game yet. Featuring the same castle from their Cindarella cover.

At 28, Killer Kong! Starring a gorilla that has metalic human breasts appears to have just done a rude.

At 27 Cave Fighter, you take on the role of Mr Pointy Knee as you take on some naughty ducks. Look at the unparamount expression of pure terror and fear in his little face.

At 26, Abraham Strong, Space Mercenary. Not too sure what is going on here. A giant Mercenary standing in a warzone in which a dishwasher has gone out of control?

At 24 Sorcerer Lord, oh my god one of his horns has turned into a dragon and is about to gobble a lady who has also come out of his hat!

At 23 ElfMania. I totally dig the guy in the bottom left.

At 22 Gepetto left his drugs out in the kitchen again. Check out the Pinocchio title, it has a wood filter on it. This is because Pinocchio is made out of wood too! Phoenix Games don't just make beautiful covers but are clever with them too.

At 21 we have One on One. I'm not going to say anything about this one.

At 20 another Kong game. This one manages the seemingly impossible task of being worse than the last one.

At 19 it's Suspect. Again, I really dig the bottom left character.

At 18, we have my most hated Phoenix Games cover. Street Warrior, not only does it have awful artwork but it's painfully generic. The dog IS amazing though, I'll give it that.

At 17 Command and Destroy. Can't believe this is box cover artwork for a recent game. Love the copy and pasting (flipping and scaling too!) of the alien.

At 16, Countdown to DOOM! (by Peter Killworth). They couldn't even be bothered to colour it in.

At 15 European 2 the 'Exciting Strategy Game'. What's with the hand growing out of the elbow?

At 14 The Kristal. Again, it's all about the expressions. Wonderful stuff.

At 13 Not sure what this is called to be honest. Some splendid posing for the cover though. Bless the guy being headlocked, he seems to be rather enjoying it.

At 12 Freddy Mercury and Tom Selleck's lovechild goe's awol in Joe Blade 2.

At 11 Knights of the Sky. Want to be their friend? Play this game!

At 10 Street Sports Baseball. Featuring some deranged guy trying to whack a fly.

At 9 the popular Ghosts n goblins had

At 8 you can't expect to much from a game named Blood and Guts but this is shocking. So many unexplainable things going on but of course the best bit is the guy standing on a cats tail for no reason whatsoever.

At 7 Black Belt is the worst Sega Master System box cover of them all. At least with the Great Soccer they bothered to draw a full leg and had someone over the age of 6 do it.

At 6 What the hell is this? If you're going to mirror something at least try and not make it so obvious.

At 5 so wrong.

At 4 Metro Cross has possibly the most uncool image in the history of box art.

At 3 possibly the most famous bad box art covers and from Capcom of all people. Mega Man not only has horrendous illustration but they have tried to humanize the character to make him look more cool. Liking the crazy gun perspective though.

At 2 we have Karnaaj. I can't believe this made it to the shelves. No idea why the R is highlighted or why the guy has blue hair and eyebrows. This isn't that old either!

At 1 Puzzle Maniacs. I don't quite know why I find this to be the worst cover in video game history. I'd just love to have seen the meetings that took place in coming up with this cover and how it was proposed.

2008-07-08T03:55:00.000-07:00

Education : no32 'sharpen'
Someone mentioned to me that rotating a layer in a PSD will lose density but it's at such a low level that it's hard to notice. If you rotate quite a bit you do lose quality so as I've mentioned before always sharpen the final image. 'Smart sharpen' is the best tool to use for this since you have more control than the other methods.

2008-06-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

Education : no31 'Colour Map'
This is one of the more newer maps that texture artists use. I often come across people that have never heard of such a thing so I will just explain it's purpose as simply as possible. You should open up the following image while reading this.

1. So imagine this is say 3% of your asset. 5 plains that share the same UV's and texture. It tiles but it sort of looks bland.

2. On UV channel1 the UV's are 5 boxes overlaying each other but in another channel (usually 2 or 3) we have UV's for multiple parts. We make them so small so there is room to have a unique face for each plain. This is to be the colour map and is usually 1024 or 2048 pixels.

3. This is a zoomed in view of the top left corner of the UV map. The rest of the map will be filled with all the other parts of the asset, I'm just not showing them here.

