Textures

Using advice from my tutor, and some online tutorials, I created the textures I needed in order to make my room look engaging, but still styalized.

Quixel

The recommended software to download or create textures for our environment/asset is Quixel, or Quixel Bridge. The majority of my peers used Quixel Bridge's immense database of textures and pre-made assets to amplify and diversify their environment without having to make as many assets; for example, one of my peers was creating a post-apocalyptic environment, and simply made a fence and tent, whilst getting the rest of the assets (i.e. roads, barrels, signs) from Quixel Bridge. Since my environment is closed-world, and I have spent the majority of my time creating my assets on blender by hand, I have no need for this software. For my textures, however, I was planning on just using plain colours, however I was directed towards Quixel Mixer in order to create custom stylized textures, since the majority of the textures on Quixel Bridge are more on the realistic side, and so not fit for my stylized environment.

My tutor directed me towards this YouTube tutorial wherein they create a stylized bark using distorted patters. At first I was quite daunted by the new software however, as one of my peers pointed out, it's remarkably similar to photoshop (a software which I personally am well-versed in). The tutorial creates some bark, however in order to make sure I understood the techniques and was not just following along with exactly what the tutorial says, I decided to make a stylized fabric pattern, which would go on my sofa or curtains.

The workflow is fairly simple; first you create a simple pattern on a plain grey layer, using the "pattern" mask. In my case I created a checker patter, with small squares, and in the tutorial he uses straight up-and-down lines. By changing the height of the layer, you are able to create depth difference in the texture. You then apply a Perlin noise component to the checker pattern, setting it to "distort" so that it gives the indents some variety. The result of all of these steps can be seen as the first image on the left.

After this the tutorial shows how they apply the colour; this is done by first adding a base layer, then by adding two breakup layers of a slightly lighter and slightly darker colour, using a simple Perlin noise mask. I decided early on in the process of making these textures that I wouldn't colour pick the colours directly from the blender colour pallet mock-up just yet, and instead eyeball it until I had got the hang of the texture. The second image on the left shows the result of this colour technique.

Finally, the tutorial shows how to amplify the stylized effects by baking the edges of the textures, using a few layers with a curvature mask applied. This mask effect is used in order to detect where the peaks and crevices of the normals are in any given texture, and to apply an effect to any given point. I had a bit of trouble with this at first, since I had an issue with my normals (easily fixed with the experimental "generate normals" function). Once the error had been troubleshooted, I created three layers with this mask component, two for highlights and one for crevices. The highlight layers, of differing brightnesses, applied only to the heightened bits of the texture, and were set to "default curvature". The crevice layer was a darker colour, and was set to "cavities only", which meant it was effectively inverted, and only effected the low points of the texture. The result of this is seen on the bottom left, and while the effect is subtle, it really helps to bring out the depth of the texture in a way the normals alone wouldn't be able to.

I then exported this texture, and used the same process to make the others.

Master Textures

After getting the hang of the Quixel Mixer workflow, I easily managed to create the other needed textures for my environment. These are, as seen below from left to right, brick, wood, miscellaneous, fabric, and foliage. I also made a marble and glass texture, however these did not end up being used for various reasons. The miscellaneous texture and the foliage texture are the only variants of their kind, used for the walls and plant respectively, however the brick, wood, and fabric textures each had two different kinds. The brick had the light and dark variants, for the wall and fireplace respectively as grey and brown (though the wall brick texture had a slightly darker variant for diversity, and so technically the brick has three variants). The wood had a light variant (for the floor and table), and a dark variant (for the mantlepiece, door, etc.). Finally the fabric had a lighter red used for the sofa, and a darker red used for the lampshade, curtains, etc.

Picture Frame

I mentioned before in my environment creation that I, on a whim, decided to make a picture frame to go in the room, in order to diversify that plain wall to the right. Well, it was at this stage that I decided that inside the picture frame I would place a cleaned-up image of what my original intended environment would have looked like. I think that this will be very good, since it is another easy call-back to my original concept.

I took one of my initial concepts for my environment, put it into photoshop, and traced over it to create the image you see on the right. The pinks in this image will go quite nicely with the beiges and reds seen in my room, since the clouds have splashes of orange and purple, which compliment red (as I stated in my colour theory research), and so I am happy this picture will fit in with the rest of my new environment.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse