[blok]

I see a lot of paintings here on the forum with great textures/structures on it.

For example; a dinosar with a very rough organic texture on it.

I was wondering in what kind of way it is done.

Do any of you use special photoshop brushes for it?, like the natural brushes wich come with ps 6.

Also i would like to know if you first paint your texture and shade it afterwards, or you just start right away with painting the shaded texture

And if anyone knows a good link for own made ps brushes please let me know!

thanx in forward,

blok

[blok]

Oops, sorry guys

damm i accidently posted it in the gallery finshed work, it should be in the digital art discussion,

Stayed up to long gotta get me some sleep...

[Sumaleth]

(Moved to Discussion)

[nevanlinna]

Yeh, I have just the same problem. I have thought that are you guys makin textures with only different brushes or...?
Please help us=)

[Light]

Texture making is something I need help on but there are many ways you can make texture.

Ps7 makes it a ton better then ps6 to make textures so you make want to consider upgradeing. Ps7 is a lot better then 6 I must say... It *may* even be close to competing with painter in a lot of areas. I just dont know yet. =0 But I do like fact it doesnt crash. The new brushes could have been a ton better but are still pretty powerful. If I waited 20 years to do a brush engine I'd do a better job but oh well.. (not get me started on that again).

...

Anyway.. texture making. Yes.. how does everyone do it? I'm interested in how to make FAST textures as I'm lazy but here are some methods:

1. Build up method. It is sorta like doing pencil textures. Get a good general shading. Add in what you feel is texture. Smooth. Repeat process. Repeat again and again and again and again and again.

2. Use layers and blending techniques. Eyewoo uses the lasso tool to create these shapes he then turns into textures. This method may have a benefit of being faster if you get it down.

3. Like (2) but different in that you just paint on a lot of layers and set blending modes to different opacities.

4. Use a variety custom brushes with any of the above to speed up the process. You can find a lot of brushes in ps6 if you load them in (natural brushes) change the step size for good effects. Ps7 is even better in that you can create much more powerful texture brushes but takes a bit more time to set up. This is how a lot of people create texture in painter as well.

Other methods..

5. Rigid paint method. Paint texture in very pecisely without using any special brush properties. This is how people do when pixeling textures.. But I dont thnk many people use this when making true color/large pictures as it would take too long.

---

Other ideas? lets see some examples of ways to create textures FAST. =)

[Dr. Bang]

Here's a good tutorial to make texture



Also, here's a link to brushes u might find useful to make textures.
http://www.sijun.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=3&t=002935

[Jin]

Hi guys,

I can't help you with Photoshop but over in the Painter Can forum at In Depth Discussions we've recently been doing a lot of experimenting with background textures. There are so may ways to do this in Painter, we're always discovering a new technique or combining several. To name a few...

Paint with any of the Brush Variants in the Painter 7 list of 17 Brush Categories, some of which have over 40 Variants in them.

Fill with Color, Pattern or specified image, Gradient, or Weave

Add Surface Texture (with controls for Softness, Amount, Inverted or not, Picture, Shine, Reflection, Brightness, Exposure, Light Color, Light Direction)

Apply Lighting (several presets or create your own)

Impasto Brushes (paint with positive or negative depth, set amount of Depth, Smoothness, and Plow which means how much one stroke cuts through another stroke)

Glass Distortion (Refraction, Angle
Displacement, Vector Displacement based on
Paper texture, 3D Brush Strokes, Image Luminance, or Original Luminance which means the current Pattern or specified image)

Marbling (can be a part of the process)

Blobs (specify number of blobs, min/max size, what to fill with, i.e. Color, Pattern, etc... blobs are random "circles" but not exactly circles cut out of the image, pushing the image to conform around the cut out area.. stretching, pulling.. each time this is applied there's a different result.. some are quite beautiful and also can be part of the process to create a background texture)

Liquid Ink brushes (can control amount of depth and degree of density)