4. Very crude but hopefully it puts the idea across which is that you can paint unique details onto each plain.

5. So now all 5 plains do not look exactly the same.

The whole process really is just an alternative decal method. I almost always have colour maps now for every medium or large asset.

2008-06-19T07:59:00.000-07:00

Resources : no3 'Brushsets'

Best resource I know of where various people upload specially made brushsets to give more variation to your brushes.

http://www.brusheezy.com

2008-06-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Education : no30 'Quick saving the diffuse'

When saving the diffuse for preview in the 3D app you usually 'save as' and select the image type etc but on those time consuming textures you can save time by going to actions in photoshop where you can 'record' an action so you just hit 1 button to save. Sometimes it can be off putting as it will suddenly stop working because it has changed the name of your diffuse (usually by adding 'copy' in the filename). If this does happen simply keep it and just temporarily change the root of the texture in the 3D app so it points to this 'copy'.

2008-05-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

Education : no29 'Concrete Edgework'

Quick example here. On the left I've done edgework that almost contains the same tones and size. Edgework in generally should never be this perfect unless it's something very hard and new. On the right is an better example of how to go about doing it where there are shifts in tone and size on an edge that is clearly more broken/old looking.

2008-04-29T02:45:00.000-07:00

Education : no28 'Normals advise for multiple element maps'

If you have different elements in your texture sheet, such as metal and wood, make sure to use the nvidia filter on elements individually. If you just desaturate a few diffuse layers and only use the filter once you will have the same nvidia filter scale for everything. When really wood and metal can require different scales to achieve the best results.

Right, am off to start playing GTA4 now. Might be a while till the next update ;)

2008-04-28T03:36:00.000-07:00

Random : no8 'XNView'

Using the standard windows explorer to view images can be slow and problematic. XNView is one of the better image viewers out there, you can map certain folders to your favourites list. I'll usually have favourites set to my references, inspiration folder, textures folder etc. Available for free if you're not using it for commercial reasons.

http://www.xnview.com/

2008-04-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

Education : no27 'Finishing Textures'

Can't quite explain why but when working on a texture for days on end, day after day, you can get it in your head that the final texture is finished and will move on. You should always stick some adjustment layers to the top of your diffuse/spec laters such as levels and hue/saturation. It is likely you will not need to adjust the bars that much, just a few digits here and there. By doing this you can often find that by doing this your texture actually wasn't quite right before. Sharpening tools can also help a lot at this stage but be subtle and look at the texture carefully to make sure it hasn't 'damaged' any of it.

2008-04-07T03:29:00.000-07:00

Flashback : no5 'Unreal3 Map redo'

So below is an image showing wooden planks, on the left is the original texture I did and on the right I spent about 5 minutes quickly throwing in a few basic improvements just to give you an idea of what I would do if I were to do this again.

1. The dirt gather under the planks on the front was originally just intense and small. I added more by bringing out at lower opacity to give the texture more depth. Before, it just looked too flat.

2. Added an overlay using an image of water drips. This gives the texture more life and adds more tones. Before the lighter wood pieces had hardly any colour variation. This helps to break up the texture.

3. The edgework on the darker planks were originally more or less the same width. Here I added more lighter patchy areas (lower opacity) to break it up a bit more so its not just dark/light. There is now more ranges of tones making it seem much more natural.

2008-03-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

Education : no26 'Q+A'

The following questions were asked on CGTALK earlier. I (quickly) jotted down some answers. Might be helpful to others as I remember having similar questions before getting in the industry.

1. How much do you get to paint diffuse maps these days on the current generation of games? I really enjoy this aspect of texture creation, but have been wondering if more and more has turned to photography manipulation.

Depends on the studio you work for. I worked on Overlord which was quite nice in that we mostly painted our textures and used photos as a very loose template if at all. Most stuff then is geared towards Photo real. However this isn't a big a deal as you may think, sure some games have textures where the artist just throws in a texture from a database and clone stamps it a bit etc but any decent games studio will make their artists use photos as a template/reference only. I still hand paint extra occlusion, edgewear, stains, dirt etc as well as often having the option to add new elements such as extra trim, hole handle, decoration etc

2. I have noticed that Zbrush is a requirement in many postings for texture artists job descriptions. What responsibilities do texture artist have using ZBrush? I mean what would be most beneficial to learn in Zbrush as someone interested in textures?

