How to become a Texture Artist

[aten skinner]

hmm, it's a difficult one, just the skills required in a texture artist can differ a lot depending on the style. For instance look at the differences between Legend of Zelda, World of Warcraft, and Fallout3. Some are totally hand drawn illustrations, whereas some will be mainly photo manipulated (possibly combined with normal/bump maps generated from models)

They generally require different skill sets, the more illustrative stuff will require good solid art skills, the realistic photo manipulated stuff also requires you know your way around photoshop inside and out (usually with other skills in other apps thrown in maya/max/zbrush etc...) You really want to have ALL these skills tho, then you truly will be on your way to becoming a great texture artist.

Study colour, shading, patterns (for tiling textures) different brushes in photoshop and what you can achieve with them. Try drawing some base textures from scratch if you want to go for a non-realistic style, the bread and butter ones are wood, rock, grass, sand. Also for characters you'll have a lot of materials that you need to make convincing, skin, clothing etc...Again it depends on the style tho as to how you will approach the job.

You might get more specific feedback if you go into more detail about where you want to go with your portfolio, what type of game or studio you wanna work at...

cheers.

[leigh]

Are you interested in texturing for games, or texturing for rendered stuff, like film or television?

[mistry]

hmm, it's a difficult one, just the skills required in a texture artist can differ a lot depending on the style. For instance look at the differences between Legend of Zelda, World of Warcraft, and Fallout3. Some are totally hand drawn illustrations, whereas some will be mainly photo manipulated (possibly combined with normal/bump maps generated from models)

They generally require different skill sets, the more illustrative stuff will require good solid art skills, the realistic photo manipulated stuff also requires you know your way around photoshop inside and out (usually with other skills in other apps thrown in maya/max/zbrush etc...) You really want to have ALL these skills tho, then you truly will be on your way to becoming a great texture artist.

Study colour, shading, patterns (for tiling textures) different brushes in photoshop and what you can achieve with them. Try drawing some base textures from scratch if you want to go for a non-realistic style, the bread and butter ones are wood, rock, grass, sand. Also for characters you'll have a lot of materials that you need to make convincing, skin, clothing etc...Again it depends on the style tho as to how you will approach the job.

You might get more specific feedback if you go into more detail about where you want to go with your portfolio, what type of game or studio you wanna work at...

cheers.

On the 'style' of texturing for far i've only really been doing game textures/rendered stuff.
I do know the the pipeline of how stuff works, like deformation of on a character and stuff like knowing how to unwarp objects properly. Well i would like to get into the game industry, since a majority of the work i do is indeed for games. As for as I know some stuff to put in a portfoilo (for games) is a combination of high-res and low-res texturing.

Are you interested in texturing for games, or texturing for rendered stuff, like film or television?

I'm interested in game texturing for sure, but i would also like try texturing objects for film/television (even through they probalby the same, expect for higher res textures i guess)

[aten]

Not really the same tbh, games are approaching film/television now but are still a million miles away in terms of shader setup, resolution and rendering. It might be worth hearing something from Leigh about the high end side of things tho as I'd be interested in that also :)

Why dont you post either some of your work OR a link something similar to what you want to do so we can narrow it down?

[ahtiandr]

I am not in the industry but I think u wont get a good place if u will have only texturing skills . For instance u go to university and graduate with diploma of animation but u also know how to model,texture and animate. I have read a lot of stuff from magazines about different artists and non of them is just a texture or modeling artist. The other thing is what kind of artist do u want to be? Enviroment artist or character artist, or maybe architectural artist or conceptual artist? All the same, all these specializations require both, good knowledge of modeling and texturing. Ah and drawwing is really important too. Unfortunetaly I realized it just now :(

[mister3d]

I am not in the industry but I think u wont get a good place if u will have only texturing skills . For instance u go to university and graduate with diploma of animation but u also know how to model,texture and animate. I have read a lot of stuff from magazines about different artists and non of them is just a texture or modeling artist. The other thing is what kind of artist do u want to be? Enviroment artist or character artist, or maybe architectural artist or conceptual artist? All the same, all these specializations require both, good knowledge of modeling and texturing. Ah and drawwing is really important too. Unfortunetaly I realized it just now :(

And lighting, and compositing won't hurt.
environment artist: hard-surface modeling, texturing (minimum).
character artist: organic modeling (topology and basic animation requirements understanding), knowledge of anatomy, organic texturing.(many prople do ONLY characters in cg. This is not an easy field, much harder then environment modeling and texturing)
visual generalist (just to make your renderings look nice): hard-surface modeling (half a year of practice), texturing and shaders (yet one more year of practice), Lighting and camera optical effects knowledge (several years of practice and theory studying, which is vast), basic compositing (several months provided you have good resources), composition and cinematography. I omitted drawing skills assuming you can draw.

Those are basic directions you can shoose. Of course you can just texture or just model. i'm sure that texturing for films is way harder (much bigger resolution, and therefore, work), and for games is more boring. For games you are restricted with resolution, you do majority of textures with tiles, bothering not to look too recurring or too blank. Often you draw on pixel-by-pixel basis with a pencil tool in photoshop. And remember: modelers will look on you down like at "knowing photoshop only" guy, and will feel head over you. So it's better to model and texture, if the position allows. Yet it's not as monotnous as texturing only.
You can make a portfolio of scenes without lighting, or with very basic daylight for example (I would prefer this if I would aim for gamedev). Yet you can model and texture some objects, not adding lighting. Plain lighting is worse than the absence of it. What I mean, maybe don't bother now achieving a a complex scene well-lit. Do more simple modeled and textured only stuff. You can make your portfolio saying "I'm a game artist and don't bother with visualisation". This is not a bad decision at all, if you aim for game development.

If you still want to create your own unique rendered stuff, prepare for long study. Lighting makes a difference in the picture, yet composition and concept design is a king. Those are more advanced positions in cg, not for rookies at all. It may take you years to become good at. But in the end, if you think it's for you and you live by it, it'll worth of it. It's fun to study.

[unwrap]

I agree, if you're to become a part of a pipeline, it's essential that you be well aware of the rest of it, simply put.

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