CGTalk - Applying color to grey scale... oh the humanity

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Freakshot

01-27-2004, 10:25 PM

Ok I gotta be doing something wrong. I have been working on game textures lately. I have approached them by doing all my main shapes and detail in greyscale and then add color to them.

The greyscale looks great. Its when I start trying to apply color that I begin to bang my head against the desk.

I use Photoshop 7 and so far I have discovered certain things about layer blending modes when applying color:

1. Color Blend- saturates the darks on your greyscale and washes out the texture, the hue and lightness of the color changes

2. Overlay Blend- Make darks darker, dont want darks going too dark but this blend hold truest to the color I chose

3. Softlight Blend - desaturates the color

Hardlight, multiply have their own problems and well as the other blends.

The best system that I have come up with is doing darks and lights of the greyscale on seperate layers(which is a pain) and adjusting each according to the type of layer blend that I used for color. Or make the color layer normal and make the greyscale layers some type of layer blend.

Arrrrrrgh... There has to be a simpler way or at least a way to get the exact color I want with out screwing up my beautiful greyscale or making a million layers.

I have checked out quite a few tutorials on greyscale texturing but they have lead me in circles.

Greyscale seems to work for flesh and metals ok, but not for wooden creatures and other types of textures I have attempted to make. In any matter I end up fighting between my greyscale and my color.

I want semi-realistic results in my texture but it just isn't happening with the whole greyscale approach. Everything turns illustrated so easily.

Maybe I should just bite the bullet and paint in color.

Can anyone help me? Tips, workshops, tutorials?

Wonder if this should be a Photoshop thread?

maxxx1138

01-28-2004, 06:17 AM

Hey,

As the title says, it's just my opinion that you should not start with greyscale. If you really want to continue with that, here's what I do: I sue channels way more than layers. Channels can be used to create any level of detail in grayscale and you can use a bunch of them without getting a really huge file like you would with layers.

My general practice is to use the channels to paint on, to create the basic shape of what I want to use as my brush strokes. I then will import a few layers of varied reference starting textures to use, say a wood, then a concrete and rust. I'll use the rust and concrete to either lighten or darken the wood in seam areas and apply those layers as hard light or multiply for darkening or screen or normal to lighten. THen, I use the brush strokes that I have stored on my channels to erase holes in those overlaying layers. Using the channels allows me to save my brush strokes and redo them or change them instead of live paitning it. hen, instead of a simple color, a texture is used for the color. You can get away with five layers or so with this technique, which makes the file not all that big. If you START with greyscale, you are going to make it very difficult to acheive the kind of variety of color that you see in photographic textures. If you start with color, it's all there for you from the photo (If you use photos at all, I guess). if you save those channels that are used to darken the seams, these channels can also be used to help in creating a diffusion/specular/reflective/bump map. If you opn up a color layer and then opn the channels palette, there's a little dotted circle there at the bottom of the channels palette that will make a selection of your currently viewed layer. This can then be filled into a channel and further tweaked for your other maps.

I hope this helps or at least offers somme ideas.

Best,

-Matt

EricChadwick

01-28-2004, 02:33 PM

I haven't had any problems with layer blending mode set to Color. Doesn't seem to mess up my brightness values.

Can you show an example? Show us what's going wrong, maybe it's difficult to see from your end.

Freakshot

01-28-2004, 06:41 PM

Thanks Max I will give that a shot

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