Seeking Critique

[ResolveThatChord]

I present to you my foray into Photoshop!

I'm not satisfied with the results, and would appreciate any criticism, advice or feedback you can offer.

Normal map was created with blender and Nvidia's Photoshop plugin. Embossing on the armour was generated from a displacement map made in Illustrator. Leather details and the folds in the tunic, trousers, scarf and sash were baked from high-poly floating geometry.

Diffuse map is almost entirely made from photographs, using layer masks to specify which areas have dirt or wear. I feel that the tunic, scarf and sash textures are too flat, lacking realistic detail. I'm uncertain how to proceed.

Mesh has 4690 triangles; more than I would prefer, but I think still within the acceptable range.

[Hanaisse]

That's the problem with photos, they're just too flat.

Add some depth to the pants, scarf and sash with something like this as an overlay. Desaturate it and play with opacity levels to fade it out, using different levels for pants vs. sash/scarf. Play with different blends.

Also, lower the specularity on the sash and scarf, they're (to me anyway) too shiny. Unless you want a satiny look.

The leather could use some scratches to give it a more worn out look.

And bump up your normals maps.

[_echo]

Model looks good, but textures are too matted looking.

[StarX]

Looks like something a redguard would wear. I really like the overall design, though I agree that the texture could use some work. Maybe you could try adding a bit more contrast to it.

Still, great looking armor you got there!

[WillieSea]

I love the armor design, something my Archer would wear I suspect. (But in "much" darker tones)

My humble observations:

The cloth could use a 'fabric weave' look to it, and a much greater bump map to bring out the chestplate relief. The chestplate looks like its made of mustard, so perhaps a different color, and more shiny. Cloth should have less shine, metal more shine. (unless the cloth is satin)

[greenwarden]

My 2 cents:

It's a very handsome design, and one that I personally would like to see looking a bit more grunged up and desaturated, so the textures can really tell the story of the outfit's history, I guess. Scuffs on the leather, weathering around the tooling, a less rich red. The breastplate is really lovely- I can imagine that in a dark tobacco leather as easily as I can see it in its current bronze-y incarnation. Some metal scuffing here and there could be cool- http://lostandtaken.com/gallery/tag/scratched

With such a nomadic, Romantic armor design (that's how I see it anyway) , I imagine that scarf being kind of nubby and coarse, with a visible, loose-ish weave, almost Gabbeh like. A raw silk or cotton texture could be cool, if it weren't starchy looking like shantung. In a different direction, some of the vintage book textures here could be interesting as a base: http://lostandtaken.com/blog/2011/10/28/25-deconstructed-vintage-book-textures.html

Take my ramblings or leave them, in any case it's a good looking piece of work, RTC.

[ResolveThatChord]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone!

Hana, when I said "photos" I actually meant "photo textures", rather than textures from filters or procedural generation. Looking at the vanilla textures, I found that fabrics' weave was detail that the texture's resolution could barely pick up. It looked more like softened noise. The fabric parts here all already have a weave texture (your link didn't work but I found the category it was in) which is considerably more visible than the vanilla ones. The consensus seems to be that the weave texture is still not visible enough. Is there some way to make it more visible, perhaps with specular and normal maps, without scaling it up and making it appear coarser?

_echo, what do you mean by "matted"? I'm really not familiar with texturing technique or jargon.

StarX, now that you say that I can see that the tunic may be a bit too similar in shade to the trousers. They should be immediately distinguishable; do you guys think they should be contrasted more? Having made it from scratch I may not be the best judge. Also you're right on the money: it is from Hammerfell, though the breastplate is based on a design from Imperial Austria.

WillieSea, I see what you mean about the mustard colour of the armour. I was going for Dwemer metal, not entirely sure what I got wrong. Suggestions anyone? I'll also try changing the spec map as you suggested.

greenwarden, I agree that it could use more personality in the texture. The textures you linked look excellent, but how should I apply them? This is one of my first attempts; I've done metal before but for the fabric I was pretty much making it up as I went along. With metal you can add scratches and grunge because it's a hard surface, but cloth flows, so the only thing I could think of was that coffee stain on the left trouser leg.

Thanks again for your help everyone, and please keep it coming. Explanations of methods are extremely welcome.

Edited February 1, 2012 by ResolveThatChord

[Hanaisse]

Resolve,

I'm wondering how many texture files you're using? Is that all one piece? Can you show a pic of your UV map?

[InsanitySorrow]

Don't use spec maps on fabric unless you want it to shine like others mentioned, to bring out the weave more, bump up your normal maps. I have a PS tutorial here showing how you can bump normal maps, though those were intially made in PS, might not be so easy with baked normal maps. If you baked them then you'll need to go back in and deepen the depth of the weave in there.

What Echo means is your texture looks rather flat, there is no shine on the metal, or at least it's not very visable. So your metal looks more like plastic. Use your spec map to bump up the shine on the metal.

For the metal colour, open up a dwemer texture in GIMP/PS and sample the colours from there. Take a dark colour for the base and then take a few samples of lighter shades for your worn areas, also take a sample of a darker shade than your base for any darker areas you have. If you take them all from the same source they'll blend together a lot better.

Now I'd like to point out that just overlaying images won't work, you have to choose where the image texture should be applied, how strong ect. Simply dropping an image ontop of your work won't look good on it's own.

You mentioned there that with cloth you can't add scratches ect, that's correct, but what you can add are worn areas. Take a look for some worn fabric images to get a good idea what you can add. Just be careful where you add it, it'll mostly appear in the most exposed areas.

