Hey guys, I thought some of you guys might be interested in this:

Although the new 3ds Max 2012 Design version has got a lot of really nice pictures, I nearly came when watching the following video:

[youtube:30tzkywo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL6sJA1BWAo[/youtube:30tzkywo]

Especially the Peel-stuff will make unwrapping organic stuff soooooo much easier...or at least quicker

We've got even more colored names online now!  :usad: [January 2011]

I congratulate the following users on their achievements in this community and on the benefits that come with them.

Contributors
-gorq
-Serifaz
-SirFranc
-TheBuG

Advanced Artists
-gorq
-SirFranc

For further information on how to achieve these ranks and what the bonuses are, read paragraphs 4.1 and 4.2 of the rules:
faq.php#f3r0

[youtube:194tlgrx]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x30Ghe_SdTA[/youtube:194tlgrx]

...best because it's the only true one

Ever since the creation of this forum we have relied on a system of approval, where every thread and post in any of the "Tutorial" subforums had to be approved by a moderator or admin first.
This is to prevent the forum being flooded by questions that have been asked already a few times, so the really vial information doesn't get lost in a heap of spam.
It is quite some work for us to keep this up since every post in these subforums has to be approved by hand and although we might switch this system off once the forum has reached more popularity and activity (simply because it would be too much posts to handle) it will stay running for quite some while still.

Having seen a few unapproved double posts where people just wrote barely the same stuff I decided to write this thread to remind people of this system, so they don't leave frustrated because their posts won't show.

Within the rules there is a section for this system, but we forgot to clearly mention that posts are affected by the approval too, I apologize for this mishap and the rules have been changed to now state that posts/replies are affected as well.

This mentioned section is 3.2. ( faq.php#f2r1 )

Although it is only

In case you have any suggestions according to the approval system, leave your comments in this thread to ensure maximum usability of this forum.

Update: Zax is currently working on changing the system so it affects new thread posts only and no replies.

Difficulty:
Intermediate

Tools used:
-Photoshop CS


1. The Problem

I bet this is something everybody has already experienced: you come across some graphical stuff and you immediatly think "some noob did this, it looks totally unreal", but you could never describe what it really is that gives you the expression, or at least it takes a lot of experience to be able to tell.

So here's to all of those creating architectural textures with the just described effect (the good message is: if you realize it's looking bad, that's the first step to improving it!). I'll be giving you a sort of checklist together with an example on which you'll be able to see the effect.

I'm starting off with a pretty basic texture, quite "noobish" in appearance. It's already seamlessly tileable and color corrected, but it looks pretty dull and unreal, although it's a realistic wall texture combined with wooden texture.



2. Add Detail

2.1. Different Structures

Now I've done the first step on this thing already: instead of having a simple white wall I added a wooden structure. Now even if you wanted a simple stone wall for let's say a temple, you could still add different stone structures, like seen here, with the different shades of grey resembling different stone structures, and the A and B standing for some kind of graphical element or hyroglyphic text.



Of course the whole texture should still make sense in an overall architectural context.

Concerning the example I'll add some more structures to it, three bars to be exact. One on the top of the image, one on the bottom and one on top of the seam between the wall texture and the wood. Those bars are going to be made of wood too.



Looking a lot better already, right?

2.2. Plants/Organic Structures

Often plants like ivy, moss or tendrillars can be found on old walls, roofs, floors...this adds a little "old" and "overgrowen" feeling to your texture, but also a kind of realism - the thing we're heading for. Now although it won't make much sense adding it to my interior wall, I'm pretty sure you can recall having seen moss on roofs, some ivy vines on exterior walls etc.
Don't forget it when doing exterior stuff, but rather do it as a modification of your basic tile.

3. Light and Shadow

Instead of having thousands of different maps for one texture like you're able to have in movie models, in game modelling the light and shadow information has to be rendered into the diffuse map (the diffuse map is practically equivalent to "texture" in the WoW engine, as it's being the the only texture map).

