Where do you get your Textures?

So i'm now comming back to it all again.

Blender - Unity - Sketchup - Gimp - Zbrush. etc. Even though i still know quite a lot of it all and stuff some things still i don't remember quite exactly.

I returned to blender today - Headed straight into creating just something really simple..

This is how it looks.... poor me.



These Textures are from CCG Textures but i'm going to ask. From where else do you get nice textures for free. I really consider subscribing to gametextures.com.

Apart from that. I really got to learn my knowledge i had from back then.

 

Well, you'll need to unwrap it properly. Simple planar projection is not going to cut it.

The texture also probably isn't suitable for wooden shelf, only for floor panels.

Also, blender can preview textures with lightning. You can even preview advanced effects with cycles renderer.

AFAIK the idea is to grab textures from all sources and then use them as base to making your own texture. I.e. projection painting, blending several textures, etc.

See Substance Painter, also check youtube for blender texture painting tutorials.

 

You should definitely study the objects you're trying to model to get an idea of what their textures would look like. With your shelf, for example... Have you ever seen a book shelf where the grain of the wood ran along the short end of the board? Probably not, since that's not the way lumber is cut.

Also, avoid easy-to-spot tiling issues like the same mark appearing right next to each other over and over, like that white line that appears in the same spot on each shelf. Move your UVs around to bring some variety into the mix.

CGTextures has a ton of great stuff, but you have to Photoshop them a bit to try and make them more suitable for tiling sometimes. Generally, making them as uniform as possible and avoiding eye-catching features helps to avoid situations where it's obvious every single book shelf is identical.

 

My first thought when I saw this.

 

The place I go to, which has a huge amount of textures from all material types is CGTextures. It used to be fully free, now it's only semi-free. You get 15 free credits a day using a free account. If you choose one of the payment options, you get access to hundreds of credits and super-resolution textures (2K and above). Each image is usually 1 credit depending on the resolution you select. The starting resolutions are almost always around 1024x1024, so that's pretty much all you're going to need for gaming.

You'll still need to create bump maps, specular maps and illumination maps depending on the texture you choose. Still, this has been the most helpful resource for me, by far, in the area of textures.

 

Thanks everyone. I'm aware of the bump maps etc and all of that.

let me show you what i once created.



The floor tiling

-

the keyboard







Just a couple.

I just simply ran out of memory xD
I don't quite remember how i did back then. Some of it i do but yea

 

It could work if the premise is that it's a survival game and you just build that shelf out of some smashed up crates.

Topic:

I steal the textures from google images without permission just so I have something to look at in my games that will never reach an alpha. It's pretty easy to find seamless textures for just about anything. You can even google "360 degree portrait" for a face texture!

 

True. Right now though i'm not planning on any games i'm just getting myself ready again to start on a 100% self made project.

I came as far to create the Normal map on my new model. On an accident i also displaced my crate. Anyway, Still looks like garbage.

 

Try using Filter Forge. It is incredibly easy to make your own textures.

 

You know, it is fairly easy to just grab photo camera and go around photographing things. Even cheap point and shoot camera will do.

I think someone once uploaded HUGE texture library (10gb+) of unprocessed stuff... the thing is I forgot where that was.

You will not get a good normal map by running diffuse texture through a filter, because the filter will not be able to remove shadows (and will treat shadowed areas as dents in the object).

Ideally you'd need to sculpt or model micro details then bake them into normal map. It is time consuming, but the end result will be worth it.

 

not sure what the point of this topic is. It's like someone saying "I know its garbage but meh" instead of just shutting up and going to do some tutorials. Learn, don't moan.

Learn: books, videos, internet, tutorials. Do it daily, or you're not serious about improving. It's on you.

 

Substance Designer.

 

Usually i create all the maps with Crazy bump. but i'll keep that in mind for sure.

ideally it was asking for where people got their textures from

I was back over 4-5 months ago pretty decent at creating models. I just need to get the hang of it again.

 

I'm using Gimp not photoshop. As a hobbyist i don't plan to spend any serious money on software before i know that it's placed in for a good cause

 

they have a monthly payment option now that you can cancel anytime and in my personal opinion, it's worth it to go for photoshop (I think gimp can be a bit messy) and then there is also "Krita" which has a nice tiling feature for making seamless tilable textures

 

Substance Designer for me is gold. I just finished making a node for spaceships where you just whack in all the baked maps and you get a substance file with all these adjustable parameters for wear and tear, roughness, dirt, emission properties so on and so forth. Now I just model stuff and send it down the pipeline. No fiddling about in gimp and photoshop.

Here's the result, rendered inside Designer:



They have a 30 day free trial if you're interested, and a monthly pay-to-own of $20/month IIRC. Takes a little time to get the hang of it, but the ability to do a one-off job to create a reusable material node is just wonderful.

 

oh...i just noticed substance live is not a subscription but rather paying off over some months ;D thats actually quite cool....

 

You can also buy it from steam (won't be a subscription, one time payment). Also, steam currently has a sale.

 

Thanks guys. It looks really complicated but worth a shot. I'll take a look at it in the comming days.

 

I tried that once. It didn't go too bad. But I don't live anywhere near some of the things I want textures of.

 

The problem is editing out the lighting and making them tile, for me at least that's an awful lot of work.

