Texture Photography

[Integrity]

I'd say you have it down from what I know. Although zooming in all the way, depending on the lens quality, can actually cause distortion, so be careful; but there are plugins that can correct this. What your actually doing by zooming in is getting rid of the effect of perspective so everything is as flat and as ortho as you can get it.

I'd say the only other thing is to use a tripod, so your shots are nice and steady, and you can also extend the exposure time so you can get nice, clean, noise-free textures.

[EricMLevy]

a lot of digital cameras cause lens distortion, because they use low(er) quality lenses. the best textures come from shooting 35mm film, and then scanning the film.

if you have access to a digital slr camera, that would work great as well.

[Vossil]

Ok so now we have:

1. Shoot 35mm.
2. Use a tripod.
3. Shoot on an overcast day.
4. Zoom in as much as possible without distirtion.

Thanks for all your suggestions but there must be more things i need to look out for.

Integrity: What were the plugins you were refering to?

[Integrity]

http://www.dpreview.com/learn/?/Image_Techniques/Barrel_Distortion_Correction_01.htm

Tutorial along with the plugin. There are others to find by doing a simple search on Google. I'm only using 7.01 and I'm not sure about CS or CS2, but the newer versions of Photoshop might have something built-in. Not to mention the regular old Pinch filter that you can use once you figure out how the plugin works in the first place.

[ecco]

This could be a silly question, but how would you choose which things to photograph, that is, if you choose to photograph doors for example, are you just going to photograph every single one? (Assuming they're all different of course.) Then while you're at it, you could do the windows as well. What I'm getting at is, how selective should one be in their subjects?

If you do every single one, you may end up with the ability to recreate your entire neighbourhood if you so wished.

I say just photographing one topic at a time as it would be far quicker to seperate all the pics once you get them on to your computer, than if your memory card is a complete random mixture of doors, walls, pipes, windows etc..

[Vossil]

I am going to set out with a specifuc agenda, though if I see anything that catches my eye I will probably snap it as well. I am having a hard time figuring out how to do some of it though, for example getting a massive road texture with out messing up the angle etc.

[EricMLevy]

Are you doing this for a specific project or so you have a texture library? If it is a specific project, write down an extensive list of everything you might need, and then go find that stuff. Otherwise, just photograph EVERYTHING you think you might need in all sorts of detail.

[Vossil]

Going to try and make myself a nice texture library, and if it is good enough sell it.

[ecco]

Me too, I'm also going to start my own texture library very soon. Although many people offer free textures, it's nicer to have your own. Only one little problem. It's totally bright and sunny here nearly ALL the time :)

A-Catcher- are you going to make a library of skies too?

[Vossil]

Yes and maybe some HDRI images as well, if I can just find a good place to find a large steel ball with no scratches, for those of you in the UK never buy the steel ball ornaments from a company called Crocus. They were really scratched and warped, so I sent them back to be replaced and they still came back scratched.

[rBrady]

I have found that you dont have to shoot your textures on an overcast day. You just need to avoid sharp light. So you can shoot in the shade. Or with a diffuser. If you are shooting with two people and your material is small then you can have one person old the diffuser and the other person shoot. If you dont know what a diffuser is, an easy one to use is the large disc reflectors that you can buy. They usually unzip and inside there is a semi transperant cloth that you can use to soften sunlight.

As far as what focal lenght you should shoot at I would aviod anything too long. Any thing past 150mm is not very benificial and it becomes harder to shoot without camera shake. I recomend a good prime lens, if you have an SLR, for textures. I picked up a 50mm f1.8 for about $80. If you want the best results aviod extremes in f-stop and focal length. If you have to use a zoom lens then keep it in the middle 50% of its focal range. That will give you the least distortion. The same applies for your f-stop. I would stay in the f9 - f11 range for the sharpest picture. Dont worry too much about lens distortion. Most of that can be fixed in photoshop. Sharpness is forever though.

Shooting film and scanning it is a pain. Im not sure that thats the best solution. I shoot on a Nikon D70 and It works great. You need good lenses, digital or film dosnt make as big a differance as you would think. But digital is much faster. I can come back from shooting textures with 400 images and its not a big deal.

If your on a tight budget for a digtal slr I recommend the olympus e-10 or maybe an e-20. They go for about $250-$350 on ebay. They are older 4mp and 5mp cameras. But the image quality is fantastic. you could shoot some 2k textures with those cameras no problem. They are patheticly slow relative to more recent cameras but the lens quality is hard to beat. Its almost like buying a good lens and getting a free camera with it. And it shoots raw.

