Help with making Textures

[Boneyardbill]

Anyone know of any good tutorials on how to make textures from scratch? Not the artistic side, but the technical side.

 

I've made some pretty cool spiked leather meshes but texturizing them is proving complex. Specifically, there are about a dozen of the spikes and 3DS is losing its mind trying to figure out how to paint them all. I figure there has to be some trick to just showing it how to paint one of the spikes and then having it replicate that for the rest.

 

I've tried many times to find texturizing tutorials to no avail. Help?

[hazarada]

Personally I like mudbox for painting stuff in 3d.

 

1. It can handle way bigger textures than max's viewport canvas without any stutter 

2. Its got macros to set up the viewport navigation to the same as various other 3d programs, including max if thats what you're used to

3. Its got layers with blending modes and some filtering capability(not exactly photoshop but has the basics)

4. Layers can actually be split into different shading channels so you can see normal maps in effect in real time and such

5. Its a sculpting program so obviously you can just sculpt the fine detail and project them into normal maps on the spot

6. Its got brush stencils for both 2D and 3D so you can sculpt/paint your spike, capture it and paste it all over the place

 

super quick tutorial on painting:

1. load up your mesh by opening the .obj or .fbx of whatever (quad faces recommended)

2. at the bottom, choose paint tools tab -> brush and clicky on anywhere on the model

3. it will bring up new layer dialogue, choose type, size, ok and paint away

4. at the right top side you have your layers and stuff, from there you can import/export/merge or move them

 

super quick tutorial on sculpting:

1. same as with painting except using the sculpt tabs

2. you can add subdivision layers and move between them at the main menu under 'mesh'

3. to project your sculpted stuff into a normal map (or project anything to anything really), choose UV's and textures submenu and extract texutres->new operation

4. here you choose what to project from(source, high poly) and what to project to(target, in game model), you can just choose the same mesh at different subdivision levels

5. fiddle with the options (read up more in documentation) and cliky OK, always prefer subdivision method over projection if applicable.