Jesse's Mini Hull Texturing Tutorial or: "How do I Explain This as Quickly as Possible"
Let's start this little tutorial off with a zip file. This file contains an example .psd file from Photoshop (3.05 or greater) that has each of the main layers, and several other seperate pictures of either raw paintings or finished texture maps. You can get the hull-ex.zip file from HERE. While I'm useing Photoshop to create the textures, Andy was useing Corel and said he could import the .psd file to look at it. This tutorial was originally written in e-mail form while I was helping Andy Akins with his LF-78 project. I'll be modifying it along the way a little bit, but there may be little weird parts left over from that e-mail. Somehow I know you can cope with it :) Here's what each of the files are, with notes, in the order created (with the exception of number 1) : 1.hull example.psd - This is the .psd file most of the layers used to create the example. 2.hull-BUMP.jpg - This is the plan hull line map that everything else get based on. Notice the nameing convention that I use. The part name followed in all caps by what texture channel it represents. Helps inkeeping track of stuff :)
3.raw hull burn map.jpg - This is the raw burn map after painting. I used the magic wand selection tool to select each box area in turn (or mulitple boxes if they're going to be the same color and they're not adjacent). Smallest boxes I tend to make VERY dark. I do a fog outline (airbrush tool with a pressure of about 10%) of each box edge, sometimes varying the pressure and rounding off corners. I don't use black for the burn maps. It's too boring. When looking at another (non-Traveller) 3D artist's ships on the Web, I noticed he used colors for the burn map and it made the image look SSSOOOOOO much better. I use these colors in the Photoshop default swatch:
(Hint: If you're not useing Photoshop, save the above image and then use your color sampling tool in whatever program you're useing to sample the color from the image and build your own palette.) I don't use it at this color intensity, but I can't seem to paint well lighter so.......
4.I then turn down the layer opacity to 50%. This is also a good time to turn the hull line layer down to 50% and save the result as raw diff map.jpg.
Use "save copy" or "save as" so that the original stays intact. Continue doing this through the rest of the steps. Since LW only uses color info in the color channel, all the rest of the texture channels can be black and white, and thus they also save space. So, convert the color raw map to greyscale, and then save it as....
5.hull-DIFF.jpg.
Now, take this one and adjust the brightness -40%, and the contrast +40%. Save the result as....
6.hull-SPEC.jpg.
7.hull-COLOR.jpg - Now it's time to do the color texture. Most of my ships to date (my IISS ships are the main exceptions) have light to medium gray hulls with some kind of color stripes or color accents. This does NOT mean that you can't make the whole hull a solid color. So, I do the main colors, and then start adding accents like panel access descriptions, vent warnings, intake warnings, stay clear of door warnings, etc. I then put that *color* layer of 50% burn map on top of the color, and LEAVE OUT the hull line map. You'll notice that the black sun on the map gets burnt looking as well since we used COLOR for the burn map. This adds tremendously to the finished product if any emblems are black. The well lit, Jupiter backgrounded Suliman shot that's simply labled "Another shot" in my gallery is good example. If the burn map wasn't color, the black "First In" logos would be pristine black, while every other surface on the ship is streaky and burnt.
So. There we are. Texture painting tutorial in a nutshell. Next is setting up these different textures. This is where Lightwave's ability to do texture layers and textures for different channels is great!! When I set up the hull surfaces I do the color with the hull-COLOR, luminosity = 0 (no-brainer if it's a hull :), diffuse 70% plus the map, specular = 0 plus the map, glossiness I've always left default, reflectivity = 0, transparency = 0, and use the bump map of the hull lines. Here's the result on a little section of slightly curved hull (sorry, it's at full resolution to show the detail better, so it's loading slow):
You'll notice that the hull lines are pretty thick and wide. That may not be appropriate for what you're trying to do so what you can do is increase the dpi size from the default of +- 72dpi (Photoshop defaults to this, don't know about other programs) to 200 or 300dpi or thereabouts. The downside is that it'll increase the size of your texture maps Now, the above example was just on a little square swath. What you want to do when setting up your textures to paint is load your model into your rendering package. Place the camera perpendicular to your main texture axis and then move the camera about 1km away. Now zoom the camera in so that your ship fills the screen. Render the shot.
This gives you a good base to work from and eliminates parallax error. You'll notice that I have a second copy of the ship so that I can also pull a reference for the rear hull, rear hull outline, and air / raft bay door. Use the box selection tool on one surface section of hull (one of the different hull colors in the example pic above) and copy it. Do file / new and paste that copied selection. You now have a perfectly sized texture map base for the area you're painting. Keep adding layers for each of the seperate maps you create for that surface. When you apply the maps (as I did in the example above) use "Automatic Sizing" and the maps will fit perfectly to your surface on the model. YMMV depending on what 3D package you're useing. You can spice up the maps further by adding little nicks, dents, scratches, etc. in each of the texture maps. I've added a shot of my master Photoshop file for the upper and lower hulls, with transparent textures shown to indicate relationships. As mentioned in the above paragraph, I used the box selection tool to make an outline of the upper hull surface, copied, created a new image, and pasted that copy of the render into it. That image then gave me the base to create the hull lines, then the burn maps, hull markings, and paintjob. After you create and save each of those layers individually, you can apply them as texture layers in Lightwave and use "Automatic Sizing" to fit the map to the hull exactly as you drew it in Photoshop. Ta-Da!! That's it. We now return you to your normally scheduled web-surfing..... |