3.1. Bevel

Bevelling your layers is the first step on adding depth information to your 2d graphic. It enables you to create somewhat realistic shadows on structures sticking out.

In my case it's the wooden stuff I'm going to add some bevels to.



It's not a groundbreaking effect, but it's definitly something your eye will either recognize or miss ingame.

3.2. Shadows

Using the Outer Glow and Drop Shadow (or even Emboss Bevels) you're able to create some nice shadow effects with just a few clicks, just keep in mind where the light source is coming from! (most of the time it's going to be the sun, so the angles are most of the time 90° in PS)

On my interior wall the shadows will be thrown from the bars onto the wall and wood, although the one on timber won't be as "big" as the one on the white wall, because it doesn't have such abig difference in height to the bars.
Here's the result:



3.3. Gradient Overlays

The last thing when talking about shadows are the gradient overlays. Although they too are subtle, they'll make a huge difference in realism.
When doing gradients keep in mind what color your lightsource is and where it's coming from.
I often do gradients on both the several structures seperatly as well as one overall, just try to not too much brighten/darken your image, play with the opacity settings.



4. Dirt

4.1. Dirten up the Pattern

Using simple Dirt Textures you'll be able to bring some diversity into your structures. The Dirt Textures should be of the same "family" though. Adding a rust texture to wood often doesn't look too good, but experiment!



4.2. Cracks, Dots and Stains

Now here's where your custom brushes come in handy. I bet you all know where to get cracks and stains brushes.
Simply brush in some custom dirt on parts where it makes sense (realistic-wise).

The outcome can be pretty awesome, but I wanted to keep it pretty simple here:



4.3. Used Edges etc.

This one's a bit tricky. You have to think of the parts of the texture that get used a lot and therefor will wear off eventually. This is pretty easily explained with edges: people will shrub along and the texture and color will change, that's what we're adding in by hand. You can either use brushes or simple strokes, depending on your texture.



Very simple white 2px strokes, but it definitly adds something to the texture.

4.4. Accumulated Dirt - Water stains and dusty parts

Ask yourself where dust or water would leave "dirt" over the years and in which way. In my case the wood near the floor will be rubbed off a little so it gets brighter.



5. Final Touches and Sharpen

This is my favorite part. I hope you kept all your stuff in nice layers because this is the time to fiddle around with your settings, try something out.
Once you're done, hit CTRL+SHIFT+E to merge all layers to the background and sharpen your image - you're done!

Difficulty:
Intermediate

Tools used:
-Photoshop CS

1. Conceptual thoughts

Very important when doing architectural textures is having a reference and/or a concept art you can relate to. I always tend do take realistic photos, maybe modify them a bit (like mixing two styles to create a new, unique one).
The big problem you're going to have (especially as a beginner) is that in your imagination things will look totally cool but when realizing the texture and then wrapping it onto a model it will look totally dull and boring. Better stick to something already visualized and the chance it'll look bad are significantly lower.

Now here's the reference I'll be having for this tutorial:



You might already see that in order to save space and filesize this house needs roughly 4 textures (going from ground floor to roof:)
-Grey Bricks
-White-Red Wall Variation 1
-White-Red Wall Variation 2
-Dark Blue Roof

I'll be going for number 2, the White-Red Wall Variation 1.
Now the next thing I do is create a palette with the main colors (using the eyedropper (shortcut: "i" in Photoshop) and the brush (shortcut: "b") and then create a rough outline of the alignment of the different elements of the texture.

[Note: most of the time this already is part of what's going to be my final texture. The rough outline with the main colors is the first layer of the texture, already drawn on the picture with the final size]



As soon as this is done I'll head for a quick analysis of the materials the texture consists of. In this case we're going to need one glass texture, one iron texture, one wood texture and one plaster-like texture. Several "dirt" textures add to this list but we'll come to that later on.

[Note: You don't have to analyze the texture like I did, this is just to illustrate my lines of thought, this is the first time I did this not only in my head. Since it's not that hard to figure out which textures you'll need for which part of the final texture I'm sure you can do it in your mind as well!]