 

Generally just use PS and paint them. However, there is a ps plugin (also standalone) called FilterForge which has tons of pre-made filters (most are pointless, but there are some decent organic ones) as well as the ability to create your own. Many also generate normal/spec/etc as well.

I wouldn't exactly recommend it, their business model is annoying, and their community is painful and silly. But it does come in handy from time to time.

 

Not really, you need overcast days and camera that takes uniform flash attachments. Otherwise you end up with unwanted lighting, shadowing and flash reflections, that stick out especially when tiled. And you still need some skill to tile them and combine them together after.

 

Lighting is certainly an issue. Tiling not so much. Just open it in gimp and use the 'make seamless' feature Just hope you took a few photos and gimp's automated tiling looks acceptable for one of them...

 

Yeah I suppose tiling isn't too much of an issue, as long as the texture is not extremely well defined. Lighting is certainly a deal-breaker for me, before I just went with procedural materials I would go through loads of textures at CGtextures before I found one that worked. I remember looking for a wheel rim for hours that had front-on lighting and was shot dead center, and having little success.

 

I was talking about raw unprocessed texture that will have to be manipulated in order to make it tileable.

You can remove shadowy gradients with lowpass filter, but of course, if you shoot overly reflective surface or something that is covered by lots of hard shadows, that won't work well as texture materials.

Either way, your average city should have lots of materials you can "borrow". Walls, floors, etc. Won't be suitable for PBR material (unless you go nuts and remodel it, using photo as a reference), but will certainly work for something more old-school.

 

Most of what I've been doing so far is using textures purchased from textures.com (previously cgtextures) and tweaking them in Photoshop and the Quixel Suite. Quixel is really good for creating quick normal maps or ambient occlusion maps. It's not perfect, but it's much easier than trying to model the details in Maya. You can also combine geometry made normal maps created in Maya with more detailed grime/dirt maps made in Photoshop and converted to normals in Quixel.

I also really want to learn Substance Designer. I bought a subscription but haven't got past playing with the presets just for some simple stuff. The Filter Forge thing looks really cool. Will have to check that.

Honestly, sometimes I feel like buying made textures off the internet is like "cheating". I'd feel a lot better about either creating them from scratch (meaning taking a photo myself) or creating them procedurally with Substance or whatever. At least then you have something unique and not like every other game. But for prototyping, I'm fine with using pre-made stuff.

 

I for one am still paying(over halfway done) the Substance Live thing. I haven't used designer much, but Painter is great. I also have a subscription to GameTextures.com. I use those textures(especially the ones set up as substances) in Substance Painter, starting with fill layers, and then you can still paint on top of that, and/or add layer modifications,like simple hue adjustments, all the way up to additional grunge, etc... I wouldn't want to use the GameTexture textures as finals though, especially since objects are generally made up of more than one material.

 

Photoshop, substance

 

Two things to do before starting to create the actual textures:
1. Unwrap properly, as @neginfinity said.
2. Bake ambient occlusion.

 

Most objects (3dmodels) i see as prefabs in the asset store. Only have a Diffuse map and a normal map.

That's the exact same maps i got on my models. Once That is on my model with nodes and everything i export it into unity.
And come out as

yes this



You see if i intended a wall it would actually work quite good. I accidently put a displacement modifier on it so that's why it looks like that.

This should actually have been a crate. I know it was for fast exploring and see how much i could still remember.
\
If i'd put a real diffuse crate map on this object it would probably have looked quite good.I'm sure.

 

It's starting to come back now. I have no maps on it other than the default Diffuse map

will post after with normal map on it

 

And now i have a normal map on it.



This is the nodes



What more can i do to make it look even better???

 

And here it is in unity

 

Here's some crates i just made. Placed them in my horror test scene. Sorry if it's a little dark..

 

Cgtextures and a bit of tweaking

 

Normalmap is incorrect and needs to be reworked. It is clearly made by running diffuse texture through some filter.

 

I don't know what filter though. Everything i've done is slap on the normal map through nodes as shown above in the node editor.

 

I think you're approaching this the wrong way. Spend a few weeks learning, doing tutorials and practicing your modelling and texturing, and come back for some feedback. This forum isn't the correct or best place to learn the basics. There are a lot of places on the internet for that, my recommended one being cgcookie.com - although it isn't free, it is really good.

 

Yeah i've had someone suggestion it to me as well. But i gotta wait as money is tight this month thanks for the suggestion though. I'm practicing and practicing. Been watching mostly tutorials over 3 days now.

 

I'm looking for a source of texture photos that I would be allowed to process into PBR maps and then resell. They don't need to be highend ready for use. I can make them tilable myself and remove unwanted shadows for example, I just need high enough resolution (2k upwards). Having the rights to resell the resulting maps is the problem, the common sources like textures.com don't allow this in their license for obvious reasons. So I'm looking for something like a big archive of highres public domain photos or something like that. Any suggestions? Taking the photos myself might not be an option because where I live we don't have too many run down or abandoned industrial areas and if there are, they are restricted areas. I'm mainly looking for urban/industrial/grungy surface photos.

If that archive comes with a compatible license it would be very interesting. Can you give me any info that I could use to search for this?

 

Found it.
http://polycount.com/discussion/157651/800-free-textures

 

Awesome, thanks a lot for looking for it!