Painting textures in photoshop

[EricChadwick]

Well, first of all the UV layout isn't very helpful. Looks like one of those auto-unwraps. Why all the empty space at top and right? I would scale everything up to fit the edges. Also, I'd rotate the plan view so it is not at an angle. Unless your flagstones are angular or something. The angled pixels will fight any rectilinear paving stones you try to make.

But really the best way to make a brick exterior is to use tiled UVs on the exterior. But then you'd need to break the brick out into its own small texture, like a 64x64.

[cord]

Yes, the UV layout was made with wings3D autoUV.
Took projection and did nothing manually to the layout.
I will fix this asap.

My biggest problem is preserving quality when i scale textures down to 64X64 to use the bricks on walls.

[EricChadwick]

Hmm, don't scale. Use a tile of maybe 4 bricks tall by 3 bricks wide. Or if you're really good at tiling, maybe a 1 brick by 2 bricks.

[EricChadwick]

Also think about texture re-use. You may be able to get away with a whole wall, instead of just a tiny tile. Front and back of church= same section of texture. Small details = pick out a section of front/back texture. That kind of thing. But, this requires custom UV layout, no automatic unwrapping.

[cord]

Thanks for all the tips, i've made the model more effective with use of polys, and I've redone the map.
Am I getting closer to a better result or am i still far off?

http://www.worldofgaianova.com/screens/churchmap.JPG

[EricChadwick]

Better. But your model is symmetrical, so you could save a lot of texture space, which gives you more detail. I see a lot of shapes that are the same. Just overlay them on top one another, mirroring one of them. Also, many of the smaller pieces could use some of the pixels from a larger wall, so they could overlay other parts too. For example, the sides of the stair-step roof parts could all sit on top of one another, the tops of the stair-steps all on top of themselves, etc. Makes for a lot more detail.

Take a look at this guy's work on Reign of Fire.
http://www.jamiefield-online.com/Webpages/ReignOfFireArtwork.htm
Lots of great reuse, but carefully done so it isn't too obvious.

[cord]

Im beggining to understand how it works, thanks for all the help POSM.

[koinu]

Cord,
First off the problem I see with your map is that you haven't sewn and of the edges together, which you can do in the uv texture editor(MAYA). Okay, makeing a texture in photodhop; make a seperate layer and make it huge or make a seperate doc that will hold the texture. Make your brick very detailed and duplicate the brick several times. Move the bricks into line so that you can tile it later. After you make this texture import it into the main texture map.. Re-size the texture to fit.. And tile it. This will not only make your texture detailed, but it will aid you in creationof your bump, specular and difuse maps. Good Luck and sew some edges together.. PM me if you want and we can talk about this if you run into problems...:wavey:

[cord]

Thanks alot for the tip o n how to make more detailed textures, it was just what I was looking for.
Im not clear what you mean by sewning the edges together, do you mean so they overlapse eachother or next to eachother?

[koinu]

Not sure how Wings does this operation. In maya's UV texture layout you can take to edges that line up. say building edges and sew them to gether to make one mesh. making various areas into one mesh you will be able to add your texture easier.. I'll make a quikc building tomorrow and show you examples to help you learn.. Post what your textures are going to look like and I might be able to give you a couple free hints.hehehe

[cord]

There are no way to snap the seams together, you can do it manually tho. moving the different blocks around.

Im thinking about using two different textures for the whole building, the wall have a brick texture taken from a real photo, and the roof a grey-ish color, painted in photoshop.
I've included the picture of the wall texture.

Wall texture (http://www.worldofgaianova.com/screens/Bricks6.jpg)

[EricChadwick]

Hmmm. Looks like you want to use two tiling textures. But your UV layout is designed for a single non-tiling texture. If you have decided on the tiling route, you should probably recreate your UVs.

Second, the brick texture has a fairly strong directional light on it, casting shadows. This will not work all that well in a scene with lighting. Some sides of the building will look ok in some lighting situations, but other walls will fight with the light.

Just a couple thoughts I had.

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