Procedural Texture Editor

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Ravenwing
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Joined: 02 Jan 2016, 02:51

Procedural Texture Editor

Post by Ravenwing »

For whatever reason I've been thinking about texture modding, which apart from my brief foray into automating watercolor-ization, I have never worked on. Been poking around and came across this tool: http://neotextureedit.sourceforge.net/index.html

Just been playing around with it for about half an hour, but seems fairly powerful from where I'm standing. Thought you all might get a kick out of it so thought I'd share! What kinds of tools do those of you who texture edit use?
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AnyOldName3
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Joined: 26 Nov 2015, 03:25

Re: Procedural Texture Editor

Post by AnyOldName3 »

In today's world of PBR, people really should be measuring things before they go and throw some functions together that look okay in the one lighting situation of the tool they're using.
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Ravenwing
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Re: Procedural Texture Editor

Post by Ravenwing »

I was mostly impressed at how easy it was to make something algorithmically generated still look very realistic. Perhaps this is common among texture editing tools.

Spent a bit of time reading more about PBR, and it certainly sounds more foolproof. Honestly surprised it took this long for it to take off as a common method since it seems like most of the basic research happened relatively long ago. It sounds like there are two different workflows people use for PBR though, metallic/roughness and specular/glossiness. Any idea which one we would plan on using? Seems like lighting situations would still be drastically different between engines, but I'm guessing you mean intra-engine?

My question about tools still stands. I've done some more looking and having a hard time finding FOSS options that are texture authoring specific. I have Photoshop, but seems like not the ideal tool, but maybe I'm just missing good tutorials. Not really willing to spend money on something that I haven't even decided if I will pursue.

Also, if I'm to be converting from a PBR workflow, I would need a converter to what we currently use. Found lots of guides on standard->PBR but not the other way around.

And if anyone has any pointers on how to get started in general would appreciate any direction/suggestions.
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lysol
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Location: Sweden

Re: Procedural Texture Editor

Post by lysol »

Photoshop is generally what people have been using, at least pre-pbr era. I used it for all of my packs.

Unless you're extremely talented and free hand paints like a pro (and want a slightly cartoonish look to your textures), you generally start off with a texture made from a photograph, that you then modify quite heavily so that it fits in the game.

There are several sites where you can find photgraphed textures for free use. Textures.com is one, but the license isn't really CC though.

Note that this recommendation is from a non-pbr workflow. Haven't done any pbr stuff yet, so I don't really know how they do those.
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Ravenwing
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Re: Procedural Texture Editor

Post by Ravenwing »

Thanks lysol! How do you preview your work? I'm thinking I need to start learning the basics of Blender so I can preview stuff there? I know there are 3D tools in Photoshop now but never used them. Perhaps that's what I should learn. It would be exceptionally nice to have something that previewed the texture on a mesh in realtime so I can see how altering the different maps affects the output.
lysol wrote: 28 Oct 2018, 08:11 Unless you're extremely talented and free hand paints like a pro (and want a slightly cartoonish look to your textures), you generally start off with a texture made from a photograph, that you then modify quite heavily so that it fits in the game.
That would put me squarely in the "heavily modify photograph" category :lol:
Although I thought it's legal to use other people's photos as long as it is heavily edited? Something about derivative works.

As for PBR workflow, my understanding is it's basically the same as you're still creating maps, it's just the maps mean different things. Metal mapping seems pretty straightforward as it's more or less boolean with small ranges within each end of the spectrum. Roughness is a bit more involved but still easy to visualize. I believe normal/height mapping is the same as it's always been.
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