Zbrush still isn't essential to texture artists but it is getting that way so having experience with this or mudbox is a huge boost to your CV. At the moment zbrush is only used when having to plan out the layout of your texture without having to worry about matching it up in photoshop. Difficult to explain, a good example of using this is doing the camo patterns on a tank. You draw the outlines or simple solid colours of the patterns on your object in realtime in zbrush and then you can export the map and rerender it to your UV unwrap layout.

3. How much shader creation does a texture artist do? I have noticed that there are few options for creating textures for artists such as render monkey and FX composer. Do you use these tools or others if creating shaders? Could you recomend what would be best to learn to create shaders.

Depends on the engine we're using. If using unreal3 then we are usually expected to be able to create simple shaders. For more tricky shaders we would have tech/lead artists create them for us. You also need to know how to set up basic standard fx shaders in your 3D application so you can test normal/spec maps in your main 3D app.

Overal then it isn't vital to learn the tech aspects of texturing unless you're wanting to be a tech/lead texture. It certainly helps but it is more important to learn how to actually create great texture maps in the first place.

2008-03-25T04:51:00.001-07:00

Random : no6 'DominanceWar3'

Entered into DominanceWar 3 this year. I'm hoping to at least finish the model but we'll see. Progress thread can be found at,

http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?p=30903&posted=1#post30903

2008-03-05T04:16:00.000-08:00

Education : no25 'Texture Artist Overview'

Recently wrote an article of sorts for gamedev sessions. It is aimed for people interested into getting into the industry. Explains what an texture artist is and what they do etc.

Here is a link to it, check out the other content on the site too I think it could grow into a rather useful collection of gamedev articles.

http://gamedev.sessions.edu/?p=11

2008-02-25T15:07:00.000-08:00

Flashback : no4 'Unreal3'

Some examples of texture work done for Unreal3 back in 2006.

2008-02-07T03:58:00.000-08:00

Education : no24 'Making maps/trims tile both 50% and 100%'

Often when building levels you need walls/trim etc meshes of various sizes. There could be a full wall and then half a wall as two seperate meshes for example. Now if you make a texture map that can tile it will work with the full wall but not the half wall.

1. Duplicate tiling wall/trim in your psd.
2. Offset 50% horizontal on your new layer
3. Softly erase both ends on this layer so the underlying layer and this layer transitions well.
4. Collapse this layer into the underlying layer to make one layer.

Now this will tile perfectly on both full walls and half walls. You can advance this method and have it so it will also work on quarter walls/trims if needed.

2008-02-03T14:05:00.000-08:00

Education : no23 'Hide selection in Photoshop'

Did you know pressing Ctrl and H while an area is selected it will hide the selection tool (as well as any guides). This can come in handy when setting the correct tone with levels or hue/saturation etc and the selection box/shape is in the way.

2008-01-31T04:02:00.000-08:00

Education : no22 'Piclens by cooliris'

This is quite something. Free tool that you install into your firefox browser. Once installed and you visit google search you'll notice that when rolling over any image a blue arrow appears. Click on it and you will be instantly taken into this virtual dark room where you can easily navigate every image from your search. No loading and no page changes. Once you find a pic you can either printscreen or press a icon that thats you to the page with that image if you wish to 'save image as'.

You can also use this with other popular image sites such as flickr. Just try it because words just don't do it justice.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5579

2008-01-30T12:15:00.000-08:00

Education : no21 'Gradient Pass'

This is a useful trick for complicated environment meshes. I will use a box for this example to make it as straight forward as possible. First of all you need UV channel 1 to be mapped as usual and also need to have channel 2 unwrapped where no polygon is overlapping and has its own space (really cheap and nasty way to do it is to 'unpack uv's' in unwrap editor in Max). Add new material to your mesh (everything you want this effect on should be atatched as one mesh) Add a gradient map into the diffuse slot, feel free to play around with the settings to get the effect you want. Add a UV map, align it correctly and rotate the gizmo if needed in order to change the direction of the gradient. Now press zero key to bring up render to texture and render out a diffuse into map channel 2.

