Hand Painted Textures Tutorial
This example will show how to create hand painted bark, however the principles can also be applied to most other hand painted textures. I'm assuming the reader has a working knowledge of Photoshop, if you aren't sure of anything there are some great tutorials available on the web.
A bit about how I work - I was taught colour theory by a fine art teacher who advised me never to use black or white in your painting, I still use this method (which has come to make much more sense to me whilst learning about radiosity in rendering). I also tend to work as non-destructively as possible, choosing to copy and then merge layers - this step isn't really necessary but does allow you to create a working file that can be tweaked for future projects.
Below is the final fully tiling texture, and the texture in use:
A bit about how I work - I was taught colour theory by a fine art teacher who advised me never to use black or white in your painting, I still use this method (which has come to make much more sense to me whilst learning about radiosity in rendering). I also tend to work as non-destructively as possible, choosing to copy and then merge layers - this step isn't really necessary but does allow you to create a working file that can be tweaked for future projects.
Below is the final fully tiling texture, and the texture in use:
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Step 1 - The colour scheme
First of all we need some reference and a colour scheme. cgtextures has some great references.
A quick way to create a colour scheme/palette is to let Photoshop do the work for you and gives some great colour variations that may not have been obvious:
Creating a colour palette in Photoshop
> Open the reference in Photoshop (crop the image to get the area of colours that you wish to use)
> Go to Image>Mode and change to Indexed Colour, click OK to flatten
> On the pop up menu enter the following settings:
Set Palette = Local Selective
Colour = 256
Forced = None
Transparency = ticked
Dither = None
> Hit OK to accept settings
> Go to Image>Mode>Colour Table (at the bottom of the menu)
> Save to create either an ACT or PAL file
> Open the file you just saved in the swatch table
Ta Da! One colour palette to use for your project
A quick way to create a colour scheme/palette is to let Photoshop do the work for you and gives some great colour variations that may not have been obvious:
Creating a colour palette in Photoshop
> Open the reference in Photoshop (crop the image to get the area of colours that you wish to use)
> Go to Image>Mode and change to Indexed Colour, click OK to flatten
> On the pop up menu enter the following settings:
Set Palette = Local Selective
Colour = 256
Forced = None
Transparency = ticked
Dither = None
> Hit OK to accept settings
> Go to Image>Mode>Colour Table (at the bottom of the menu)
> Save to create either an ACT or PAL file
> Open the file you just saved in the swatch table
Ta Da! One colour palette to use for your project
Step 2 - Laying down the colours
Open up a new file in Photoshop, generally for textures like this it is best to start working at double the resolution than you intend to use in game, so here I have opened a new file at 1024x1024. There are pros and cons to working at double size - when shrinking the file size any small details are lost, so for a texture with intricate details it can be best to work at actual game res.
> Fill the background layer with a base colour
> Using the colour swatch that we created in the previous step and keeping your reference in view, pick a similar colour and lay down some stripes of colour. I have used a custom brush to vary the edges and the opacity slightly.
> Continue to lay down colour stripes, building up light and shadow areas. At the moment lay the colours down in vertical(ish) stripes:
I tend to use a new layer for each colour so I can go back and adjust anything that I don't feel is working
> Fill the background layer with a base colour
> Using the colour swatch that we created in the previous step and keeping your reference in view, pick a similar colour and lay down some stripes of colour. I have used a custom brush to vary the edges and the opacity slightly.
> Continue to lay down colour stripes, building up light and shadow areas. At the moment lay the colours down in vertical(ish) stripes:
I tend to use a new layer for each colour so I can go back and adjust anything that I don't feel is working
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Start adding colour variations - here I have used greens and purples in the shadows and oranges and reds in the mid tones to add depth to the bark (this texture was to be used in an autumn scene which dictated the colour choices)
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Step 3 - Tiling and paint sculpting
Making sure that your image tiles at this stage will save a lot of work later on - although the tiling will be broken when we start sculpting the image.
> Once you are happy with the colour variations, group your layers, copy and merge.
> Duplicate the merged copy and offset by 50% on both the horizontal and vertical axis.
> Hide the seams on the offset layer using a combination of the smudge, clone and healing brush tools. Offset the image again by 50% and repeat hiding the seams if necessary.
Once you are happy that there are no obvious seams on the image we can start sculpting.
> With the merged, seamless layer selected use the liquify tool and start sculpting with the paint to merge the colours together, add in swirls and knots, and add texture to the image. This stage can take quite a while and can be quite experimental, just keep working.
Tips:
> Don't be afraid to make mistakes, sometimes mistakes can give an unexpected result that creates just what you are looking for.
> Tighten up or spread any valleys using the paint by pushing the colours together or apart.
> Work back and forth between adding colours onto the working layer, and using the liquify tool.
> If something doesn't look right flipping the image on the horizontal axis can highlight the problem
Once the image is complete offset and hide seams to create a seamless image.
Using the image
For this example I used the bark as a base to create a horizontal tiling image, colour corrected, and added extra detail:
I hope this tutorial has been useful, I don't claim to be (anywhere near) an expert. Keep experimenting and thanks for dropping by.
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