Lots of info there. Hope that helps.
Ryan

[Marcel]

I shoot a lot of textures, and I find that I hardly ever need a tripod. Only when the light is low and the subject is of a dark color (like a black wall) you would need it. Other than that if your shutterspeed is above 1/125 sec you'll be fine with your steady hand. If you really feel you need it you could get a monopod, much easier to take along.

rBrady is right about the Olympus E-10, I've used this camera to shoot a lot of good quality textures. The advantage of the E-10 is that the lens has zero distortion when you completly zoom in, and the 120mm maximum zoom is good enough for most subjects.

[Vossil]

Cheers guys, this is turning into one useful thread (bookmark). I think I will probably shoot analogue and scan the film as I want the highest image quality possible.....that and I do not have a good digi yet.

Marcel: When you shoot textures do you shoot lots of pics and stitch them together in PS? I assume a tripod might be more helpful if you are doing that but you obviously know more than me on the topic!

[JuddWack]

I've tried this but my camera puts out such terrable image quality even though it is 3 megapixel. I rarely get a picture free of noise. I'm sure you not going to go hunting textures only on overcast days so if the sun is shining make sure the amount of light hitting the surface is even throughout. Also don't forget to set your white balance.

[Marcel]

Rbrady is right about shooting analog, don't do it. First of all you pay for the developing of the film, and then you have to scan all the photos or slides. You'll loose a lot of quality during the scanning process (unless you own a really good scanner) and you also have to clean up your image to remove the dust you'll invariably pick up while scanning.
When you shoot digital you can shoot as many pictures as you want, which is nice when you want to build up your own library of textures.

I do sometimes stitch multiple photos together, it takes a little bit of scaling and pulling in Photoshop, but it's never hard to do, just tedious. I don't think a tripod would help for this either, you are not shooting panoramas. With a landscape you'd rotate the camera, but when you photograph for example a wall you want the camera always perpendicular to the wall so you'd move the camera sideways instead of rotating.

I also agree with rBrady on the whole 'shoot on an overcast day' thing, it's a not really that big a problem. The brighter the day the happier I am to go out, because more light means sharper pictures. Ofcourse some surfaces have very distinct shadows on a bright sunny day, but I shot some of my best textures in strong sunlight.

More general tips:


Try to shoot with your camera exactly perpendicular to the surface, if your camera is at an angle you might get unsharp areas in your picture.
Try to get the shutterspeed up to at least 1/125 sec if you want to shoot without a tripod/monopod. I sometimes hold my camera against a streetlight to make it more stable.
Textures with a lot of natural noise don't work well.
Try to frame your texture the best your can, it'll save you lots of work afterwards.
If you are shooting for example a wall against a bright sky you might get a lot of light bleeding over your object, try to frame so that no sky is visible in your picture. A lens hood also helps to keep sunflares away.
Take enough batteries for your camera.
Be careful, I once almost fell in an oil pit when I was walking/trespassing in a junkyard on a quiet sunday.
Have fun! :)

[rBrady]

This is turning out to be a good thread. I agree with everything marcel has said. I did a texture recently were I used photos from just my apartment and a dumpster in my apartment complex.

http://rbrady.com/tmp/Forum/Textures/cryoCrate.jpg


You dont necissarly need to go to far to find some great textures. I found one of the images I used on this crate under my stove tray. I set up my bogen tripod to overhang above my stove and used a flash to bounce off the smoke hood above the stove. Couldnt have goten this texture without a good tripod and a good flash. This is just the raw image, I edited it quite a bit to get what parts I wanted.

http://rbrady.com/tmp/Forum/Textures/stoveTexture1.jpg

[chrisWhite]

Wow, some great tips in here. I definitely agree that a digital is by far the better option. One of the things that I had to get into the habit of doing when I first started shooting digital is to take advantage of the large amounts of photos you can take. When texturing I think it’s often valuable to have more texture than you can fit into just want picture, I’ll often get many pictures of one area, some farther back and some more detailed. This isn’t always necessary when your shooting for a specific texture—though I can’t imagine how it would hurt, more materials is almost always helpful—but especially when creating a library. You don’t know what type of detail any future projects are going to need, it may be your working on a distant or game texture that one photo of the entire side of a building is best, while another where you may be working up close to the wall for HD and you’ll need those details. Not really all that special of a tip, but it’s definitely an advantage of digital worth using.

Obviously having a camera around anytime your out and about can be a great way to stumble upon some texture jewels when your not expecting. Just plan on getting very strange looks and getting made fun of by those you’re out with. ;)

One of the biggest things I’m constantly struggling with is how to organize all these photos. What kind of solutions have you come up with? What about naming conventions? Do you use any type of asset management software? How about tagging organization? I have yet to come up with a solution I like.

[Marcel]

The organization of textures is a big problem for me too, it takes a lot of time to sort them into meaningful categories. Especially with textures that are harder to categorize, for example natural rock: you see clear differences but its almost impossible to put a name to them.

