Some 3d Art questions I have...

I'm working on my art skills and something bothers me about my art. It looks really bad, even after I have finished painting it and placed it in Unity. I just have a few questions about the process.

Are normal maps completely necessary for games? I mean does every mesh need one?

When creating a normal map for unity how does one know what parts will shine at different angles? If there's color in these maps how will that affect the appearance in game?

What resolution should I be painting my textures at? I've exported them at 2048x2048, because I read somewhere that most modern GPU's have a maximum texture resolution of 4096x4096. How are quality lower resolution textures made if even at this resolution my textures look blurry or pixelated?

The purpose of a material is to give the graphics engine a way to know how to render an object, right? Similar to rendering it with reflections or translucency.

What is a good way to paint details on to my mesh? I cannot imagine painting small details if my biggest ones keep coming out blurry or pixelated...

 

No. Depends on the style of the visuals you want to display. But I think mixing media, some with normals and some without, won't look good.
Also depends on your output resolution and how close to the camera pieces will be. On a character - is skin detail necessary? If the character will be full up on the screen performing dialogue, yes maybe, but still dependent upon style. If stylized like a counter strike characters maybe not.

The higher resolution you have the more detail you can provide. If you textures are blurry change the import settings until you find the right setting that you like.
Make sure you are also outputting a lossless format, not jpg.
And maybe change your brush settings in your paint program. Adjust the hardness so the edge strength of the brush is stronger, less fuzzy.

Normal maps are best used for providing fake surface detail resulting from the lights in the scene. Download xnormal, crazy bump or the nvidia photoshop plugin and play with them for 3-5 minutes. This is better than trying to explain how they work.

I'm still not clear about the difference in material and shader so - to give you my artist friendly simplification, materials/shaders define how a surface of a 3D object will interact/react with the other systems in the engine.
Reflections and transparency are properties of the material/shaders that can be controlled via maps and numerical settings.
I'm sure this is a complete over simplification, but that's the easy way to think about it without getting stuck in the weeds.

 

Good info. Could you also point me to some decent texture painting tutorials? I've tried virtually every combination of keyword I can think of and I keep getting results like how to paint a model in Photoshop's 3d painting mode (I have PS CC 2015), or something else which is almost completely irrelevant.

I want to get to a point where I am comfortable with my skills, so I can be autonomous in figuring things out... I just don't know how to begin. I think I have the modeling thing down, I made a pretty cool spacecraft for my game, but I don't know just how to create decent textures for it. Blender3d is getting easier and easier to use, too.

On a related note: keeping things simple makes things easier and looks better in general. I made a model on the fly a few months ago, spent several days to weeks modeling it, Unwrapping it, and giving it a half-assed texture. It was kind of cool but in the end it was just too complex. All kinds of nook and crannies nobody would ever see.

Regarding Materials and Shaders, I will tell you what I think I know about them. I've read some of the Unity documentation about Shaders and Materials. Shaders are little programs written to describe how things should be rendered. If I'm not mistaken they provide the cool effects like normal functionality, reflectivity, toon shading, and translucency. Materials are the things which specify what and how to render something. Put simply: materials are the "input" to the shader program, while the output of the shader is the rendered product.

 

check polycount and gameartisans
great resources.

 

Neither of those actually has any tutorials... gameArtisans said this: "January 12th, 2015: Tutorials on GameArtisans.org is currently being revised and will be back soon ..." and polycount has nary a tutorial to be found...

 

For Blender or Photoshop?

 

I just got this link in my email today: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB0wXHrWAmCx994Cb7iRFSmupYHFw5DTx

It is a beginners course on texturing. It is from Allegorithmic so it is based on Substance Live but the first few videos should be a good intro. As a beginner to this kind of thing, I really like the Substance Live programs since they work with PBR and will output all the maps that you need or let you use procedural substances.

 

I have the LIVE subscription and got that same link today as well. I can also vouch for the programs. It is quite better painting directly on the model, in all channels at the same time, then trying to author the several needed textures all seperately. And it lets you use layers, layer effects, etc... just like photoshop. It is indeed accurate in my opinion that this software is probably the most intuitive method of painting PBR textures for models.

 

@BrandyStarbrite Adobe Photoshop.

I'd never heard of PBR (or Substance Painter) before you two mentioned it. Its interesting but forgive me if I don't want to fork over the cash to buy yet more software...

