Hi, I'm kinda new here. I've been doing a fair few models in Wings and now I wondered if there are any tutorials on how to paint textures for use in UV Mapping? For instance, I'm currently making a Sci-Fi Corridor and I'd like to know how to paint a background for the walls. Help?

Hi Fran.. Here's a piece of grungy metal I made for something awhile back. Maybe with a little help from the clone brush you could stretch it over a short space without it looking too tiled.. Also you might find a tut you can use at Good Tutorials.. http://www.good-tutorials.com/tutorials/photoshop/textures Good Luck with that corridor. Saw the image earlier.. Looking good..

@Ravynsworld Nice metal there bro, any chance you could show us your technique?

Ravynsworld - Very nice work, the tecqnique looks familiar to me but the scrathes are the detail that rocks this tex. ;) Fran - I was posted free "techno tex" under freebes couple of months ago, you can use it as a bump map to because it`s a greayscale RGB image, but the alpha channels gives you the control to color every detail different. Hope it can help you ;) Tihomir

Yes, I would be interested in knowing how you accomplished this. :-)

Thanx Much guys.. Haven't been ignoring you all. Had some hard drive issues & was getting my pc back up & running again..
I did the texture several months ago using digital photos I took & don't remember exactly what I did.
But there's no real trick to making it. Just start with a brushed metal base (Good Tutorial tut) then build it up in layers.
The odd green layer was beveled a tiny bit. Rough texture is actually rough stone that I roughened up a little more with a Photoshop layer style. Beveled this layer a tiny bit too & erased with grunge brushes to make the streaks & scratches.
The rust was done in several layers using a layer style I made from my pic & applied with the grunge brushes & varying transparency (layer pallette) so it blends in. Some beveling here too.
When it's all done you can copy & paste to another window or merge the layers if you prefer, then use the darkening tool to add some shadows & brightness/contrast till it suits you.
I've tried making my own grungy brushes with some pretty miserable results so didn't use my own. If I remember right, I found the scratch ones at Adobe Exchange & the others were some that Outlaw By Design? had on their website.
Sorry I wasn't more help..

Fran.. Like you I'm just learning to use Wings but I've found that saving each piece of the model & uvmapping them separately makes it easier to texture.

Ravynsworld, Thanks for the offer, but I would like to know how to actually do it myself. I'll take a look at that tut site you mentioned, thanks for that. tantarus, Do what? Sorry, didn't understand what you said there or how to do that - that's why I'm looking for tutorials.

Everything is explained in readme inside the .PSD file (photoshop format), just click on the eye on the left side of the layer to show the content ;) If you`ll dont understand something just ask ;) Tihomir

tantarus, I've seen the thumbnail of that "techno tex" you mentioned and that's not what I need, that sort of detail I'm modeling myself. What I want to be able to make is the metal for the walls, floors and ceilings of space stations, corridors, rooms and hulls - Like hull plating (with rivets, sort of like what Ravynsworld has up at the top of this thread, but less rusty - and bigger); Grid floors, smoother metal plate floors, walls, stuff like that.

First fill the background layer with 50% gray by going into edit-fill-50% gray. Then go to filter-noise-add noise and set the amount to about 100%, check gaussian and monochomatic. Then go to filter-blur-motion blur and watchb the picture while you draging the slider, it will make the metal look, set the angle as you like it. Now crop the distorted edges and thats it for the basic metal tex. From here you can tweak it with Hue/Saturation to make it look like real metal. The plates are easily made with rectangular marque tool, create new layer and draw the rectangular selection and fill it with the color of youre choice, duplicate the layer and use filter-stylize-emboss to make the real plate, set the blending mode to overlay and thats it;) Tihomir

Here is the example of how it should look like ;) This is alien ship corridor after he`s finished with the humans ;) Tihomir

Hmm nice. How do you do the rivets? Though I think I'd want them a bit less close together than you have there. And why do you have two different types of rivet there? How did you do the scratches? I like those. I understand the bit above about making the basic metal - that's Brushed Metal isn't it? I've just done that tutorial and it sounds very familiar.