I have photoshopped the 'basic uv map' to show what you essentially get at the end. If its more complicated you'll get something like the example shown in bottom right. Now you can use this layer in Photoshop as a mask for dirt/grime/rust/moss. In max you can add noise by playing with the settings to make the gradient less perfect but you can also do that in Photoshop in various ways.

2008-01-27T05:51:00.000-08:00

Education : no20 'Turning an difficult photo into seamless texture'

Neil Blevins provides 2 methods on how to fix this common problem after offsetting as shown in the image below
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/brightness_var_tileable_texture/brightness_var_tileable_texture.htm

2008-01-21T12:03:00.000-08:00

Education : no19 'Layer Managment'

2 years in the industry and I still don't have a fool proof guide on how to set up layers. I wish there was an universal way of doing it so that we instantly know whats going on when opening other peoples psd's. Everyone has their own style when it comes to layers. I hope to do more on this in the future but for now some of my methods.

'General' Folder
Have a 'general' folder with layers for dirt, scratches, rust/edgework, shadowing etc that are generally painted over the whole map. Before I would have something like dirt_objectX, dirt_objectY etc thinking it gave me more control but often I'd end up with multiple different layers for multiple types of general layer. Try to limit to yourself to one layer per 'general texture'.

Colour scheme
Devise a colour system for the main groups. I use red for diffuse, blue for normals and green for specular. You can expand on this to create your own little helpers. For example I sometimes add to the layer names what they will later be copied into. For example General_highlights (spec) or General_indents (norm / spec). It really depends how complex the map is.

'Normals / setup' and 'Normals / final'
"Normals / setup" Group. The cheap way to do it is to throw various layers from diffuse on top of a gray background. Adjust the layers and then normal map filter it. I stick a 50% grey background layer on the bottom with the various layers from diffuse added on top BUT one by one I'll have just one of these layers showing along with the background and then edit the layer/background to produce a good normal and then throw that into a group called 'Normals / final'. At the end you then have multiple normal maps and can easily change the intensity of each layer by simply changing the opacity. Instead of going back and changing the original layer and filtering it again.

2008-01-20T05:51:00.000-08:00

Education : no18 'Creating painted wood'

Really nice and simple tutorial here on achieving an weathered paint effect on wood from Methodonline.

http://www.methodonline.com/painted_tutorial.htm

2008-01-18T04:23:00.000-08:00

Education : no17 'masking in'

With many textures you need to add general dirt, rust, moss, chipped wood etc. Quick example here of how I go about these.

1. Fill you map with your texture. So here I have just stuck in a photo of rust and healed/cloned it around so that it fills the map. If you're only generally bringing this texture into areas then you can get away with this layer looking tiled other wise just spend a bit more time making sure no obvious shapes repeat etc.

2. Click on Mask. The mask shows as 100% white, make sure to click on the white square in the layers window. Invert (Ctrl & I) to make it black and your rust will vanish.

3. Now you can go into specific areas and with a soft white brush gradually bring it back in.

Doing it this way gives much more control.

2008-01-14T04:13:00.000-08:00

Random : no5 'Update'

Back again. I'll be doing another round of updates over the next few weeks so if anyone has any questions or ideas of what to cover then drop me an email or add a comment. Thanks.

Since last time Unreal 3 has been released and so hope to update my website soon. The only other game that we can really talk about it a sort of MMO low spec affair on the PC. This set of screenshots show the texturepass for village buildings that myself and another worked on. For more information of the project you can go to http://awomo.com

2007-10-09T03:38:00.000-07:00

Resources : no2 'Custom brush tutorials'

Anyone wanting to start making their own brushes should check out the nicely illustrated tutorial series.

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutorials/2d_custombrushes/2d_custombrushes.asp

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutorials/2d_custombrushes2/2d_custombrushes2.asp

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutorials/2d_custombrushes3/2d_custombrushes3_1.asp

2007-10-09T03:22:00.000-07:00

Random : no4 'CGTalk UGAC3 update'

Here is a update of my plague doctor, as you can see I'm quite underway with the texture. Should be able to finish it before the deadline of 17th. Only problem is I also need to do the rest of the body before then, so I've failed!! Oh well at least I will have a great addition to my portfolio. I will also be able to use aspects of this project for some more 'education' blog entries some time in the near furture.
As always you can check progress at,

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=39&t=537843&page=1

2007-10-02T03:34:00.000-07:00

inspiration : no1 'Bram Eulaers'

New section then. From now on when I come across inspiring texture artists work I'll try and post them here. Enjoy.