2. Gathering the resources

In order to get the texture going you'll need some blanks of course. It's always handy to have a big library of those at hand, but even if you don't have one (yet) you can always start growing one using the multiple sources of the internet. Here are some I can recommend to you:

-Google for the blank you wish and add "texture" as a keyword. (easiest solution, sometimes crappy results though)
-Search

http://www.flickr.com/ for a picture containing your element and create a seamless blank from it (needs some advanced photoshop skills)
-Create one yourself (either using photoshop filters etc, multiple tutorials in the internet, most of the time ugly results or you could draw them by hand, that's what blizzard does - given the fact you can draw of course...I can't)
-Buy one of the numerous texture packs out there. Most of them don't come as finished textures but texture blanks, sometimes seamlessly tiled, sometimes not. (Also very easy and timesaving, but most of these packs are pretty expensive)
[/list]

When selecting textures from your library there's one more thing you have to keep in mind: tiling.
Think about the way your texture will be tiled on the final model. In this case the texture only will be tiled horizontally (left<->right), so we have to either choose textures which are able to be tiled horizontally or make them seamless ourselves.
I'll be doing a tutorial on how to make textures tile seamlessly soon.
Not all the textures reach the side borders on this one though - the glass and iron texture don't have to be tileable in any way.









Some of these images aren't in their original state, I made the plaster texture tileable and the wood texture was made longer (not by stretching but by using the clone tool - photoshop shortcut "s").
The colors all aren't correct, but that's because we're just looking for suiting blanks right now. Images to add realistic structures to our colors.


3. Creating the texture

We got the references and we got the resources we need, so we can start working on the actual texture now.
The first descision you're going to have to make is the size. Most of you already know to just use powers of 2 as sides - 128x128, 256x256 or also 64x128 etc as long as both are a power of 2.
But which one is the most suiting?
First choose the proportions, the reference might help you. In my example you can see that one texture is pretty much square, so the file's gonna be square too.
A good general rule for the number of pixels per side is to adjust it according to the maximum size it will be taking on the screen later on: the more you'll be able to zoom in, walk closer etc, the bigger the sides should be.
As for architectural textures 512x512 is the maximum you should go. I'm going for 512x512 as well as you'll still be able to size it down easier than to enlarge it afterwards.

The following steps differ of course depending on your texture, so I'm only able  to give you just some tipps on it:

-Work with thousands of layers. Each element gets its own layer. Every "dirt" texture gets its own layer, every color layer is seperate etc. This gives you the most power over each small part and you're able to change things without ruining the whole texture.
-Don't delete parts of textures etc. Sometimes there's a little part missing too much and you'll regret it but can't go back that many steps. Use layer masks instead. That way you're able to crop image parts without deleting them.
-Use lots of "dirt" textures. You'll have to play around with them very much especially at the beginning. Once you've got the hang of it you'll already know which dirt texture'll fit most but there's only one general rule when starting: try it out and then try out some more.
-Use folders. Since you've got lots of layers you can pack them into folders, make several layers invisible/visible with just one click, move them all at once etc. Folders are very helpful if you put the right layers in them.
-Don't forget about Layer Style! You can use it to either create realistic Shadows (Drop Shadow, Outer Glow on Multiply with dark color) or even realistic bevel (if you set the options right) even if you can't draw realistic shadows etc.

Now here's what I did:

1. Texture Layout

Using the concept graphic as a reference for proportions etc (by scaling it up to 512x512) I packed the image with the blanks, tansforming them into the right places. I cropped some parts, stretched, rotated them and played with the layer hirarchy.
I also grouped the layers into the 5 colors: DarkRed (Wood), LightRed (Wood), DarkBlue (Iron), LightBlue (Window), White (Plaster)




2. Dirt Textures

I copied all the elements inside a folder, hid the originals and merged the copies to one "master" layer. This master layer gives me room to play with settings and also saves time when I want to change a certain value. What's more by holding "ctrl" down while clicking on the image of the master layer inside the layer panel/tab I can select the not transparent values in order to create layer masks.