The rivets are made with hard brush, press F5 to get the brush pallete and under brush tip shape increase the spacing until you like it. Then click and hold SHIFT when you drag the brush. Duplicate the layer and use filter-stylize-emboss set the angle to 90 degress, height to 2, amount to 500%. Set the blend mode to luminosity and lower the opacity to about 75%. Regarding the scratches the technique is the same, blend mode is dissolve, and lover the opacity really low. I call this kind of metal basic because its the simplest way to do it. The corner rivets are holding the plates and the smaller ones are closing the gaps around it ;) Tihomir

Basic premise for textures, and this should give you ideas, is that you need a color map, and a bump map - sorry, but I can't tell if you understood that part from this thread. The color map is just that - a color picture of the texture you want, like the ones above in the thread (those are pretty cool, BTW guys!). Then you need a bump map that is greyscale - the lighter the color, the more it protrudes "out", the darker, the more ir recedes. While the examples I'm attaching are not what metal, they should show you what you need to do for YOUR purposes. Here is the color map:

And here is the bump map. Realize that the black lines are what's gonna make the bricks stick out. You tend to not have a bright white as your raised texture because it doesn't leave much room for subtle lumps and scratches kinda stuff - and when you get this into Bryce (saw that most of your stuff was Bryce - love that program!) you can raise/lower the bump height. I tend to not put highlights and shadows in my texture colormap because that's what the bump map is for You can make your textures from scratch using filters and blending layers, use manipulated photos, combination of both, whatever. There are plenty of "metal" tutorials, or you can grab a digital camera and shoot metal plates - and you can add "plates" to your bump map (that arean't in the picture you took) by merely using the rectangular marquee tool and raising the levels of the selected area. And side note: try to take your pictures (if that's your route) on an overcast day so you don't get highlights and shadows built into your colormap that won't look right if you're using created light on, say, the inside of a ship. I know that was long - sorry, but I hope that helps. Good luck- -Lew

I do know that a bump map gives height. Doesn't mean - (apart from vaguely moving the mouse around in Bryce's terrain editor) - that I know how to make one. If I could have found any metal plates - I've have shot them from every place I could. (at right angles though) I have found a few metal tutorials but they usually seem to skip a lot of steps that were taken to produce the final product - ie pretty awful tuts. Bar one for Brushed Metal that was complete - and extremely simple. Please don't appologise for a lenghty reply - the longer, the more info, so the better, from my point of view. PS Those bad tuts were not here in R'osity, but it's not easy to find anything but stuff for Poser in R'osity.

I'm working on a few Photoshop tutorials to load up on R'osity since there's a lot of questions for them, and you're right - there aren't many Photoshop tuts here at all. And just for things to make sense, go here - www.rochr.com and go the the Tutorials section (this guy should be bronzed! his stuff is absolutely awesome!). Click on Photographic Textures" and he shows you how to apply textures like the ones above. Save the images above, and do them to a simple square or sphere and you should get what I'm talking about. So, in the long term, keep watching the tutorials section and hopefully I'll have something you can use. -Lew ;-)

Here's what I have so far:^^^

Some of it's okay, but I'm not happy with it at the moment. I think the copper, although perfectly lovely, isn't the look I wanted for this. I'm looking for a more blued metallic look, dull metal, slightly scuffed.

Oh, and ignore the bubbled metal at the end of the corridor, I was just trying that out on a cube, I'm working on the model for the door to replace it at the moment.

I quite like the slightly irridescent metal effect on the floor, and the lights and the grid in the ceiling are pretty much the way I want them... otherwise the rest is subject to change.

(actually I've already got a wider version of the corridor section, and I may change the angle of the walls - if I can figure out how to do that)

And I will keep looking out for tuts, thanks... Oh and yes, Rochr is a god among us, isn't he? I didn't think to look for textures there, but I will, thanks. (edited because you really shouldn't forget Rochr!)

Message edited on: 10/28/2005 03:17

Ah, I've looked at that how-to-use-photo-textures bit on Rochr's site. And actually it isn't that bit I need help with but more actually MAKING the texture to start with. i.e. making from scratch, or adjusting a simple photo, but I'd prefer making from scratch as otherwise I'd have to use someone else's photo as a starting point. I like the idea of being able to do it all myself you see... Not that I refuse to use other people's photos, just that I'd like to be able to do it myself as well. Can you imagine just how satisfying it would be? - just for once - to be able to say on posting an image - "everything you see is made by ME!"