More can be seen at http://cmdstud.khlim.be/~beulaers/portfolio/

2007-09-30T05:22:00.000-07:00

Flashback : no3 "Overlord Ancient Ruin Texture - Part 1"

The images below are the property and copyright of both Triumph Studios and Codemasters

Will be going about this differently to what I did with the flashback on the Gears texture. For this one I will explain the layers I used to build up what finally becomes the following final texture.

Layer 1 - Colour Base
I used Painter for the first time during Overlord. The blend tools are more organic and natural then those of Photoshops which works well for the almost 'cartoony' textures required for this game and other games such as World of Warcraft etc. This layer is JUST colours. This is the initial design stage of the texture.

This method is quite different to how I usually texture. In this one we have highlights and shadows in the very first layer. Usually a big 'no no' with photorealistic texturing but here we can get away with it since realism isn't the main priority. This first layer really is the 'skeleton' of the texture, any major mistakes on this layer and the rest will come crumbling down.

Layer 2 - First photo overlay.

Added moss photo overlays to the moss on the colourbase

Layer 3+4 - stains and drips

Just took some simple soft brushes and threw down some details, smudged and erased a bit.

From the image above you might be forgiven for thinking these extra details were fine tuned for hours and done with great care but if you look closer it really is rough! Remember, these details for now at least are just 'designs'. Build them up generally, not drip by drip so to speak. Don't spend ages on one stain only to realize the composition of all the stains at the end look out of place.

2007-09-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

Education : no16 'AO / Lightmap'

1. Throw in skylight, plop.
2. Press '9', turn on light tracer.
3. Select Low poly and press zero key for the render to texture dialogue
4. 'Pick' High poly object
5. Make sure your low and high poly 'fit' each other well. If not then enable projection cage, reset and scrub the 'push' so that you push the cage slightly past the low poly.
6. 'Add' lighting map, setup your filename and location etc
7. Hit render

You will get a map similar to the one below. Blend it into your texture psd. (see what blend mode works best for you)

Its vital to do this with all texture passes nowadays, if not your stuff will look dated. Unless you spend ages painting all this detail in, correctly.

2007-09-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

Random : no4 'Graphics challange'

Here are some images from popular games of the past. It's interesting how people instantly know the answers from such little detail. I put this in a forum and within the night they had all the correct answers so it isn't impossible. What really blew my mind was 'C' and how many instantly knew which game it is from even though there is very little detail at all.

2007-09-17T13:09:00.000-07:00

Education : no15 "Rectangle tool"

Top sign is your typical boring rectangle. Using the rectangle tool you can change the roundness of the edges by adjusting the radius option that sits at the top of the screen. Easy.

2007-09-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Education : no 14 'Extra detail in spec maps'

1) Don't just turn the diffuse into a spec map and be done with it. In many cases adding an extra spec grunge/dirt map like this within your spec map only can really create much more interesting and realistic textures.

2) On the left is a simple diffuse to spec conversion but even with the edges, add 'unique to spec only' brightness to it as seen on the right.

2007-09-14T04:18:00.000-07:00

Random : no 3 'CGTalk UGAC switch/reversal Competition'

I'm currently having a stab at this challenge. Have to take an exsisting character/setting and change the style/setting/sex etc

I'm going with a modern day take on the 'plague doctor' figure from the 17th century.

I've been going over the design for quite some time and finally came to this design,

You can see how I got to this design and check out any progress by going to the following link,

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=39&t=537843

2007-09-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

Flashback : no2 'Gears of War texture part 4'

Final part then. Check it area number 4. Again that scratched away surface could be more defined but I won't bring up texture definition again. No the problem I have with this is how its just on ONE of multiple ridges. It all goes back to education no3 where I mentioned storytelling in texture work. If you think about it what I did in this texture meant that when this trunk was being moved about only that particular ridge was getting hit against surfaces. Which of course is just stupid beyond words. The truth is those ridges will be generally getting hit almost equally with there being slightly more damage to the ridges nearer to the corners. Anyway for my fix I only spent a minute but it still shows how if I were to do this again I would tone down the rubbed off/scratched/effected areas on the ridge and apply the same kind of detail to all ridges.

