Texturing with DestinysGarden
DestinysGarden
Posts: 2,550
Coming soon. WIP. Space reserved.
Aims: to answer texturing questions and demonstrate workflows
Topics covered:
- Introduction:
- education
- skill set
- Tools used:
- 2D apps
- 3D apps
- Resources:
- found textures
- created textures
- using merchant resources
- using brushes
- other online tutorials
- Topics:
- texturing buildings
- texturing fabric items
- texturing people
- getting it into Daz Studio and the surfaces tab
- Others:
- Overview of lighting and promos
- Q and A and FAQ
- texture map challenge
- Whatever else makes us happy
Edit to add a really big disclaimer: This thread in no way is intended to be the "only way" or the "best way" to texture anything for Daz Studio. I am only sharing my way, with tips and experience I have gained in the past 6 years.
Post edited by DestinysGarden on
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Hi guys! I've been thinking about doing something like this for a while. I have built up a stock pile of knowledge about texturing 3D items over the last 10 years, and I wish to share what I can.
Introduction: I am a graduate of Columbia College Chicago class of 1994. My major was photography, with sidelines in painting, fashion design, 2D design, 3D design, color and compositon, drawing, art history, and typography. Keep in mind when I say 3D design, that encompassed clay sculpture and woodworking and the like, and not anything to do on a computer. Beginning photography, art history, beginning drawing, and color and composition was required for anybody seeking a degree, even the marketing and communications majors. The solid traditional art background has been incredibly valuable to me. My wish for anybody seeking to learn more about 3D art as we know it today would be take a photography class where you actually shoot black and white film, develop the film, print your pictures with an enlarger, and develop them in very strong chemicals. If nothing else, you appreciate how good we have it today with our graphics programs. Anyone who has ever spent time in a dark room with a dodge tool ( a piece of cardboard wrapped in duct tape stuck to the end of an unbent paperclip) with a stop watch to lighten a small portion of a print, will know what I mean. Art history 101 and beginning drawing also give such an appreciation for art in general, what is "good art" and why, and what makes the masters of art "The Masters." What I learned about myself in art school is that I hate drawing, but love painting. I like designing clothes, but not actually sewing them. I love printing pictures, but not actually taking them. I am passionate about ancient Egyption and Greek sculpture and architecture. In short, my passion is making things pretty.
You don't have to go to art school to learn any of this.. The internet is such a wealth of information. All of this is out there for anyone who wants to learn it. All my art degree really qualifies me for is to give a critique, LOL. It is not what you have, but how you use it. I can tell you, my art degree was super helpful the last 13 years as I was working as a travel agent, and 1 summer cleaning cabins, and 2 years at a book store before that. LOL
Last August, my husband (InaneGlory) and I were at the point where we able to quit our day jobs and become full time Daz PAs. The hours are long, my boss (me) is a crab about deadlines, and no product means no money. The bonus part is being able to spend the day being creative, and getting enough money to live on in the process.
The programs currently in my workflow are Daz Studio, Paintshop Pro, 3D Coat, Filter Forge, Genetica, some super small skill with Silo, and I'm learning Modo. Never stop learning. Don't be afraid to try something new, and don't be afraid to mess it up in a big way. That is how we grow as artists and people.
Wow, that last post ended on sappy note, didn't it? *DG snaps out of it and gets back to business*
All right, so I mentioned the tools I use above. I use Paintshop Pro, and not Photoshop. There are a few very simple reasons for this. About 15 years ago, I was hanging out on MSN Groups, and all these people had these amazing signature tags that they said were done in PSP. There were about a million tutorials on how to duplicate these sig tags, so I got a copy of PSP 9, which was so much less expensive than Photoshop, joined a few tagging groups, and dove in. For about two years of my life, this consumed me. Talk about humble beginnings, heh. The upshot of it is that PSP is the program I don't have to think about to use. I know what I want to do, and the program does it for me, with a minimal amount of thinking about buttons to push. If I could go back in time, I might chose differently and spend that time learning the industry standard instead. It is what it is.
The other ramifications of hanging out in the sig tag community was my introduction to 3D art. I have to mention Darren Hiles at Optical Sorcery. http://opticalsorcery.com/ He was a member of one of my tagging groups, and he offered his Bryce images to use in tagging. He was amazingly generous in his willingness to teach others how to use Bryce. I had never seen anything like his shiny abstract images, and I fell in love. Another group member offered up her "Poser tubes" for use in tagging, and between the two, I wanted to know how they did it. Enter one copy of Bryce 5.5, Poser 6, and Daz Studio 1.8. The rest is history, as they say.