Now let me explain the term "dirt textures" to you...it's not a texture of dirt, close but not quite correct. You use dirt textures in order to roughen up a structure, make it seem more realistic (nothing's nice and clean, especially not architecture). Anything can be a dirt texture that looks worn. Sometimes dirt textures can be made by simple dirt brushes (black/white) or also using special colored textures.
There's no real general rule about that but it's quite a good guideline to say try sticking to either realistic worn elements that exist in real life as well or use dirt textures of the same structure family as your structure texture (i.e. another wood texture as dirt on wooden parts)
Something you've got to be aware of though: dirt textures can easily ruin your seams! Either choose seamless dirt textures when using real textures as dirt or stick to brushes (or create a seamless dirt texture yourself).




3. Coloring

We start by selecting the master layers and hitting "ctrl+shift+u" to completely desaturate them. On top of the master layer I create new layers filled with the color corresponding to the element and set the blending mode to "color" (NOT "hue"!).
Now the color palette from the beginning comes in handy. Cut it out and paste it into your texture, above all other layers.
In order for the elements to really take the color chosen you have to create a brightness/contrast adjustment layer BETWEEN the color- and the master layer and play with both the brightness and contrast value until the right color is achieved. It's very useful to hide the other parts of the texture while color correcting one (just hide the folder, that's the easiest solution)

Here's  what it looks like with the dirt textures, one step further to completion:




4. Shadows and the Rest

The last thing to do is adding shadows and some finishing touches like cleaning up the picture, fixing mistakes, refining stuff.

I can't tell you anything on those things except the shadows:

-Use the master layer to add layer styles.
-In order to achieve different shadows on the same element, cut out parts of the master layer.
-Drop shadow is the most obvious tool to use, just be careful to deselect global light, since it'd affect shadows of other layers too
-Other very helpful layer styles are the Inner- and Outer Glow, set to a dark color and "Multiply" blending mode.

And it's finished!

Particles and Ribbons still missing


This tutorial is suited for the creation of objectcomponent-items: helmets, shoulderpads, weapons, shields - items with an external model file without collision and mostly without animation.
This tutorial does NOT include the creation of geoset related texturecomponent items!

Difficulty:
Intermediate

Tools used:
-3dsToM2.exe
-Autodesk 3ds Max 2010
-Attachmentadder.exe
-M2Modder.exe
-Milkshape 3D
-Photoshop CS3
-WotLK Model Viewer
-WoWImage.jar




1. The Model
You've managed to create your own model and texture using one of the thousand tutorials out there? That's great, now I'm going to show you how to get this model ingame!




1.1. Reference Model
First of all you'll need a reference model in order for your model to be the right size compared to the player model.
Open up Model Viewer and navigate to the Human Model ("CharacterHumanMale") or whatever Reference Model you'd like to use.
With it showing click on "File -> Export Model Snapshot" and save it as .ms3d extension, since the other ones seem to be broken.





Model Viewer now exports the model with its UVs intact and the used texture files to your preferred location.
Start up Milkshape 3D and open the newly created reference model. Go to "File -> Export -> Autodesk 3DS" in order to save the model as a file format 3ds Max can handle easily.



In 3ds Max you can now choose to import this reference model and using the scale tool you can size your item down to fit the reference model in size.






1.2. Correct Rotation



Using my RotationHelper.png it should be easy for you to rotate your model correctly. Something you shouldn't forget either is that the center of the document (where the fat black lines cross) is equal to the attachment point on the model, so make sure to line your item up right so it fits the model afterwards.




1.3. Export Option[/size]
In order to be able to export the model right you need to transform all polygons to triangles (this will have no negative effect on your UV maps or textures, don't worry if you haven't done it up to now)
The easiest way to convert all polys to tris is using the "Subdivide" Modifier. Apply it to your model and use an enormously big value as size. I use 100000 most of the time.



Once this is done and your desired item object is selected simply go to "File -> Export Selected" and save it as a .3DS file. In the upcoming window make sure to have the check on preserving the texture coordinates.