STC#19 - July 6 - July 13 - Claymore (Sword)

[Gekko]

Originally Posted by wolfsage

A little tip I picked up for doing this in Photoshop;
copy UV's into new layer and place on top as you said.
But then invert the layer and set blending mode to multiply.

That way you end up with a black UV wire frame with everything else clearly visible underneath without the slight opacity.

Thats what I do too only Personally I like to have the wire frame white so I set the layer to screen. (This simply makes the black back colour transparent).
Pretty simple and standard tips but one of those that once you know you will use it on almost every texture to make.

..While Im on it...
Should you wanted your wire frame to be any other colour than black or white just make a new layer and flood it with what ever colour you like (eg Red) and then just paste your wire frame in a layer mask.

[wolfsage]

Ahh! that's even simpler, and would work far better on dark coloured textures than black.

Little pearls of wisdom that make life so much easier

[Tiros]

Hmm, I usually do it like this:

1.Render out the UV's without a fill to only get the green/white lines and a black background.

2. Create a new layer in PS with the fill colour "#a6a6a6".

3. Hit Q (Quick mask or something) and paste in the UV image.

4. Hit Q again and invert the selection followed by hitting backspace to erase everything that shouldn't be seen.

And so I got myself a layer containing -only- the lines and all in one colour. Maybe it might sound a bit troublesome but being used to it, it only takes me a couple of secs.. and I find it very effective while texturing.

Cheers!

[HollowIchigoBanki]

If it help any one i have an action for Photoshop CS2

that will take black line off a white background at the press of a button

you just have to have black as foreground colour and white as background colour

[wolfsage]

Ok here's my entry, which I think is far more successful than my last attempt.





I started by doing some quick research on Google and decided to go with a William Wallace style Claymore. Took some photos to use as reference of brown leather and a replica sword I happened to have lying around the house

Positioned everything in Photoshop to create the Defuse using diffrence layers and blending modes to get a look I was happy with, then I used Crazy Bump to make the Normal and Specula maps.

[Baida]

Cool theme, perhaps I'll take part aswell, but that's going to be hard with those first entries which kick ass !

[giles]

@Fleistad @X-Convict

First off, Great work!

My Question --
You both stated you used Crazybump to create a normal map from your diffuse map. Could you explain your strategies for avoiding seams with a normal map generated from a diffuse map in CrazyBump?

Two threads in the CB forums discussing the issue :
CrazyBump :: View topic - Normalmap Borders
CrazyBump :: View topic - Your very own precious CrazyBump usage is ...?

I'd very much appreciate any insights you might have.

[Marlen]

Originally Posted by giles

My Question --
You both stated you used Crazybump to create a normal map from your diffuse map. Could you explain your strategies for avoiding seams with a normal map generated from a diffuse map in CrazyBump?

I'd very much appreciate any insights you might have.

On the subject of crazybump, before I install the demo can anyone tell me if will it completely disable its self after 30 days? (I thought it used to be free!)

cheers

[X-Convict]

giles: I actually had all of my selection pieces expanded a few pixels before taking it into crazybump to avoid the seams. Sometimes I edit my normal maps in photoshop afterwards, painting over to get rid of seams/fixing/adding little things.

Marlen: I know that it does expire now (not sure how many days though), we have bought licenses for people in the company. It did used to be free though.

[wvanh]

So, first post here, might as well start by joining in the competitions.

Went with something a tad more exotic. Managed to get the texturing done in 90 minutes, rendering upped that time a little. Used the nvidia photoshop plug-in for the normal map as my crazy bump trial was over. The specular map was a quick and dirty hack job, as you can see below. If I had more time I'd have fixed the specular on the grip (and smoothed the normals) Oh well. Hope you like it!


Final render


top to bottom: Diffuse, Specular, Normal.

Creation was completely straight forward. Made the diffuse from collections of generic textures, some hand painting and some patterns. Used that to create the normal map using the nvidia plug-in, and disabled layers and messed with HSL and Levels to create the specular map.