Texturing as Dev Diary Pt. 1 (Patreon)

People have asked to see how I do texturing for a model, and while I've done a couple of very short videos (well, one video is technically still a preview. oops) on this but I think it might be more helpful and interesting if I write out.

In this post I will go over my texturing process for a model, from start to finish. Hope you enjoy. 

Where do we begin? We (me) start by laying in bed, drinking a lime beer, listening to Charles Willeford's "Miami Blue" audiobook -- And finally updating this Patreon with a substantial post. Whatever demons of unproductivity and doubt that have been making me miserable lately are loitering around but here we are with a long awaited (I think) post to keep them at bay.

Behold, the man. I decided to start fresh and make a guy. I haven't been using blender as much as I should and it's amazing how fast skills and habits degrade but, oh well. I perserved, and this lumpy freak is the result. 

I didn't make him with any texture or look in mind, though I do plan to turn him into a sprite and I have also had cyberpunk bullshit on the brain. Thinking some kind of weirdo pruned by strange drugs. 

I thought it would be fun to make a character's whose clothes are more real world, something I haven't really done yet at all. Humans in any of the settings I've been working in all seem to wear armor or jumpsuits (thank god), but I like the idea of this freak in shorts and a t-shirt. It's summer where he is. A balmy, cyberpunk-ish metropolis with palm trees and legal methamphetamine you can buy in a can. 

Thinking he might be a random guy who'd get flechette'd by a more important character. I should watch Dredd again. 

So, lets' start throwing shit into a paint. For the sake of file size and efficiency I've started to try and standardize but we're going to make him the way I've made the majority of models so far: open a paint doc, stretch it big, and start copying and pasting in the old paintings. 

I've been getting the vast majority of paintings from various twitter art bots. Twitter is cruel to pictures but these little lofi cretins come out looking good (I'd say). 

For example. 

Here's the sheet I've thrown together with some new faces and some other bits I was going to use for models and never did. So here we go.

I select pictures with people facing forward whenever possible. An interesting face or expression helps a lot. A lot of different expressions can come out of what was a melancholic eye, once it's distorted on the model. Cloth fabric, colors, and just a general mood all motivate my selections and unless I have a very clear idea (a rare, rare moment) I just throw whatever seems suitable as I finish the first stage of the model. 

So, now we have a nice collection of faces, skin, wrinkled cloth, colors, etc. Everything we'd want to make a guy. Along with those are some old (copyright free, from what I can tell) posters from an account that posts old Communist posters, and I'm throwing in some photos as well. One is a kind donation from a twitter friend and the rest are vacation snaps (Summer 2019). 

I might do another pass over this, if we figure out which ones we're using or not, so I can swap out some parts of the image that's being used for the texture. 

I might also go in with Affinity (a photoshop style program which has replaced photoshop for me) and fuck around. I'm thinking if I use a picture to give him a graphic shirt maybe I'll try and add wrinkles or stains. Something to make it more shirt-y. If I do that, I'll make a similar post showing my process. 

This face seems the most promising to me. Expressive eyes, kind of sad and a little stupid. It's a portrait of a child, so, apt. Let's see how it works. 

Well, not at all. I always just go to material properties and apply image. From there I need to change some settings so it's pixellated-y and also far less shiny. Setting the first bit to closest and specular to zero. 

Okay, that's done. Let's get this face going. Selecting the absurd number of panes of this face I start to drag and drop and slide around... 

No. And I need to regain my ability to make simple faces without slicing constantly. The slicing is my stupid person's way of creating easily manipulatable vertices. We're getting somewhere though. 

The eyes are going to be resized through selecting those vertices on the model and then adjusting on the sheet on the left. I'll probably do the same with the mouth.  Often the corners of faces will contain darkness due to shading or backgrounds and I'll do similar adjustments. 

Very tempted to hop into Affinity but I'm going to do that later and detail it in another post. 

One of the best ways that I know how to adjust is to grab a corner and start wiggling. I'm getting rid of the blackness and dark, shaded areas that ended up on the face due to resizing the eyes. By dragging the corner I can get rid of that darkness while changing little else. 

This is what it looked like pre-wiggle. 

Anyway, once the face begins to resemble one of my trademark faces I'm going to do the same for other parts of the model that will have bare skin, probably pulled from this same painting so the skin tones match.

This post is huge I think, so let's call this part 1. Part 2 to be posted tonight/this morning as well, as I am literally working on this model and pausing to screencap and write for this. 

So, End Pt. 1

As an aside, maybe for myself than anyone: it really is helpful doing hopping between record keeping/communication and making something visual . When I would post twitter screenshots every few steps, for my own amusement/to get those sweet likes, it'd keep me focused. Something to keep in mind for the future. Maybe that kind of thing works for you too and this is helpful. Distracting your ADHD with varied stimulation is good sometimes. Try it.