In addition to PaintshopPro, Filter Forge is an indespensible part of my workflow. There is almost nothing that single filter can not acheive. Genetica is the one I use to turn my own photographs into seamless tiles for texturing. 3D Coat is my go to for 3D projection painting. None of these programs is very expensive, only a few hundred dollars at most. OK, full version of Modo is around $1800, but it the indie version can be had on Steam for around $10 a month on subscription. I didn't pick them because of price though. I chose them because they are the ones that work with my brain. I can't stress how important it is to give a proper evaluation to any trials of programs you are considering, to see what works for you. It is is not what you have, but how you use it.
Modeling, rigging, and morphing are things I know the process of, but they are not my main skills, and not things I have developed enough yet. But I can paint anything.
All right, enough about me.
Texturing is in some ways the easiest thing to do, and in some ways the hardest. Put a stone texture in the diffuse or base color channel, and you have textured an item. To make it believable though is going to take more work. Good textures can elevate a model, create details that were not polygon efficient to model, and sell the realism.
First off, standing offer, if anyone has made the model from this tutorial http://www.daz3d.com/modeling-in-hexagon-fantasy-tower and would like to send me the finished, UV mapped obj file, I will walk you through texturing the darn thing. We can do it here as a community project. If anyone has ever bought a quilt pattern, and I think KnittingMommy may have done
, you know they give you fabric requirements to the 1/8th yard, cutting instructions to the 1/16th of an inch, and detailed instuctions for sewing the quilt top. The last lines of the pattern are always "layer with batting and backing, baste, quilt as desired, and bind." Well that skips several steps in going from a beautiful quilt top to a usuable quilt that keeps you warm. I'd like to fill in the gaps.
On to resources. First note, in some ways digital textures are better than photographic resources because you have more control over the final outcome, and can generate them at a better resolution. Photographs gives a more random and organic quality that can not be reproduced digitally. It is about selecting the proper tool for the job at hand.
Here is a lsit of sites I have used. I'll edit this list with good contributions. Check each site for exact terms of use specific to your finished project.
Resorces: Found textures
http://www.textures.com/ textures can't be used to make material or shader sets. Textures must be baked to a texture map. Free to use
http://www.dreamstime.com/?gclid=CN735525ycsCFYSAaQodpWQPYQ#ref454 pay per image or buy credits
http://www.yurdigital.com/catalog/content-developers/greybro a super cute website for 3D stuff, and Greybro has excellent skin texturing resources
http://www.doverpictura.com/ copyright free clip art, super cheap for what you can get
https://www.3d.sk/ skin texture resources
Also, check the usual 3D sites for merchant resources, and web search for stock photography.
Created textures:
http://spiralgraphics.biz/genetica.htm creates seamless tiles and normal maps from photos, and tons of other textures
https://www.allegorithmic.com/products/bitmap2material also generates maps from photos
https://www.filterforge.com/ if you can dream it, you can make it
Small list of forum threads I have contributed mini tuts:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/49964/ds4-6-pro-3d-coat-need-advice-on-import-export/p1
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/970500/#Comment_970500
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/978425/#Comment_978425
Excellent very basic tut on texturing clothing by our very own Chohole.
http://chohole.ovbi.org/texture_tutorial.htm
Okay, so this is why I didn't know you had a texturing thread. Pulling up a chair. First student. I want to learn!
*sits down in the front row with KM and eagerly looks forward to what's next* I do have a question on some of Ron's brushes. I know what to do with .abr brushes but what do I do with the asl files?
YAY! I'm always excited to see another PA dipping into public tutorials, and as a big fan of you guys' work I'm also very interested to see what you have to tell us. :)
Aw, thanks guys!
SY, you are my inspiration on giving back to the community. I might at some point be able to do videos like you do, if anyone wants to listen to my Chicagoan/Northern Minnesotan accent ramble on. You do your videos so well, and they are so much appreciated.
KnittingMommy and Ice Dragon Art, thanks for jumping over here so quickly. Ask away, and I'll get to it as soon as possible.
Aw, thank you. :)
I think texturing is one of the things I a most interested in learning. Maybe its just because I still love to color lol...
Pulls up a chair all excited ...Thank you for doing this, I can't wait to learn :)
Welcome Ferretmania. That front row is getting full.
Ice Dragon, I still love to color too. I think I might have about 3000 Crayola crayons floating around the house. Don't even get me started on the markers, colored pencils, and drawing apps on my tablet. Let me tell you, the scrapbooking paper, quilting fabric, and beads, take up a whole room on their own.
I think I'll start on fabric texturing tomorrow, but since I can't resist, I'm going to issue my first texture map challenge. Did you know how much you can do in Daz Studio with just a black and white map? Here are a few to get you going.
Resources used: Filter forge
Free patterns https://www.filterforge.com/filters/9275.html
Noise https://www.filterforge.com/filters/231.html
Fabric weave bump and normal https://www.filterforge.com/filters/7245.html
First off, do the way that I've named these files give you any indication on the use?