Water Color brushes (interact with the current Paper to have paint seep into the texture, paint on the surface or in the cracks..either positive or negative.. Paper has Scale, Contrast, Brightness controls.. Water Color diffuses, runs, can be "blown" across the Water Color Layer using the Wind control, splatters, and more)

Auto Clone (specify a Pattern or any image as the Clone Source, pick any of the majority of Brush Variants, set the brush to Clone Colors, then use Ctrl/Command+Shift+Z to fill the Canvas or Layer with paint dabs, click in the image to stop the Auto Clone process.. depending on the chosen brush, the texture can become almost anything from sand to sponge splatters.. or whatever.. especially if two or more brushes are used to Auto Clone on top of each other)

Multiple Layers

Composite Methods (Photoshop's Blending Modes)


The list goes on, and I often use several of these techniques, including regular painting to complete a single background. It's quick, and so much fun you don't want to stop. Half the time I don't recall all of the steps taken because there were so many and frequently they were used several times each.

If you aren't going to buy Painter 7 (or an earlier version), maybe this will give you some ideas to use in Photoshop. In any case, feel free to come see what we've been doing and ask all the questions you want. We're all learning together, after all.

P.S. There are Photoshop users there too, believe it or not.. not just Painter folks like me.

Jinny Brown

PixelAlley Section Links Page at: http://www.pixelalley.com/pixelalley-sections-pages.html
Painter Can forum at In Depth Discussions: http://www.critical-depth.com/cgi-bin/idd/
______________________________________

[Socar MYLES]

Just from personal experience, I find that the easiest way to build textures--without getting into custom brushes, which tend to give a really obvious, "canned" effect if you just apply them as-are without any erasing or overpainting--is to just use the roughness and imperfection of the brushstrokes to your advantage. That is, instead of smoothing and blending everything, let your brushwork show. If you're painting a stucco wall, use some smaller, abrupt brushstrokes in addition to the large washes of colour which define form. You don't have to paint EVERY bump and notch--just the suggestion is enough most of the time.

A lot of the time both digitally and traditionally, I work this way:

1. Pick a colour--preferably a midtone--a red oxide can work really well for this--and paint it all over your canvas. If you want to get a "base texture", a good thing to do is use a couple of minor variants of this base colour, and paint over the whole canvas with brushstrokes of each colour. You can do this REALLY easily in Photoshop by setting the brush response options to Stylus for size and colour (not opacity at this stage, though, or the white default bg will show through and wreck your midtone). That will give you a textured feel right off the bat, if you want it. If you don't want it, just make the whole underpainting ONE colour.

2. Lightly block in forms and colours, with opacity turned ON in Photoshop. Let the underpainting colour show through a bit--you can get rid of it later.

3. Build up forms with colours and lighting. Use complementary colours to distinguish highlights from shaded areas. Do the texturing at the same time as you do the shading/form building. Use quick, random blotches and lines for things like tree-leaves (you don't want to paint them all...what a drag!), and hatching or more ordered stippling for synthetic materials. For textures like broken concrete, paint any cracks in semi-transparent washes and layers, to give the impression of slow erosion.

4. Go around with darkest darks and lightest lights, picking out high and low points in your textures. Be sparing with this, because that's also how you can pick out focal points.

If you are in a hurry, you can also cheat by painting your textures in oils or acrylics, scanning them in, and copy & pasting them into your Photoshop painting. You have to use either a semi-transparent layer or one of the alternate blending modes (Multiply, Overlay, etc.) so that what's underneath shows through. You can erase into imported textures, too, so they integrate more smoothly. I do this all the time, but most people can't tell which of my work is all digital and which has almost no digital painting at all. I usually have a little "library" of oil and acrylic textures I can use in a pinch, if I am feeling lazy.