 

Even if you don't get substance painter or designer, there is good info on the Allegorithmic site. PBR is the way Unity 5 does things by default so you should learn it. I don't know how easy it is to get photoshop to do all the different maps. I think that someone has plugins for photoshop (Quixel?) but those will cost money as well. Substance live is $20/month, you can stop it any time and restart it and the money you pay goes to purchasing the software so once you've paid it off you don't have the monthly fees anymore.

 

Oh ok, I only took a glance at the prices so that is great news! So this software and the PBR method would let me create good textures, right? Sorry I'm just a little confused, its the texture painting part that I need help with and I'm unsure about...

 

Yes - PBR knowledge is a must for any realistic like 3D content creation.
And understanding it is only half the battle. I'm still not sure setting things to where they are supposed to be set on the PBR guides is completely right. It might be the artist mind in me that thinks things look better when they are pushed a little away/beyond actual real world numbers.

 

Google has tons of texture painting videos for games. It doesn't need to be Unity specific.

 

Sorry, but learning PBR and some software won't make you make good textures. It is a good start though. The methods used in this specific software are more intuitive to use to many people, but it won't make you suddenly be good. You need to know what you are doing as far as creating textures too. You could use some good color theory, and need to understand how perfect textures are only good in extreme sci-fi environments, while anything else needs to have some grime, dirt, etc... if you expect it to look good. You need to understand other general things as well. But yes indeed, the right software will make things much easier. And the substance LIVE subscription is one of those good things, well worth the $20 a month especially when you consider it isn't just a rental like with Adobe's software suite, and other things.

 

@theANMATOR2b Like I said I've tried everything I could think of, and nothing is relevant or even helpful. I don't even know what you're talking about

 

Post some screenshots of what you have, and where you want to be

 

Where I am:



Where I'd like to be:

http://tf3dm.com/imgd/l22297-m4a1-specialforces-hires-textures-detailed-mesh-8123.jpg
https://slm-assets3.secondlife.com/...Shield_with_full_3D_dragon_002.jpg?1374983182

I just need to be able to create those fine details, the armor plating, the rivets on the metal, the tiles on a floor, the rough scales on a dragon's skin, etc. Right now about all I can do is the above. Give it some color in the right spots... and I would rather not use photographs for my textures... I'd like to *paint* them myself.

 

Try this: http://www.pluralsight.com/courses/programmers-guide-game-art-unity
It is a pay sight but you can get a free trial. He uses blender and photoshop but also shows gimp.

 

Cool.

If you already know Blender you can do everything you need there.

Essentially yes, you need normal maps to provide you with the sort of fine details you're looking for.
And when you bake normal maps you'll also bake albedo or diffuse maps, which you can paint your colour and roughness and metalness on.

You may also want to look up hard surface sculpting techniques.

I cant help you too much w Blender workflow, I personally use 3DCoat which is much easier and far more powerful for sculpting and painting task, and worth every penny btw.

Another set of softwares you might be interested in is Substance Designer and painter

EDIT: the workflow can be daunting ad confusing, happy to talk some more over PM / Skype sometime if that's of use

 

You know that's a great offer I may just take you up on @arumiat . The link suggested by @GoesTo11 reminded me that most tutorials, at least the really helpful ones are only for sale these days... there's gotta be at least dozen sites offering tutorials/training on game art and other things with similar prices. I have a friend who offered to go halfway with me on one of them, I asked about it last night. She said she would have to wait until the end of the month to see if she can afford it...

 

If you can get on to Microsoft's BizSpark (and maybe DreamSpark) you can get 3 months free of pluralsight/digital tutors. I got 21 days (or something like that) free at Lynda through LinkedIn.

 

Sorry to add two more cents - but have you watched any texture speed painting videos?
These are great sources to see how a texture is built up over the course of its creation.
Commonly Textures are created similarly to paintings - you first sketch rough details on one layer then lay down base colors, add some base detail areas, add highlight layers and shading layers and tweak until happy.
With pbr workflow the highlight and shading layers are less detailed but still used - depending upon the style you are after.
Capture some Speed texturing videos so you can play them back at 1/2 or 1/4 speed.
Several are found in the archives of the polycounters - who were the first to start doing total "re-skins".

 

All good advice. I also think you have some questions about the overall 3D workflow, which is something I really struggled with and actually isn't covered that well/ in its entirety anywhere as far as I've found.

 

I actually decided to purchase a DigitalTutors subscription... and I've already learned some things I never, ever would have guessed at!

But Arumiate I do have some questions about 3d workflow, I'm surprised you knew that! Do you want to chat over skype?

 

I purchased a plurasight/digital tutors subscription after my three months were up. The C# and visual studio tutorials are excellent.

 

I struggled with it for a long time. I have your skype details now