[ResolveThatChord]

Hana, shall I pm you the .psd? It's 88MB compressed, that may be a bit too big. Basically what I did was start with a concrete texture for higher-frequency brightness variation. Then every material (metal, leather, tunic, trousers) has it's own, slightly transparent base texture, as well as a hue/saturation adjustment layer for colour, a grungy texture for dirty or darker areas (overlay blend), another hue/saturation layer for lighter areas, and usualy a layer that decreases colour variation on areas that are worn. Ambeint occlusion is overlaid over the top of everything. Most layers are masked to constrain the effect to where I want them.

Basically I just applied the methods from this tutorial, which is a good one I think.

IS, I haven't yet made a normal map from the diffuse texture. I'll try your suggestion. As for stronger normal maps, it seems blender can bake stronger maps by applying the map to the material more than once. This may be limited to creating discreet multiples of the normal map's effect, I'll have to experiment a little.

I've discovered that blender had been using the Spec map's alpha channel in those renders, so the specular strength was uniform. Here's a new one with proper specular and doubled normal strength. Looking at it now, I think the normals on the embossing are inverted. Must fix that.

I'll also look for some workable worn fabric textures.

Thanks a million once again for the help, guys!

[Hanaisse]

No no, I don't want the whole texture file, I was just asking to see the UV layout on your texture. You are following one, right? A .tga file? Is it all laid out on one .dds file? Also, what size is that final .dds? 1024x1024 or 2048x2048? My feeling is, if all that is laid out on one file, it may be too small to see the detail.

I also think you're relying too heavily on "baked normals". There's not enough detail except on the cuirass and the folds in the fabric. It's fine to bake normals for shape, but you need to add "fabric texture" to bring it out more of the grain and characteristics of fabric, give it a kick of roughness.

And make an _n.dds normal map! That's very important to capture all the nuances. Can't stress that enough.

Keep going.

[ResolveThatChord]

Ah, I see. The whole suit of armour currently uses only one texture space (so three files; only one each of diffuse, normal and specular maps). Currently the resolution is 2048x2048, but it will be reduced to 1024x1024 for release. I've tested for loss of detail from reducing the texture, and found it mostly unchanged at the kind of distances we see in-game.

I haven't yet exported anything to .nif or .dds; everything is still in the Blender/Photoshop stage.

I'm currently working on a normal map made from a modified version of the diffuse texture, to be combined with the baked texture. Hopefully that will give the fabric the extra bit of detail that it needs.

And, incidentally, if anyone noticed the weird shadow around the feet, I've discovered that it was caused by Blender's limit on raytracing distance. I've fixed that up so future renders will display the lighting properly; I'll put one up once I've sorted out this normal map.

[Hanaisse]

Oblivion does not use separate spec maps, you'll have to add that to your normal map.

[ResolveThatChord]

I know. In Blender it's easier to use a separate texture for each effect you apply to a material.

I've added the second normal map and combined it in Blender. Still dissatisfied with the result, I'm not sure if I prefer it with the extra shadow detail. I've rendered it next to the Redguard outfit for comparison, I think it does a good job of illustrating what's missing.

Clearly, more dirt is called for.

So far I've been overlaying dirt textures with varying strength, but it seems that I ought to have been really caking it on. I think an opaque blend will give better results. If I do this so that the knees of the trousers and the skirts of the tunic are dirtiest, it may give the contrast I think the two garments need to be readily distinguishable. I tried to achieve this by changing the tunic to darker, more contrasting shades, but that turned out to undermine the design and just look kind of ugly.

Literal dirt textures are quite flat; usually a uniform shade of brown. For this I think I need something with more variation within the brown spectrum. Just as we use concrete as a base for metal textures, I think something else for the dirt... Does anyone have any ideas?

[WillieSea]

I don't necessarily like a lot of dirt and scratches on my characters clothing. People cleaned and fixed their clothing/armor back then because it was not easy to come by. But thats my opinion. Seems most people now-a-days think everything was in ruins and in a dilapadated state in the old days.

[DarkRider]

It's true care was taken with weapons and armor, but even well cared for items are not immune to wear and tear and the effects of time as metals and fabrics degrade with use. I think the point is to make it look less factory new, as opposed to ruined, that would be too far to the other extreme.

Really like the way this is progressing, but would still like to see a covert snow version

[ResolveThatChord]

Everything is filthy in Skyrim, and I do want to be conisitent with the visual design. The amount of filth caked onto the clothes may not be entirely realistic, but it does communicate the character of the world. I'd say that good design is more important than realism, and look: The dirt has broken up the flatness that was bothering me so much. I think I can accept the quality of this texture now. I'd rather move on and do it better next time than continue tweaking this one.

Well, maybe I'll put some more wear on those boots.

Feel free to make any more observatinos or criticisms. If anyone has questions about the process, I'd be happy to oblige.

Next up is the tedious stuff: making the other three mesh shapes, vertex weighting all four, and testing in-game. Thanks once again everyone for your help. This will be released here on TESA as a modder's resource; you'll all be free to retexture it into whatever covert, snow-based suit of armour you please.

Stay tuned for whatever the next thing will be. I've got my eye on the costume designs from A Game of Thrones, maybe that will be next.

[Hanaisse]

Ooo, I think it's come a long way. The cuirass looks much much better.

As I said before, practice, practice, practice.