[KEKS]

Someone told me to buy 100 mm makro lens for texture work? I am looking for best equipment to take good textures. I have about $2000 to spend on this. For the body I will go with Nikon d70s or Canon 20d. What lens to buy? money is not an issue

[chrisWhite]

rBrady knows a lot about this subject and helped me quite a bit in deciding what camera to pick up. I personally went with the Canon Digital Rebel XT, I didn't see anything in the 20D that really made me want to spend a lot of extra money one it when I could have gotten a much nicer lens for that price. The D20 seems like a great camera, but I really do think it's resolution is at about the bottom of what you want for textures in the price range you are looking into. Right now I think you best choice would be either the Rebel XT/20D or the new Nikon D200 which looks amazing! Jump over to DPReview for researching the cameras, it's by far the best resource I've seen on the web for digital camera information and their reviews are amazingly extensive. As for a lens, I picked up the Tamron Autofocus 28-75mm for Canon and it's some awesome glass, especially for the price, if you search the web you'll find nothing but good reviews on it as a great general purpose lens. I choose it because it can do most of what I want to do while being balance more on the macro side of things which I figured would be best for texture photography.

A few things I'd like to add though would be a good fish eye for shooting reflection/light maps, a really nice macro and maybe a wide angle as well.

I'm not a strong photography guy though, these are just the conclusions I made after a ton of research before buying a camera a couple of months ago.

[mike0006]

I have to agree. Go with the Digital Rebel XT over the 20d. The only differences I found after doing some research is that the 20d has .3 Megapixels more than the XT and it is a bit more rugged. (the dealer told me that I could expect to take 100,000 photos with the XT and 150,000 with the 20d before something would need to be repaired)

And as a footnote, I love my XT!

[dbates]

I don't have a DSLR, but I use a Konica Minolta DiMAGE A2 and it works great. Small, inexpensive (relatively), 8 megapixels, etc. SLRs are not necessary for texture photography--the A2 gives me 28-200m, and it was less than $600.

[KEKS]

Well I also want to be able to use the camera for other projects not just textures. I found grait prices for the 20d body and nikon d70s. I dont know if I should go canon or nikon route. Rebel is just like a toy for me sorry .. it is a good amateur slr but I want something more robust that I can depend on. I am also thinking about that nikon d200 sounds really nice.... I saw a shifting lens that can take panoramic pictures of sky for example without moving the camera.... saves a lot of work after!

i think i am gonna go with a 50mm prime manual lens and 100mm macro. And then maybe one zoom like a kit lens to cover other ranges

[chrisWhite]

I felt the same way at first, I want to spend the money and get the pro camera (D20), until I actually sat down and looked at the features and found out it didn't have anything I really wanted or would use. I think the silver rebel looks like a toy, but the black one looks and feels very professional. I'm curious, what will you do with 20D that the Rebel can't?

[jeremybirn]

Another thing to get: be sure to pick up a flatbed scanner! You can get a decent flatbed scanner for less than $50 nowdays, and for some textures it can work much better than the best camera/lens set-up. It works especially well for flat things like wallpaper or fabric samples, but even some kinds of foods can be laid on it. The advantages are (1)perspective - things are always completely flat they way you want a texture (2)even lighting - it scans the light right across and (3)resolution and image clarity - even a lower cost flatbed scanner rivals the best digicams money can buy in pixel resolution, and flatbed scanners don't interpolate pixels the way ordinary digicams do.

Someone told me to buy 100 mm makro lens for texture work? I am looking for best equipment to take good textures. I have about $2000 to spend on this. For the body I will go with Nikon d70s or Canon 20d. What lens to buy? money is not an issue

You could use a 100mm macro. I use a 60mm macro (Nikon D-series) on my D-70, it works great, and also is a sharp, versatile lens for other kinds of shots. You can always add extension tubes if you want to get a greater magnification macro.

I'm sure you not going to go hunting textures only on overcast days so if the sun is shining make sure the amount of light hitting the surface is even throughout.

On sunny days, the place to look for textures is in the shade. You don't want a texture map of a brick wall or something that has those dark shadows built-in to the texture maps.

-jeremy

[jeremybirn]

I am going to set out with a specifuc agenda, though if I see anything that catches my eye I will probably snap it as well. I am having a hard time figuring out how to do some of it though, for example getting a massive road texture with out messing up the angle etc.

Bridges are your friends. On a bridge (or pier or boardwalk if you want dirt/sand) you can look straight down on road textures with no perspective distortion. Also, once you've found a nice bridge or overpass, go underneath it and find some great textures on the bottom too. If you were doing a project with a lot of different shots of roadways, you'd want a lot of different textures, on different scales: the striped patterns on the road, the paint on the stripes, the shoulders, the asphalt, the cracks, the tar snakes where cracks have been repaired, etc.