2007-09-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

Career : no1 'Introduction'

Today marks the anniversary of my second year working for my current (and first) games studio. So it seems fitting to start this new topic today. I remember when researching how to land a job in the games industry and on reflection I made quite a few mistakes that I'll share to those who are currently or about to look for their first job. It's not meant to be a 'This is how you get a job!!' series of articles (I'm crap at it anyway, took me 30+ attempts to succeed) , its just what I experienced and how I approached it. Over time I hope to go over education, cv's, interviews, job searching, recruitment agencies, portfolio, website etc So for now just a lighthearted reference to quite possibly one of the more influential pieces of advise I received at University which oddly enough came from a Pixar seminar held by Mark Walsh and Rob Russ. During the Q+A one student asked how they can get a job at Pixar. They replied for quite some time about the great lengths you have to go to land the job, how you have to be mega super amazing, how you have to know this and that and how you HAVE to do this and that as well as this. Then at the end they say '...or, you could find the next Pixar'. That was one of the reasons why I looked into and considered the outsourcing industry. I saw it as a upcoming area since at the time we were approaching the Next Gen era where I knew most developers would eventually have to use outsourcing for the big budget games.

Of course I did apply to all the obvious studios as well as the smaller ones but thankfully I also looked into the idea of something more, different. It was quite a risk but its payed off, I can't think of a better place to gain experience. Where else in under 2 years could you be working on your NINTH title?

2007-09-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

Flashback : no2 'Gears of War texture Part 3'

Another example of not enough definition. Also structure made no sense at all.

2007-09-06T04:36:00.000-07:00

Flashback : no2 'Gears of War texture Part 2'

In area 2, yet another area that has not been defined. This time it's a hard edge.

2007-09-05T15:13:00.000-07:00

Random : no2 'Wacom tablet'

Starting using Wacom tablets in 2003. From a texture artist point of view its good practice to use your pen for work outside of texturing from time to time. Here is my official first stab at painting with a tablet pen. I think its ticking all the wrong boxes here including design, perspective, colour scheme, lighting, defining areas etc. Then below is my latest example of wacom skills which was for a personal project.

2007-09-03T02:32:00.000-07:00

Flashback : no3 "Overlord"

The images below are the property and copyright of both Triumph Studios and Codemasters

Two textures created for Overlord meshes (mesh created by another Streamline Artist)

Quite possibly my favourite project to work on so far. It wasn't that technical, had a simple engine and it was all about painting skills. The textures were usually about 60-70% handpainted and only 30-40% photo work.

2007-08-30T03:53:00.000-07:00

Flashback : no2 'Gears of War texture Part 1'
The images below are the property and copyright of Epic.
Here is the first texture I made for this project. Looking back at it I believe it works well overall but when you actually look at the texture sheet it really comes across as quite amateur, i've certainly improved alot since then.

OK so for this part we're looking at area 1. I made this area look nice and worn but in a very general approach. This mainly consisted of splashing some colour around and sticking some very soft photo overlays. However what I'd do if I were to do this again would be to go in there and draw in extra details by using the photo overlay as a template. By brushing in edge highlights and inner shadows for the worn areas you can really help to pop out the details. Quick example below.

2007-08-27T10:02:00.000-07:00

Education : no13 'quick colour pass'

In just about every texture I do I try to make a layer with insanely low opacity strokes of random colours which I overlay very softly over the texture. I find it gives everything a bit more life. Even in this example its a bit too much but I needed to do so just to get the point across.

2007-08-24T03:25:00.000-07:00

Education : No12 'Redefining Cartoony game art'

Here is an short article written by a good friend of mine that I had the pleasure of meeting during my university days. The article explores the many different types of cartoon texturing in the gaming scene.
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060417/sondergaard_01.shtml

2007-08-23T03:10:00.000-07:00

Education : no11 'Base building from photos'

I sometimes like to make texture bases which I store and keep. It involves taking a cool feature from a problematic photo and generally repeating it everywhere to give you a layer that you can easily adjust and overlay your textures. In the example it is finally overlayed a flat gray with exclusion at 65%, this is just so you can easily see it but in this case I'd drop it down to something like 15-30% as its a very busy texture.

