Photographic, hand-painted or both?

[soulburn3d]

While it is a matter of preference to many, I'd say a large number of people use both together to make their textures. Even if you're going for something a little less photoreal and a little more stylized, starting with photos can be a big time saver. Each technique has it's own advantages and disadvantages, now that you've pushed hand painting along for awhile (and you're right, I'm sure it's been a great learning experience), try photomanip for awhile, and then you'll be in a good spot to see how you can combine them for maximum effect.

- Neil

[danshewan]

Thanks for the advice, Neil.

I started playing around using photographs as bases for my hand-painted elements earlier today, and even after such a short time I'm already much happier with the results. I'm definitely going to try and develop my painting skills, but I think that photographic textures and how to manipulate them will form a major part of my texturing workflow from here on out.

Thanks again. :thumbsup:

[soulburn3d]

It's always good to have hand painting skills, one of the disadvantages of photo manip is that you need to have a photo of what you want in order to use it as a texture, and that's not always possible. So your hard work is not a waste, all just tools in the toolbelt. Good luck.

- Neil

[leigh]

I use 90% photos, 10% hand painting/touching up. When realism is the goal, the photos are your best bet. I'd recommend getting a membership at a site like 3d.sk or environment-textures.com.

[danshewan]

I'd recommend getting a membership at a site like 3d.sk or environment-textures.com.

Thanks, Leigh - I hadn't heard of environment-textures.com. Looks like a great resource.

[PrayingMantis]

I'm exactly wondering about the same question, I'm currently trying to improve my texturing skills for realism.
I use 90% photos, 10% hand painting/touching up. When realism is the goal, the photos are your best bet. I'd recommend getting a membership at a site like 3d.sk or environment-textures.com.

When you saying that Leigh is it because it's a time saver or because of the final result?

When looking at VFX sculpture they are able to achieve outstanding photorealistic skin, so that's possible to achieve the same result with hand painting, but I don't know about how much time it would take to do this.
(Jamie's gallery is awesome, take a look at his paintjob http://www.avatarsculptureworks.com/jamiegallery2.htm)

I find easier to match something that exist in nature than some fantasy character, but that's because I suck at texturing.

[leigh]

When you saying that Leigh is it because it's a time saver or because of the final result?


Both.

Those sculptures are great (I've seen them before), but I don't think they can really be compared, since those are physical models which require a quite distinctly different set of skills and techniques to paint.

[bonestructure]

I use both. But I rarely use a photo texture I haven't meddled with in Photoshop. I've found Flickr.com to be an excellent source for photo textures, and most of the images are in creative commons licensing, so they are available to use. There are several pools there that deal with texture, walls, wood, grunge and so on. Hard to wade through the mess, but go to the home page and enter search for the generic of what you want. When you open an image, look on the right side of the page to find the pools you want, and then go to those. The advantage i find at Flickr is that the images are often in high res formats, though you have to watch for bad focus. It's been my major resource for finding photos to make textures from. Usually requires some work on them, but worth it.

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