Fran whats the hurry, PS is one of the programs that have very hard learning curve. Making textures is not easy as it look, for realistic textures you need experience and allot of experimenting. Go step by step and the results will come :) Tihomir

http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1039876&Start=1&Artist=thundering1&ByArtist=Yes The above link is the final version of this image I made in Bryce. More often than not, I like to finish textures, shinyness, reflections, etc. in Photoshop. I like creating textures, then applying them, but Bryce sometimes takes entirely too long to render with complex lighting (sometimes more than a few DAYS!!). Maybe you could just make your render with the lighting you like, but just "color" the walls to the colors you eventually want them to be, and take care of the rest in PS. And Tantarus is absolutely right - PS has a fairly steep learning curve, and making realistic textures can get complicated - especially if you don't have a really good understanding of creating the bump maps that go with them. Textures by themselves are flat, but when you apply a good bump map, it bounces off the lighting and gives it "depth" that you can't conveniently achieve another way. This may sound dumb becasue of what you wanna do right now, but go out and get a couple of Scott Kelby's books on PS. There's some really good excercises that most don't have anything to do with creating what you specifically want, but they'll definitely get you good ideas of HOW you CAN do what you want. Good luck- -Lew ;-)

tantarus, yeah, everything is step by step. At least it is if you can find step by step tutorials. But why can't I use any step by step tutorials in Photoshop for making metal textures? Why should I try a tuorial on... how to make a cartoon pussycat? It's like having to do algebra at school, when you'll NEVER use it in the future - crackers! And when you don't know a program it's very difficult to distinguish between the algebra tuts and stuff that'll help you get nearer to what you want. Not knowing the prog, you don't KNOW what you NEED to know! Unless of course, YOU know what I need to know? You could then tell me which are the non-algebra tuts! (brightly attentive expression) gg Don't mind me, I'm having a headache day. (sigh) It's getting closer to flying time, and someone's messed up our accommodation in Seeb so we aren't going for a week after all, just the one night... Oman is about the most INEFFICIENT place I know of. Oh, look, enough of me moaning, I've done "Brushed metal" nice tut, extremely simple to do, nice result. I've done the same Brushed metal but in a copper colour, easy! I've also done a "Metal Panels" tut, wich wasn't quite so easy, cos the writer did diagonal lines but didn't explain how. She did explain how to do horizontal lines acurately by holding the... shift key down as you drag the mouse, I think it was shift... And I discovered that if you hold the shift key down (if it was shift) and pull the mouse up or down from the last point, then you get a nice VERTICAL straight line. But no diagonals... couldn't figure those out. Anyway, the metal panels in question are a sort of blued-metal effect, and turned out quite nice, (but I'd have liked the diagonals), so now I have 3 different metals.

thundering1, "Maybe you could just make your render with the lighting you like, but just "color" the walls to the colors you eventually want them to be, and take care of the rest in PS." That sounds to me like even more expertise is required in Photoshop than even just making the textures! Nice result in that link btw. Aren't bump maps just a greyscale version of the texture? Books... ah... couple of problems with that 1) I'm in Oman - they're all in arabic, 2) even when I get back to UK, we have to be extremely careful with money for the next 3 or 4 months, as Ian's contract out here has been terminated early - Omani's f***ing things up as usual, and we'll have to take extra care not to become liable for a massive tax bill, so Ian can't get a job for 2 months even though he's been promised one, so no books... And possibly 3) if the books you mention are American. So online tuts are really my only option. Thanks very much you guys, for trying to help me out, and I'll keep looking out for any tuts going, just in case they AREN'T for cartoon cats... ggg

Here are the two results of metal making tuts I've done so far: No 1^^^ Brushed Copper version of "Brushed Steel".