2007-08-22T03:34:00.000-07:00

Resources : no1

Nice sites for interesting environmental reference,

http://home.f01.itscom.net/spiral/research3.html

http://www.boreally.org/fr/bonus.php

Good alternative to google image search

http://www.flickr.com

2007-08-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

Education : no10 'Shadow/Highlight Adjustment tool'

Sometimes texture photo sources have light coming from one direction (image on left). One method to balance out the light source is to use image>adjustment>shadow/highlights (as seen in the image on the right). Then you can adjust levels/saturation etc to bring back the original colour. Not always a perfect solution (the perfect solution involves messing around with the gradient tool) but one which can produce good methods in under a minute.

2007-08-20T03:39:00.001-07:00

Education : no9 'creating edgework in under a minute'

This handy trick from 'mr kite' on cgchat shows how to create simple edges. It involves making a 'cavity' layer that you eventually set to 'soft light' blending mode over your diffuse. It creates simple clean edgework everywhere based on your normal map. Obviously you shouldn't leave your edgework like this in most cases it will look too clean but it's a great place to start.

Additionally, you may want to clean it up by picking out the dark colours and using the replace colour tool to make them 50% grey like most of the map. Remember, you only want the highlight info here.

2007-08-16T03:26:00.000-07:00

Education : no8 'Patch Tool'

Patch tool. It's in the same button menu as the heal tool (shown in previous blog). Print screen or copy image and load the image below into Photoshop. Make a selection box around the 'messy' part of the line. Go to patch tool and drag inside the box. Using this tool you can fix the line so it is perfectly clean. It can be useful in many situations, it can sometimes be really helpful when cleaning up normal maps.

2007-08-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

Education : no7 'Heal tool'

Never even used about this brush until I got into the industry which is odd since it plays such a big part in my texturing process these days.

Hold down on this button to reveal other options, select 'healing brush tool'. Anyway here is an example of its powers. Below I have used the clone stamp to add some of the left texture to the right. Then in the next example I use the healing tool, notice how it calculates the colours it needs to shift to to blend into the new image?

2007-08-12T04:05:00.000-07:00

Random no1 : 'Real world texture design'

This is one building I pass everyday on my way to work. It's become quite an icon to those at my work who also pass it. It is known as the 'badly textured building' or the 'building with obvious mirroring'.

I remember having to texture a shop interior in Saints Row, due to texture and time budgets we were forced to repeat 3 poster designs to fill the 6 poster meshes in the shop. At the time I was thinking the idea that they would have 2 of the exact same posters in the same shop would be unrealistic not to mention boring. Here however are examples showing it really does happen and whats more is that they are even placed right next to each other, just in case anyone misses the one on the left.

Then there is this wall design in our train station. The pattern is very random. For example it is odd how the blue line doesn't just carry on till the edge. Also the random widths in between the red lines.

I find it interesting how all game worlds are made by artistic people yet the real world does have areas designed and put together by people with no eye for design at all. I'm sure if I created any of the above I would get criticisms such as 'Obvious mirroring, too repetitive, inconsistent design etc'. Even really torn up dumps in games are beautifully designed. If you have a bag of chips/crisps spilling onto the floor you can be sure their layout and composition has been thought out.

2007-08-09T04:37:00.000-07:00

Education : no6 'Random Stuff 01'

In Photoshop if you're making a tileable texture and have a layer with detail outside your canvas it will show when offsetting it. Easiest solution? Ctrl+A and then image>crop

2007-08-07T11:43:00.000-07:00

Education : no5 'Starting a project'

Whenever I start a new project I usually spend 1-3 hours checking out reference and building a reference library. If one is supplied I pick out what those that I consider important and then continue to search for extra reference. From this I usually create my very own desktop wallpaper that has all key reference slapped on which I find quite helpful to be constantly reminded of the key aspects of the current project. The idea being that it will start sneaking into your subconscious mind while painting. Something like that.

