Texturing challenges?

#21

You’re missing my point. What is the point of catering a challenge to the lowest denominator? That way, no-one learns anything. If you make it a little bit tricky, then the beginners will have to push themselves in order to compete - this is what makes a challenge a challenge.

Like I said, go look at some of the other mini challenges on this site. None of them are catered for beginners, yet loads of beginners take part, and most of them improve through doing so.

A person with your level of experience, well I wonder where you go to learn and be challenged.

At work.

#22

I guess the tiling thing as a challenge was bound to get a retort. :slight_smile:

Can’t argue Leigh’s comment- A plain offset with a bit of cloning to tile job is easy. :smiley:

I was thinking about taking it a bit further… Some haven’t tried their hand at normal maps for ex, and there are a few ways to go about that including working in ZBrush to manually creat your map.

Or imposing limits. Make a really good 256x256 tile with ground layer mask and detail map.

Sometimes I’ve found concentrating on the simple things and taking them as far as you can at your current level is a good way to learn…Heck there’s one site that does a sphere challenge and it’s neat to see what people do on that too.

I think the celebrting mediocrity comment is a bit much…and not all beginners are inspired or even take part in advanced challenges.

Here’s an example I have had recently. It was a very complex model, and as I mentioned erlier, only a few even made it past the unwrap stage.

I know CGT is all about a very high standard…isn’t it possible to lighten up a bit too, maybe instead of a celebration of mediocrity it will expand our ability to find “complexity in a simple thing”. :shrug:

Either way, maybe the suggestions are out of line. If so, just say the word and I’m happy comply on the parts that aren’t acceptable. :thumbsup:

#23

(unless you’re working on textures that are intentionally needing a hand painted look, like some game work, or animated films).

Funnily enough I do work in the games industry and at our company (Team17) we make a lot of cartoony games. The ability to draw good stylised textures in a non-realistic manner is something we’re constantly looking for in new applicants and is actually a real bonus in a portfolio.

I think the ‘tiling’ thing is getting taken a little out of context :slight_smile: Often at a low res you wont have enough high frequency detail to simply clone detail from one part to another and the tiling must be worked in from the start. Simply getting an image that tiles does not mean it tiles in a good way.

As for making this a ‘challenge’ well, yeah, that could be a waste of time. The forum is better used for displaying work and getting good feedback and you don’t need a challenge for that. Better to just post up work you’re doing for crits and advice if you want to improve.

Aten

#24

Okay Leigh, I hereby challenge you to come up with challenge that will be a challenge for both seasoned pros and amateurs alike! (How many challenges was that?)

#25

Well personally, I think a fun challenge that everyone could enjoy would be a simple building or vehicle. The main reason for this is that the UV mapping is quite straightforward (lots of planar projections), and they’re fun textures to do. I actually have a jeep model somewhere that was given away for free some years ago here on CGTalk that might work quite nicely. This kind of thing is a good idea because it’s a decent enough challenge, without being insanely difficult.

For those of you talking about low res, game stuff - there are game art challenges run elsewhere on this site from time to time.

#26

Alternatively, we could also always simply use a model that’s already UV mapped.

#27

That’s what I was hoping to bring in…fairly simple building with original texture source pack.

*The question about whether people wanted images for a tiling challenge was in response to the other’s comments. From response, I guess that is a nix on that direction.

The downside I thought we could avoid by just picking any model on our HD is it doesn’t have a use after all the work goes into it.
The models I’m brining are being used over in the collabs section for Minas Tirith. I’ve volunteered to help them out, and I thought bringing some of it over here would help on both sides.

Unless someone else has a major issue with that I’ll still bring it over.

#28

I guess I got the wrong end of the stick when I came onto the ‘texturing and surfacing’ forum. I thought this would be the place for people who wanted to improve their texture painting skills and from reading the threads that’s exactly what it sounded like. I’m not exclusively interested in low-res stuff per se, that’s just what I happen to do for a living.

I thought it would be a lot of fun to get people to try and push themselves to paint something from scratch - why not? If that’s not the way films do it then - coming from a games background - I’d love to know how they DO do it.

I read the thread with Neil saying that Pixar use photos in their stuff and was really interested in that. I’d like to know what sort of work people show in their portfolios when they apply to Pixar and the techniques they use there :slight_smile:

Aten

#29

It would be great to get a texture challenge going but hard to nail down the criteria & practicalities.

Things like lighting can go so far to change/influence a textured models appearance…

In fact something like the pre-supplied scenes in the lighting challenges are pretty close to a texture challenge already. The best entrants use textures/shading to help convey the look they’re after.

Ahhh… I’m sure I remember debating this very issue with you a few (4…5?) years ago!

#30

Yeah would love to see texture challanges even if I don’t have the time to get involved. I really like the look of that challange that has just been made by softdistortion but for me its too time consuming. I’d maybe get involved if challanges were based on less time consuming assets like a door/wall/floor/prop etc

#31

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