Looks like I can only get two per post. Or maybe one. You can get the other two maps here.
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x183/jjacks50/DGtexturechallenge1N.jpg
http://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x183/jjacks50/DGtexturechallenge1B.jpg
Edit: Get to used to the edits. I keep thinking of stuff I forgot.
Legal stuff:permission granted to use these maps in any texturing project, free or commercial, as long as the final result is baked to a texture template. Please do not re-distribute unaltered tiles.
There, that is out of the way.
OK, so 5 maps. Now what? I've opened Daz Studio, created a plane, and applied the Iry Uber shader to it. Default environment only Here are some examples of what you can do.
Map 1W in Metallicity
Map N1 in Base Color
map 1W in Metallic Flakes Weight
bump and normal
OK, Photobucket is not cooperating and I need to get to bed. Try map 1W in emission, metallic flakes or top coat or anywhere it says "Weight," map 1B in bump, and map 1N in normal. Try map N1 anywhere it says "Roughness."
Back in a few hours and we'll tackle something bigger.
Edit: Photobucket is clearly not the soloution it used to be. All the ads keep freezing my system. Fotki no longer has free accounts, sheesh. I'm going to try my One Drive because apparently they gave me a terabyte of space with my Office 365 subscription. Works for me.
Putting all of the above together. The pink one uses the Metallicity, and the green one uses Metallic Flakes.
Look at that, we have new surfaces, and all it took was a few black and white maps and some random colors. I can see the bump and normal together are too high, so I'd probably pull the normal map in this case. More on why that is later.
Pulls up a comfy chair and waits with the others.
just found this, but I'm at work right now so, I'm eagerly awaiting to go home and start reading through all this! Thanks ahead for all the info!
Runs in late to class, but hoping to catch up. Maybe Sonja or Knittingmommy will give me their notes....
Thank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I really hope to learn, texturing technic,
(I have some questions, already,, about stencil in 3d coat more clean,,,, but,, now I keep quiet,, and just sitting down to listen teacher,,
Thank you so much Destiny, this is exciting to learn texturing! Yesterday I spent the whole day in FilterForge trying to figure it out to make my own textures so combined with your class I will know how to use them.
Nifty. fanboy in attendance.
Welcome Wendy, Linwelly, TabascoJack and kitakoredaz.
Welcome Kharma and Evilded. You snuck in on me, heh.
I'd definately like to take requests. For example if anyone has a suggestion for a clothing item or building or small prop they would like textured, if I have it, I'll use it for the examples.
Kit-I'm thinking that a full blown 3D Coat workflow is porbably going to take a video to explain it right, but I'll answer your question with screen shots if I can. I don't understand what you are asking for though. More clean? Do you have a picture of what is not working for you?
All, jump in anytime with any specific questions, and I'll answer them. I don't mind my rambling waffle being interrupted by useful information.
Holy COW! I'm out of town for 2 days and something fabulous like this happens!
/squeezes into the front row with an innocent, slightly apologetic grin
Thank you very much for taking this on, DestinysGarden. I am definitely interested in being taught as much as possible about everything! (takes to long to figure stuff out on my own...)
I've already seen some of my favorite people here! This should be fun!
woohoo!!
David
Hello David. Thanks for bringing the morning dose of enthusiasm!
OK, I've got one more practical example of using a black and white map to change a surface. In this screen shot we have the Blazer Outfit, first render with default textures. The second render, all I did was put the 1W map from above in the Metallic Flakes and chose a gold color.
The second image is a very cool thing in the Iray shader. It is called the Image Editor. You get to it by clicking on an image map in the surfaces tab. The first four options are Browse, None, Image Editor, and Layered Image Editor. Image Editor is the one we want here. I changed the tiling on the Metallic Flakes Weight only down to 6. This leaves all other maps at the defualt tiling, which can be very important if you want to layer a surface modification of some type over an item that is using an opacity map.
Can't resist a challenge.
Put the weight map in Metallic Flakes, weight set to 1
Out 1A in Translucency, set to .1
Put N1 in the Flakes Roughness map, set to .7
1N in the Normal map, 1B in the Bump map,
Voila!
Awesome! Green is my favorite color, in case it comes up at trivia night or something. That turned out really pretty. Thanks for jumping in TJ. (Do you like TJ, or Tabasco or Jack?)
Hmmm. I love a challenge. My DS is still rendering something I started last night, but as soon as it's done, I'll give this a try. Looks like a great start, DG!
Thanks!
As for the name, it's all good. TJ works, Or Jack.
Ohh I'm going to try this, looks fun to play with. Had to finish a render first which had been running for 3 days :/
Here's the texture on a dress I made. Will come in very useful.
I have a question please...Once you have all the settings in the surfaces tab set as you want how do you save that out as a shader to reuse later?