All these words might not mean much...anyway...I hope they help, and here is a visual, too--it's a 1:1 shot of a bird's wing I painted in Photoshop, which might show more of what I meant about letting the brushstrokes work for you:



( The actual picture is at http://www.gorblimey.com/art/flyaway.jpg )

I didn't actually paint any feathers at all, but in the finished picture, it still works as a bird's wing. If you want a less impressionistic look, just keep working further and further forward into details--don't leave it like this. Once you have a good foundation of colours and values, you can go as realistic as you want, or leave just the impression.

P.S. My favourite Photoshop brushes--you can get almost any texture with these:

Hard round 5 pixels
Hard round 27 pixels
Hard round 35 pixels
Hard round 60 pixels
Hard round 172 pixels

I like to have spacing set really low, because the jumpy look annoys me, but you can experiment with that--you can get different textures with different spacings.

The custom brushes can be good, too--Mr. Mullins apparently gets some awesome effects with them, but I suck and can't use them at all. You just have to figure out what works for you and what doesn't.

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Socar MYLES ]

[Socar MYLES]

P.S. again--sorry, I just realized I might've been unclear about one thing--anywhere that I said "layer on" the colour, or build up in layers, I didn't mean layers as in...Photoshop's layers menu, where you add a whole new layer that can be moved around on its own--those things are evil, and eat up your memory. I just meant...keep layering on different colours and textures till you're satisfied. But on the same Photoshop layer.

I still haven't quite got my digital vocabulary together--I just started painting digitally...well, it's been almost two years now, but I'm lazy!

[Asurfael]

Sorry I'm a bit off topic here (I don't know that much about texturing), but socar, thinking about adding this to the tutorials section of your page? I think that the regular visitors of your page might really benefit from it, not all of them probably visit sijun... And even for those that do visit sijun, i think it would be easier to find it on your page instead of browsing the forums to find this thread. *just a thought*

[Socar MYLES]

Hm...I wasn't planning on it, but...okay...I'm doing my laundry now, but I'll add it later.


EDIT - Okay, I added it.... http://www.gorblimey.com/tutorials/5.html I put some more "visuals" in it, too...hopefully it's clearer now, what I meant and all.

[ May 11, 2002: Message edited by: Socar MYLES ]

[blok]

Thanx guys for all the comments and help

[Light]

Yeah good information. I'd just like to add that you can of course use filters too.

Some of the photoshop filters make nice paper textures. And "I guess" you could use the lighting effects too. Contrast, levels.

Whatever works. The film grain makes a nice texture surface in photoshop btw. I'm not big on filters but if they are used for these like that or in the proper transparent ways then I don't see anything wrong with them.

Sorta following the tutorial up there but just break down a texture into say 3 colors and paint them in..

[Asurfael]

one way is to make your own texture in black and white and use the photoshop texturizer filter... but that tends to make the surface boring if you don't know what you're doing.

[colonel kurtz]

A lot of the tutorials that I have looked through have used a photo as an overlay, toughed it up adjusted the saturation and stuff.

[Jezebel]

I have several custom brushes that I use to create texture with. Most often I use them in backgrounds, so they have more of a watercolour/papery look to them. To do this I start with a base color, then on a very low opacity I build and build and build up various hues. It ends up looking something like this:

[pixelsoldier]

hey Jez, do you think you'd be able to provide your brushes for us to download/use?

I understand if you consider them unique to your style, but I just thought I'd ask.

[eyewoo]

I'm with Socar... simple brush strokes and I also use the lasso tool with some ofr the main adjustment tools - levels, color balance, contrast, hue. For example, that is all that was used to create the wood texture in this picture...



I'm looking for some time to do a tutorial on that wood... right now I have no time. Just moved to a new home... Phew... so much stuff!!!

[Basement bound]

This has become an enlighting thread. Nice to learn different approches. (yaaa, my thread has been reborn!!!)

JA

[zak]

this is very interesting. anyway you can just use the magic want tool on a photo or a picture and you can get some cool textures that way if you turn them into custom brushes

[blok]

Thanx guys

Yes indeed Basement bound,
i didn't expected so much reactions on this topic,but it turned out great with lots of tips and comments, so keep sending more information about your texturing people!

blok