2007-08-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Education : no4 'RGB tweaking in Normals'

Classic normal map mistake problem here. Imagine you have normal mapped a coffin with a Crucifixion on top that had to have its uv's ROTATED to have a nice fit. Did you know this will mess with the lighting of the normals? Look at the square with proper lighting with purple on top, pink on right, dark blue on left and light blue on bottom. However in example 1, because the uv's were rotated the purple will now be on the left side of the cross instead of the top as seen with the square. I have a set of 3 short key actions that I can play with to rotate and flip the lights, these are 'Invert Red Channel', 'Invert Green Channel' and 'Flip RG'. As you can see in 2 I have changed it so that if it were to be rotated as intended the lights would be exactly the same as the square.

'Flip RG' incase you're wondering involves bringing up the channel mixer and then going into red channel. Take red to 0 and green to 100. Then go into green channel and take green to 0 and red to 100.

Remember, Red Channel shows light horizontally and Green Channel shows light vertically. Inverting these changes the lighting in your normal map.

2007-08-05T07:40:00.000-07:00

Education : no3 'Texture storytelling'

For quite a while the idea of 'telling a story within your textures' felt a bit cliche to me. The problem initially was that I found it hard to get deeper then 'this door has a blood splatter that was caused from recent zombie carnage'.

The following is a old PDF from the famous Leigh of CGtalk that's worth reading if you haven't already. Even if its just the first half.

http://www.leighvanderbyl.com/pdf/texturing.pdf

In regards to 'storytelling' its really just about asking yourself more open ended questions. So in the case of my terrible blood stained door example I would go on to think about questions such as how tall this zombie was?, what was it doing as its head exploded?, how thick is the blood?, when did this incident happen? What made his head explode? Its all about collecting ideas to play with, the more you have the more chance you have of creating a originally interesting texture.

2007-08-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

Flashback : no1 'My first ever texture map'

Managed to track down my first ever texture! Simply a horrible brown base with some noise (done with a filter I may add) and a photo of a rock surface, blending mode set to overlay. So boring, no focus points at all. Dull colours. How would I fix this now? Its not actually bad for a 'background' layer. I would lower the opacity by around 70-80% and start to paint on top of that. Adding subtle colour, focus points, occlusion etc.

I never even got round to using this as it was so bad.

2007-07-31T12:42:00.000-07:00

Life Drawing : no1

Once a week we usually bring in a model into the studio to draw. I've always been into concept art and doodling but find realistic anatomy and proportions quite a challange. Wish I had some of my older life drawings as I'm sure I've improved over the last few months. THIS is why I created this blog!

2007-07-31T03:41:00.000-07:00

Education : no1 'Focus spots'

I once asked someone at work to explain in under 60 seconds what makes a texture good, he doodled the following within 30seconds, no words. These pictures won't turn you into a great texture artist over night but I think its a very simple visual way to explain a fundamental rule of texturing.

The first example is a stone texture. I know, it looks JUST like stone. The second example was made up by myself as a continuation of the first example. It is wood and yes again it looks JUST like wood. Lesson is that this simply isn't enough. Notice how if you look at the bad examples your eye looks at the texture map as a whole where at in the good example your eyes focus on the interesting areas one by one? (orange dots or connecting cracks depending on the example) while the boring but wonderful base texture acts as 'background'.

2007-07-30T13:01:00.001-07:00

Introduction :

So who and what is caponeart? and why is there now a blog?

So, caponeart is art that can only be created myself, Adam Capone. I created art for quite some time before developing it further for around 8 years after school and finally landed my first job at Streamline Studios as a texture artist working on various videogames, where I soon discovered that infact my art skills were a bit rubbish compared to my new peers. Luckily for me my apparant dedication and potential outweighed my character mesh that had too many loops around the mouth and that hideously monotone texture on my underground subway environment.

At my current workplace we have this routine of writing up a daily report that explains what we did, encounters we had, problems we have and you're free to include comments about where the project is going. These are stored in a simple network area and are easy to navigate. During long projects it's interesting to go back and see these issues you had day by day and how it unfolded.

'Skip to the end?' Ok so the creation of this blog came about while mulling over the idea of a 'daily' report that covers my career as a whole. Now that should be an interesting read in many years to come.

During the blog I hope to talk about past, present and future in regards to my career in games, my love of art in games and educational tips on texturing, in games.