Completely new to texturing

#1

Hi all,

So as the title says I’m new to texturing. I’m finally about to start learning Mari for VFX texturing.

With so many different types of workflows, maps, passes and terms (for example… roughness map, translucency map, dirt mask, polarized, non-polarized, colourspace, linear etc etc) things that you don’t really hear a whole lot of when watching tutorials… it starts to sound pretty complicated and way more to it than just adding colour to stuff :stuck_out_tongue:

The more I start to read into texturing the more it becomes overwhelming.

My initial aim is to be able to do basic texturing of assets (background assets, props, vehicles, buildings) for VFX, so what I’d like to know is what are the core fundamentals that I should learn and the most common passes/maps used in the industry in order to land myself a junior texture role at a vfx studio.

Some maps such as displacement, bump and possibly normal, depending on the asset, I assume are better handled in a sculpting package rather than Mari or maybe its just down to artist preference, I’m not sure.

Anyway any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

#2

No advice from anyone then…awesome. :thumbsup:

#3

unfortunately theres no “one size fits all” work flow. different studios use different renderers and different this and different that. each require different maps and methods and whatnot.

if a studio is using vray and mentalray they’re probably getting away with a more traditional texturing work flow (ie. spec, diffuse, normal, displacement, transparency etc). if they’re using renderman then they may go the more PBR (physically based rendering) which is where you’re starting to use roughness and these newer maps.

whichever method a studio will use they’re all based on the same ideas, give it colour, give it shading values and give it whatever fancy shit you care to give it.

learn the basics first, get comfortable with painting a texture map using photo sources, this is complicated in VFX by the fact that you’ve gotta deal with exposure levels and all sorts of shit, i’ll leave googling that labyrinth of information to you. once you can get a good looking colour map you can start mucking around with shading values and creating spec maps. then give it bump or sub surface scattering or whatever you want to add some razzle-dazzle.

once you can get a pretty realistic looking “thing” using traditional methods the newer fancier shit you’ve been reading about will be much easier to wrap your head around.

#4

Thanks for the reply.
See thats another thing added to the list of shit to learn, exposure levels.
For now I guess I’ll just focus with diffuse, spec, normal and disp. I feel the rest will probably be on the job learning if its going to differ that much from studio to studio.

#5

I made a tutorial for my blog. Its based around renderman and texturing in mari. I go through some of the concepts in modern day shading texturing. diffuse scalar etc

//youtu.be/jhqGZrYqwGY