And this is a small section of the Blued-metal panel:^^^

Diagonal lines - in PS, create a new layer, and hit "U" to get to the proper tool set - it may come up as the rectangle tool first - click and hold to see the rest of the tools under that button and you'll see the Line tool - Bingo! At the top you can set the line width, and at the far left, you can see the 2nd section of icons has 3 "boxes" - click the one on the right to "fill pixels". When you hold the Shift key down, you can drag straight up and down, as well as perfect 45 degree angled lines. As far as bump maps, try this excercise (I know, yet ANOTHER excercise...) where you just make a grey square picture (just 512x512) and save it as your "color" image, and then draw white lines, or fill white boxes, and then black lines, and black boxes - save this as your "bump" image. This way you have NO texture in the general color - everything is created by the bump map so you don't have to distinguish what's what. Apply that to a sphere or box and see what it does. You canmake any texture you want just by using different shades of grey, and on the extreme end blacks and whites. If you just turned you copper image above into grayscale and used that it would be far too lumpy and more resemble rust than brushed steel so you'd have to lower the contrast a LOT. Just changing the color image to B&UW is the quickie method, but not necessarily realistic. Actual plates that are copper: (just an idea for you) Try creating an image that is just a truckload of lighter and darker boxes overlapping (make them on different layers) and change their opacity so they even overlap visually. If you just wanna be fast, flatten and save as your bump, then turn it into a copper color. Draw the lines like you want - go nuts with it. Take your brushed copper above and lay it on the top layer (Ctrl+T - stretch it to fit) and change the mode to "Soft Light" so it'll look like brushed copper plates. You can always just apply this to see how it's going to work, and change it/do it differently if you don't like the results - but hopefully you'll have a better understanding of how you can create textures in PS. See how that works for you - I know you're frustrated. I'm kind of caught between giving you exact directions and pointing you in the right direction because I know you want to come up with this on your own (to make it YOUR texture and not someone else's), so maybe this will be a better "point" perhaps? Good luck and happy experimenting- -Lew ;-)

Sorry - AFTER you draw the lines, flatten and save as your bump map - THEN make it copper for the color and add your copper image. Also, don't make the boxes all square - vary the sizes, long, wide, make them all different.

Thanks, I'm saving that to look at in a mo, when I get offline...

Cartoon pussycat ???? You must tell me where I can find that tut. I been looking for that tut. for months Lol. :) "Unless of course, YOU know what I need to know?" All of that metal, wood, CARTOON PUSSYCAT, etc tuts. are garbage for newbie. They will tell you what to do but they will not tell you WHY to do that. My point is find the constructive tuts. that will teach you how to use tools, adjustments, selections, etc. so you can use the program by youre self. Then follow that "effect tuts". On the front page are few very usefull tuts. by Paula Sanders and Bluevenus, those are constructive tuts. "yeah, everything is step by step. At least it is if you can find step by step tutorials." Use the google, if you want to narow the results use the smart quotes "example" :) Btw I didnt have internet when I was learning the PS, you can borrow books in the library, Scoot Kelby and Deke McLeland are the experts that have great books :) OK enough, use the image-adjustment-hue/saturation to colorize the metal plate you did above, check the colorize box and drag the middle slider to the left, with top slider choose the color :) Tihomir

That's been my worry - if I give specific instructions, it'll be like a paint-by-numbers and you wouldn't know WHY you were doing what you were doing - so if you wanted to make changes you'd still be lost and frustrated.

I don't see that, since I followed specific instructions for the "Brushed Metal" and was perfectly able to change that - thus the "Brushed Copper". I find that if I've once got some instructions, first I follow them exactly then I play around with the various bits, like, the ammount of noise (I played with that in Brushed Metal,) the blur, ditto, the colour, ditto, brightness & contrast, ditto (not that the last looked too good with too much brightness,) - oh for Brushed Metal you just: open new doc, fill with grey, Filter/Noise/add noise, then Filter/Blur/Motion blur (about 50 & direction left to right) adjust Brightness contrast as desired, then crop to remove the odd bits on the left and right - fini! Um, why do you have to have a new layer for diagonal lines? Is there no way to do a straight line - then in the SAME LAYER turn for a diagonal, then back for another straight? etc etc?

