Character Texturing

#1 I found this site a long time ago when I was learning how to use photoshop, and although you're using paint shop, you may still find it useful for learning the basics...

www.phong.com/tutorials/

I followed most of the tutorials there and that's how I learned alot about how to make texture maps and graphics of any kind from scratch.

At the bottom there, you'll see some tuts on making metallic panels and stone textures... maybe start there. And you'll want to find one on how to make your textures tileable or seamless too, that's pretty important.

#2 If you're looking for some good human photo references try www.3d.sk
I use them to make my photorealistic character textures. This one for example:

#3 This isn't exactly an answer, just an observation from the E3 demonstration this past may of the new Unreal Engine. They are implementing a technology that allows the developer to design a very high resolution poly model (millions of polys), and texture it. This textured model is then used to make a texture map that would be applied to a low poly(thousands) model based on the original high poly model. Correct me if I am interpreting this wrong. :) This concept sounds brilliant to me for making a detailed texture without limitations. use your super high res textures for your model and let the converter do the rest. It would be kinda cool if this technology could be used for torque or other engines. :) Go search on fileplanet.com for unreal, and look for the demo of the new engine from the 2004 E3 show. It's a really amazing demo.

#4 Displacement Modelling is the new way to model for the future if you ask me. Node by node modelling is slowly going to be replaced by more efficent techniques and tools.

Aka, Zbrush2 which was used in beta form for Doom3, Lord of the Rings (Two Towers & Return of the King) and Sky Captain and the World of Tommorrow.

Sorry, off topic there

The texturing is awesome, something about the cornea looks a tad off though, maybe darken or lighten it a tad, is the white dot part of the texture or a render effect? If it's part of the texture, I think that's it, it's a tad too bright for a highlight, other than that, it looks awesome! :-)

#5 @Matt: There are several polygon crunchers. Here's one for Lightwave,
http://www.imagespro.com/programs/2155/

@Timothy: Thanks for your comment. The highlight is a shader effect.

#6 I think you're talking about Normal Mapping.

That is what Doom3 is using to make those detailed looking models. Before there was Bump Mapping, but the problem with that was that you couldnt create subtle changes in height and capture the full curvature of a surface. With normal mapping, each color channel contains information taken from a high-poly model's vertex normals. So this would include the angle or vector of the normals, not just the height. That way, you could, for example have a low poly sphere, but when you look at the surface, it's completely smooth, like the original high-poly version of the shere.

Personally, I don't think it's that great because, the real answer to getting the best quality is to simply have more polygons, which is where everything is headed anyway. But, regardless, it's always good to be able to get those tiny little details.

#7 No, Tim is right...displacement mapping is the future...it takes the lighting tricks of bumpmapping and normal mapping a step further and actually generates the triangles that are "faked" with these techniques on the card. So you send a low poly mesh and a displacement map texture across the bus and all the polys represented in the displacement map texture are generated automatically on top of the low poly mesh. Very, very cool technology and amazing to see in action!

#8 Hmm, it seems that Will is right after all, Displacement mapping is an extended bump map, whereas Normal mapping is manipulating the mesh... according to the people behind Zbrush. -In that respect it seems rather confusing when we try to make Normal maps for TGEA, but it seems like it only accepts displacement maps. Displacement maps are best at rendering, not for real time 3D...

Which was first the hen or the egg? It seems unclear what to call it, but the GG term for normal map is Zbrush term for displacement map and the Zbrush term normal map is GG Displacement map.

to kill the confusion: could anyone please tell us what the correct GG term for surface manipulation via texture material is?

#9 As far as i know displacement mapping doesnt add geometry it just manipulates geometry that is already there at least that is what displacement maps do in 3ds max for instance if you add a displacement map of clouds or something to a low poly sphere the sphere just gets really ugly and has jagged bumps but if you apply it to a high poly sphere it looks nice and how it should but that is just simply not possible for real time applications..

Normal Maps are what the unreal engine uses for the most part

and yeah they create them by making a base model for the high poly exporting to zbrush or mudbox usually using like poly cruncher or something and then applying materials to their hi poly models so that they can use the render to texture tool which then creates a spec map, normal map, diffuse map, and i think height maps if you want you get to choose what maps to render but either way for the diffuse map you still have to do some work in photo shop although if you apply all those maps the model will already look pretty good all that is left is to do some fine tuning of your textures