Reply With QuoteSubbed to this so I can come back later for more awesome high-res textures!
Keep it up, you talented nerds, you!
You probably shouldn't show off the full-resolution raw version anyway. It just lets us nitpick things that would never be visible in-game.Originally Posted by Renzatic
Subbed to this so I can come back later for more awesome high-res textures!
Keep it up, you talented nerds, you!
...never again. :O
Okay, when I said this thing was the most time consuming texture I've ever worked on, I'm now doubling up on that opinion. This thing takes for freaking ever to adjust and move around. I think it's because I have so much to scroll through, and so much to tweak, even the simplest thing requires a long trek through the layer stack just to get to. I've been working on it for almost two hours now, and I've only finished two shelves. GAWWW!
Here's the current progress on this...one...single...texture. Man, I could've modelled and textured this thing faster. Anyway, I adjusted some of the books so they jut out and cast a bit of a shadow. Adds a goodly bit more depth, but I might need to tweak it a little more to get rid of the floaty look to some of the books. This is going to be the last feedback round on layout, because I'm finishing this bastard up tomorrow.
If you have too many layers to work with, you could try cleaning up the layer stack by putting them into groups - or even into Smart Objects.
I think the shadows under the sticking-out books might be a little too tall.
I've already got everything into groups. It's having to clone one layer in one group, scroll all the way up or down through 15 layers, drag it into another group, then position it in there that's taking so long. I've started copy/pasting both the layers and the layer styles to make things a little quicker.
Smart objects? Never heard of those before. How do they work?
If these work the way I think they do, you've just saved me a huge amount of time. Thanks for the tip.
I'll try and fix them tomorrow. Ain't touching them now. Don't wanna. :PI think the shadows under the sticking-out books might be a little too tall.
By the way, what is everyone else doing?
Last edited by Renzatic; 19th Oct 2012 at 04:50.
Looks good.
The awesome thing is that with a completed stack of books you can start making tons of cool bookshelf textures.
But the long shadows do make some of the books seem like they stick out too far. Which isn't horrible here and there, but I count at least a dozen instances.
Also a nitpick, but I'd try and level out the bottoms of all the books a little more. To me, some give the effect of being behind an imaginary lip on the shelf's edge. For instance, the difference between th second and third books on the right, bottom shelf.
That's the plan. Once I get this one done, doing the rest in the set should simply be a matter of moving books around.
That's actually what I'm trying to do. The lower books are supposed to be overhanging the lip by just a bit. Since the perspective is from a slight top-down angle, the books closer to the edge should look like they're set lower than the ones pushed farther back into the bookcase.But the long shadows do make some of the books seem like they stick out too far. Which isn't horrible here and there, but I count at least a dozen instances.
Also a nitpick, but I'd try and level out the bottoms of all the books a little more. To me, some give the effect of being behind an imaginary lip on the shelf's edge. For instance, the difference between th second and third books on the right, bottom shelf.
As for the long shadows and too low books, I went ahead and fixed one of the shelves to see if I could improve it a bit, and...
...I think it looks pretty decent now. I'll fix the rest up tomorrow.
I agree with everyone: it is looking awesome and the shadows the overhanging books make are a little too deep or too dark or too uniform. Not all books that overhang should overhang the same amount. Great work on a very difficult set of textures!
Just something to be aware of, the more books are hanging over the edge, the shallower the bookcase appears to be. For any respectable bookcase, only truly massive books should be overhanging.
A smart object is basically a separate document inserted into this one.
You can group as many layers as you want into a smart object, which you can then open separately.
Cloning a smart object only creates a new instance of the same smart object - any changes made to the smart object will apply to all of its instances.
I was going to suggest just working on each shelf as a separate document.
Whenever I try to replace stucco.pcx with a 1280X1280 version the texture doesn't get recognized in Dromed or the game. I can replace other textures just fine, and when I just shrink the texture down to 128X128 it works fine. Any ideas?
Well surely you're not doing anything silly like trying to use a non-power-of-two texture dimension.
There's no way I would do anything like that.
um, 1280 is not a power of 2. The closest that are powers of 2 are 1024 and 2048.
Am I doing this right?
If the textures' dimensions are a power of two, then yes, you're doing it right.
(you're only doing it two-thirds right)
I meant with the texture. Before when I said "There's no way I would do anything like that." I was being facetious.
Yet, you first mentioned a 1280 x 1280, then presented a 126 x 128 texture...which are not in accord with the power of two.
For clarity, power of two = 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096
I know, and I know. Two of the three textures you just posted have valid dimensions. One of the three does not.
Haha I know. My initial mistake was not making the texture a power of two because I didn't know about that engine requirement. The 126X128 texture is the original stucco.pcx, I just made a resizing error when I converted it to .jpg apparently.
While the texture I posted has similar roughness to the original when shrunk, I think that the blurring caused by resizing makes the original texture appear much smoother in game.
Okay...I just wanted to make sure you weren't confused about that...
When you say, "Am I doing this right?"...do you mean "How can I scale this without blurring the original texture?"...or something else?
It is a little lighter in color and not a finely grained as the original. It also does not tile invisibly the way a stucco texture should because the color of the stucco is not uniform across the whole texture. This is one of those cases where I would get the color and intensity from the original by blurring it, and then applying a stucco filter over that to get the granularity needed. I bet FilterForge has a couple to try out. A photo is generally problematic due to uneven color and lighting.
Filter Forge would do it (which I need to get around to learning one day). Or if you have PS, you can run it through a high pass filter to get rid of the shading differentiation. Setting it about half way up the slider should be enough to achieve the desired results without making it look too flat. Then run it through a sepia photo filter to restrengthen your color.
End result looks like this...
edit: just tested the tiled results. Colors are better, but you've still got a cluster of stucco that's causing an obvious pattern...
here.
You can clean that up by clone stamping it out using a fuzzy brush.
Last edited by Renzatic; 19th Oct 2012 at 19:43.
LarryG: Those images you posted look funky on my screen (1360x768). A strange pattern is going down the screen, literally.
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