In case you want to edit later - change its position, align it with aother line instead of the one it was first placed with, make copies and line them up, etc. It gives you much more flexibility for editing later. If everything you do is on the same layer you can't just copy bits and pieces very easily - or change properties of certain elements. Here, this might give you some more ideas: New document. New layer (name it "boxes"), make a few boxes that are a version of gray-blue - odd shapes, maybe some overlap. New layer (name it "brushed"), and do your brushed metal excercise for the whole image covering everything underneath - but this time make the angle of the motion blur 45 degrees intead of either just up or down. Now hold the Alt key down as you click on the line between "boxes" and "brushed" - as your cursor goes over the line you'll see it change, letting you know you're in the correct area for you to do this. You've just conected (locked) one layer to another - whatever is on the upper layer (brushed) will only affect what it is connected to. You've also made them separate so that you can change the color of the boxes layer to a lighter blue (Ctrl+U), and then change the "brushed" layer mode to Soft Light (instead of Normal). More fun - apply a bevel and emboss layer effect (at the bottom of the layers palette its the circle with the italicizes F) to "boxes" - try pillow emboss as well and see what you like. Better yet - click on the "brushed" layer to make sure it's active, then Ctrl+T - right-click and choose "Flip Horizontal" - bet you were wondering why I had you make the brushed metal at an angle, instead of straight up and down, right? Now click on "brushed" to make it active, and at the bottom of the layers palette click the circle that is split B&W and choose "levels" - slide the far left up arrow far to the right, and the far right far to the left to make it really contrasty. This make an adjustment to whatever is below it (doesn't jave to be the top layer) without ACTUALLY altering anything below - IN CASE YOU WANT TO CHANGE IT LATER. NOW hold Alt and click on the line between brushed and your new Levels layer - you've just made only the brushed layer more contrasty. Double click on the Adjustment Layer to open it and change the sliders around until you like it. You can make several sets of layer like this and build up the brushed metal plating of your dreams - or use other filters and combinations to make changes. Have fun- -Lew ;-)

"This make an adjustment to whatever is below it (doesn't jave to be the top layer) without ACTUALLY altering anything below - IN CASE YOU WANT TO CHANGE IT LATER." Ah, I hadn't thought of that, I see... Um, what do you mean "make boxes"? Do you mean draw squares? or create an actual six-sided object, in a 3D modeller? and import? Or just a drawing of a six-sided box? Sorry, I'm a bit confused by that bit... Come to that - what do you mean "that are a version of gray-blue", how do you do that? If it's drawn squares, is that the same as 'Fill'? "Now hold the Alt key down as you click on the line between "boxes" and "brushed"" Woah! Fascinating, that's something I'd never have thought of in a million years, thanks.

Yep, just get the rectangular marquee and make a bunch of boxes and fill them with different shades of grey (or the same shade for all if you don't want variations - but keep them a version of grey because its easier to add color with Hue/Saturation (which is ALSO one of the options when you click on the split B&W circle at the bottom of the layers palette, and Alt-click between that and your boxes for even further editing capabilities). Don't worry about creating 3D objects and importing - this is just simple stuff we're talkig about to keep it fast. The reason I'm big on adjustment layers rather than adjusting the layer itself is because when you change Hue/Saturation (for example), when you go to do it again, you are actually starting from a different color now - with an adjustment layer you can just bring the adj-layer up and do a slight tweak from your ORIGINAL starting point because you wanted it "just a little bit further..." Make sense? I'm a commercial photographer and I do EXTENSIVE Photoshopping to the images, and I need it to go fast, and be able to re-adjust anything later on in case its the wrong color (example - I just had a shoot where they had a pendant they would be selling as earrings later - but they had the wrong color for the shoot - lavander gems, when they'll be selling ruby and sapphire ones - I needed to come up with 2 versions of each stone), or the client wants THIS element lighter, etc. Hope that helps- -Lew ;-)

Do you mean boxes like this??? Sorry, don't know "rectangular marquee" (I'll have to search for that later) - I was just using shift and mouse click, so my "boxes are crappy... but is this (more or less) what you mean by boxes?

Message edited on: 10/31/2005 11:00

Here ya go: -Lew ;-)

Oh I SEEEE! Right-ho off to do that now, thanks for the screen grab, makes it soo much clearer.