Blender Underground

Hello ALL, I haven't been on in awhile since I been enjoying this thing called sunshine. Yes you guys must not see a lot since you are on here so much. I need someone to show me a Gimp tutorial on how to make the texture from scratch and apply it to a model in Blender. I saw where Jabhacksoul and Penix1 argued the difference between image textures and procedures? Maybe they could like give some side by side examples as to why one is better than another or they could show the pros and cons. I know this is not a Gimp forum but you have to admit it is related since many of you must use Gimp or Photoshop. I run linux on my laptop so I would prefer Gimp. Right now I am at hime with the family and enjoying the pool today so I am going back in and I will watch the topic.

Thanks!

Sunlight (hissss) it causes cancer you know. Don't even get me started about the dangers of chlorinated water.

Pros of Procedural Textures - Generated inside the blend file, no need for external files, and consume very little memory compared to image maps.
Cons of Procedural Textures - Limited function, difficult to learn, control, and manipulate on the mesh.

I am not a big fan of one or the other. If you have an image map already then it is easier to work with it and tweak it as needed. JAB likes images because he works with game mods a lot. Most games require an external texture.

I, on the other hand, am the opposite of JAB. I find procedural textures quite easy especially if you build a good procedural library. I have seen some hideous UV image map jobs though. Looking like someone simply slapped wallpaper on a mesh.

Yea, procedural texturing sure does have the enormous advantage of removing the tremulous task of playing with UV.

For this reason I'd say, if you have 2 similar textures one in procedural and one as a texture, take the procedural one.

On the other hand, procedural textures are much more harder to get as nice as the textures you just get out of your cellphone's camera.

Overall, it all depend on your skills I guess.

Myself I am diggin into advanced procedural texturing today (quite a coincidence i know).

I won't be focusing on blender though.
I've played a lot with each(Each I could find) different parameters of blender's and found out that I wasn't totally happy with the control I have on these textures.

Looking into my memory, I found out a software that was a bit more advanced for such thing.

it's MAPZONE (currently at version 2.6)

here's the homepage I took quite a while to find back since all I could remember about this application was this stunning bathroom showcase:





Now this application is free, but as you may expect, there is an evil goal behind it which is to get you buy a licence for their "Substance" software which seem to be a strangely small upgrade of the free & really deep version of MAPZONE. It's like if blender was free, but you'd have to pay to be allowed to use the compositor...

their licences aren't gift away though. It's around 25 000 $ per game or around 3000 $ for professional use.

Il stick to the free edition and keep you updated on what I come up with it.


[Edit]For god sake Penix1 [/Edit]

Goliath, I'm willing to bet that image was rendered with a non-biased render engine. If not, then it really is stunning.



You asked for it if I recall correctly.

Don't ask me that,

I can't even tell where the 3D model end and where the texture start.

Myself I'd be tempted to say it has been rendered with a biased renderer since there isn't grains everywhere. But maybe it's a non-biased one which they let go over a year. There is a very popular rumor on the web saying that if you let the unbiased renderer go long enough, the grains disappear of the picture. It would make sense otherwise it would be quite paradoxical to use such rendering engine, but I have to admit I never saw anyone here posting an unbiased render that wasn't full of grains.

I have seen some that look like they used a crayon. But that is the skill level of the user and not the fault of the image map vs procedural.

I suppose a Gimp tutorial could be done. It's not that I am so dead set against procedural texture. I am just more about getting the texture looking good. After all the texture is 99.9% of your model. The mesh is like a Christmas tree and the texture is the lights and ornaments. For the low poly game mesh I deal with to look good you just need great textures no matter the source material.

I would like to also point out, that it would be very hard to do flesh with muscle textures in procedural. Not impossible but extremely hard. Most people that I know "cheat" by getting a free skin suit online and tweak it up in photoshop or Gimp. I will crank it up and give you a broad tutorial by this weekend.

You're Welcome.

One thing that dramatically helps the procedurals are the texture nodes. You have to have a firm grasp of them to get realistic things like skin tones. I have one procedural skin that relies on subsurface scatter for the slight translucency red pigment while using particles for the fine skin hair everyone has. It is truly cool but the nodes are really hairy (pun intended).

WooHOO!!! I will be looking for it.