-jeremy

[jeremybirn]

the best textures come from shooting 35mm film, and then scanning the film.

I've shot textures with 35mm SLR's (mostly in the 1990's before I had a digicam), with some mid-sized digicams, and now with a digital SLR. Even a mid-sized digicam can make great texture maps and has many advantages over film.

A lot of the digicams have really, really deep focus, which is really valuable especially in macro photography. Also, the flexible viewfinder set-up of many digicams helps you get down in close to different surfaces at different locations. Being able to go out and think nothing of collecting thousands of shots is better than a slow process of processing and scanning and cleaning up a few shots. I use higher resolution now, because I can, but even a camera that makes nice 1600x1200 resolution images can be used in building your texture library.

-jeremy

[Marcel]

You could use a 100mm macro. I use a 60mm macro (Nikon D-series) on my D-70, it works great, and also is a sharp, versatile lens for other kinds of shots.

What's the advantage of the macro lens over a 'normal' lens? I'm using a 28-105 zoomlens on my Nikon, and I have only a little barrel distortion at the short end, but I'm always looking to improve :)

[EricChadwick]

A couple more tips.
Think about tiling or cropping or touch-up work you'll need to do, and frame the shot accordingly.
Bracket your exposures (overlit, regular, underlit) to have the best lighting choices to choose from when you get back to the computer. For me, LCDs don't show much range.

One thing that's been bugging me is the extraction of good depth maps. There is the Zarria.net idea of lighting the surface to extract a normal map...
http://www.zarria.net/
...but that's pretty laborious, and requires nighttime shooting if its an exterior surface. Anyone have some tips about this? I've been going the route of creating geometry in the computer to derive depth, seems the only reliable method.

[rBrady]

I used to bracket everything. Now that I have my D70 I have started using raw. Raw gives you a lot of the same benefits of bracketing in a single file. It gives you more than a stop in each direction. CS2 Bridge makes it easy to work with raws too. I guess you would get the most range from bracketing raws.

Has anyone tried multiple exposures combined into a 32bit per channel HDR and tone mapped for capturing all possible color information from a photo? That would eliminate shadow which could be good and bad I guess but at least you have choices.

I wish I could tell you more about normal mapping photography but on another note have you tried working with Parallax Bump Maps. They function like a bump with a grayscale elevation map but with the added coolness of parallax shift and self shadowing. Seems to me that this is even better than normal mapping and simpler to implement (once you get the shader working) since you only need a grayscale image.

Here is a Mental Ray parallax bump shader.
http://www.thepixelmachine.com/content/tools/fdisplace/fdisplace.htm

Has anyone seen a parallax bump shader for renderman? I have looked and haven't found anything.

Great thread everyone!

[EricChadwick]

I've done a little testing with parallax bump, but it seems to only work well with fairly flat surfaces, and I see undesirable smearing/swimming if I really stop to examine the surface. But in a gameplay situation, no one really picks apart a surface like this. Unless they're other game artists! So it's a pretty cool little hack.

Ben Cloward has a parallax bump HLSL shader, if that helps. Might give you a starting point.
http://www.monitorstudios.com/bcloward/resources.html

The raw route sounds good, thanks for this. Could eliminate a lot of hassle. I haven't worked with HDR though.

[Marcel]

I recently purchased a cheap 50mm prime lens (non-zoom) for my Nikon. It's absolutely amazing how good this lens is, almost every shot is as sharp as can be. It involves a bit more walking around to frame the picture right, but it's definitally worth the effort.

I never have any problems with overexposed images, and shooting in RAW is so much more work (importing raw in PS is so slow). Some images are slightly underexposed, but not to the point where correcting it in PS would leave visual artifacts.

[tedious]

If you have a digital SLR, get a fisheye lens for it. Shooting with a Nikon D70 I've been using the Nikon 10.5mm fisheye with great results. Nikon Capture software can perfectly de-fish it if you want all the curved lines removed.

If you're making HDR's from wide angle lenses, remember to change the shutter speed (not the f-stop!) when you bracket. If you change the f-stop you get a different depth of field, and your images won't line up! So change the shutter speed, go in 2 stop increments in a set of 3 (sun not visible) to 5 (sun in shot) exposures, and be sure to use a good, sturdy tripod so all your bracketed shots will align.

There's only 1 downside to a dSLR compared to point and shoot digicams for texture shots, and that's that p&s digicams have much deeper depth of field, so you can get macro shots with greater edge to edge focus even on non-flat subjects with a p&s digicam like a Nikon Coolpix or Sony f717 than you could get in a SLR (unless you had a bright ringlight and were stopped down to a very narrow aperture.)

tedious

[CGTalk Moderation]

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.