[Flipside]

Ok, I'm slowly working my way through a Heavy Assault Cruiser and decided to type up a Tutorial as I went along, the first part takes you through some of the basics of using Photoshop to texture your model, including bump-mapping for possible normal maps or texture baking. The techniques listed here are at a pretty basic level, but are designed to be built on as you work.

http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/Tutorial_Part1.doc

Hope it's useful

[Turey]

yay 

[Cobra]

Yarrr, can you make a .pdf or something? I don't have Microsoft Word or Works, and I can't remember what the OpenOffice link is. Wordpad can't "convert" the pictures. =/

[Flipside]

http://download.openoffice.org/1.1.5/index.html

There's the OpenOffice link.

I'll try to get a PDF up in the next day or so though

[Scooby_Doo]

Ahhh I see you use one PSD for everything diffuse/bump.  I usually do them in seperate psd files, mainly cause i've got 5 or 6 seperate groups just for the diffuse texture.

[Flipside]

Usually at the beginning stage I'll stick to just one but divide it up into layer groups. I tend to try to one overall texture because it helps co-ordinate the colour/bump maps I quote like the way you have colour only 'sub-panels' on your models though, I might look at something similar for this one. You wouldn't believe how frustrating it was to keep flattening and saving the layers to do a quick render in Lightwave

The main thing the texture lacks at the moment is 'character' since that's a final stage of the texture-making process, I'll be referring people to your grime-making tutorial to help them with that

[Scooby_Doo]

Lightwave doesn't support PSD (with layers)? 

[Taristin]

Interesting. To think I hand-draw all of the "effects" in my maps.....

[Cobra]

Interesting. To think I hand-draw all of the "effects" in my maps.....

That must be a real ***** to do.

[Flipside]

Lightwave doesn't support PSD (with layers)? 

Actually it does . Forgot about that...

Interesting. To think I hand-draw all of the "effects" in my maps.....

I used to do the same thing, but with the new features of the Engine and the fact I do texture baking now rather than pre-make the 3d-effects, my style has changed significantly over the years.

[Scooby_Doo]

Ahhh your baking your bump map right into the diffuse map 

[Flipside]

Ahhh your baking your bump map right into the diffuse map 

Yup, I do my texture baking in Lightwave which works a little different to 3DS Max as far as baking is concerned I think. It does, however have the advantage (I think) of being able to burn to a different texture map, which means I can take multiple-mapped models and then burn all of those maps onto a single seperate map applied to the entire mesh.

Visually, I actually think the quality of the 3DS Max texture burning is slightly better, but I'm comfortable with the Lightwave interface

[DaBrain]

Very nice tutorial.

The help lines... man... that's a great idea.

I did use help lines too, but not to this extent. This is a useful trick.

Interesting. To think I hand-draw all of the "effects" in my maps.....

I do whatever looks best. Sometimes a little bit mixing of both looks best.

It's interesting how hand-drawn stuff looks sometimes more 'correct' than the baked stuff. For SoL, it's pretty much hand-drawing all the time. To achieve a less realistic and more 'stylish' look.

[Scooby_Doo]

Ahhh your baking your bump map right into the diffuse map 

Yup, I do my texture baking in Lightwave which works a little different to 3DS Max as far as baking is concerned I think. It does, however have the advantage (I think) of being able to burn to a different texture map, which means I can take multiple-mapped models and then burn all of those maps onto a single seperate map applied to the entire mesh.

Visually, I actually think the quality of the 3DS Max texture burning is slightly better, but I'm comfortable with the Lightwave interface

Oh you mean bake several textures into one? Max does that, although I definetely don't recommend it, it modifies the UVmap terribly.

[Flipside]

http://www.aqsx85.dsl.pipex.com/Tutorial_Part1.pdf

PDF Format Document for those who don't have access to .doc files