Metal texturing is something that is all too often done poorly by simply overlaying photos on top of one another. While this can look alright if done properly, it usually ends up looking like stone or concrete, which does not look or act the way that metal does in real life. We can counteract this by making our own low-contrast base texture, using our own brushes, and also using lots of layers and masks, and finally end up with a hand painted texture that looks and acts much more like real life metal.
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Tutorial Video
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
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By Racer445
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Great Tut. Thanks!
do you have any of your brush packs available to download?
In addition to the commentator’s question what’s the name of the brush presets you use for this tutorial for grunges and scratches?
http://www.brusheezy.com/
Thank you.
OMG I was looking for something like this! THANKS!!!!
Good tutorial
Is it me or does it seem that the tutorial cuts off at the end?
definitely seems like this cuts off and isn’t the full tutorial. I hope this isn’t in parts either.
Here too.
yeah it didnt explain how to make the preview image at all :S
Here it is cut off too.
Yeah.. umm.. where is the rest of it?
Seems to be a problem with the FLV on Bliptv. I’m waiting for there tech guys to reply, but try downloading the flv and playing it on your desktop in the meantime. Sorry about the inconvenience.
Is it just me or is Bliptv messed up? The video viewer’s scrub bar works horribly and this is the second time I have seen it either cut off a section of freeze up at a certain time. There was a video at Nettuts that had close to the same problem.
Yeah, every once in a while a video can get messed up out of nowhere on Bliptv. But nothing in life is perfect (even powerful softwares like 3ds Max, Maya, Zbrush, and Photoshop have been know to crash regularly), and when you upload between 5 and 10 high definition, 200+ mb videos a week….I guess the odd glitch here and there is pretty much unavoidable.
is a tut plus, u need to pay, since in this video u see tons of unuseful steps with grunge brushes…
wrong. do not say anything you are not sure of.
It seems that it’s cut, is it multi-part like others?
cause he didnt stop not even near the final preview
please, if it’s not multi-part, please recheck the vid condition.
thanks in advance, it looks like an great tutorial!
It cut off at the end for me too…weird.
where is the rest?????, looks like some cool stuff to learn
This is the kind if stuff I wanna see more of, texture making!! Good vid
Good up until it cuts off, wish the rest of it was there….
Seems to be a problem with the FLV on Bliptv. I’m waiting a reply, but you can try downloading the flv and playing it on your desktop in the meantime.
Nope. Download doesn’t work here.
use firefox and downloadhelper to download the full video
Can’t wait until the issue with the video gets resolved.
i downloaded it, still cut off
Blip couldn’t fix it, so I re-uploaded it. Seems to be fixed now. Let me know if you still have any problems!
I have been looking for a tutorial like this for a long time! Thanks a bunch it was great!
Good god kid, slow down….
spectacular video. I’d love to see more of this type of tutorial. Advanced Texturing is probably the least understood part of 3D.
Keep them coming! I’ve got soooo much to learn.
Video should be fixed now! Let me know if you have any more problems.
Great! Thank you!
thanks kaleb!! checking it out now
download fails and the video doesn’t playback :(
Works fine for me, and it seems to be working for others too….maybe you should try clearing your browser cache and deleting your cookies?
Nice! There was actually a lot of useful stuff in here, haven’t seen that in a while (anywhere) I also really liked the tempo, thanx!
Great tutorial — there’s a lot of great tricks in there. Thanks!
Wow, Thanks for great Tutorial. I want to see more of Hand Paint Textures tutorial like this.
This was great. Just what I needed. Cheers!!
thank you very much. if you could, for your next texture tutorial could you do a “painting a realistic skin texture” or something organic of that sort?
I can’t see flv.why?
So much work put in to that texture. Kind of daunting if that’s what it takes to create good looking textures.
And that was done pretty quickly! Believe it or not, in a AAA game you can expect to spend at least 4 hours texturing a simple prop, and between 2 – 5 days texturing something larger …like a building for instance.
Anyone interested in hard surface texturing won’t want to miss this one.
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=373024
it’s really worth a look!
You kids are some of the most ungrateful people ever.
Your sitting moaning about the video and you don’t realise who made it and how useful it is.
totally agree as a texture artist for video games myself, I find this of extremly quality, and it is free, you should be grateful that there is people, that good, wanting to share those tips at no cost.
yes I agree as well. this video is one of the best free texturing videos Ive ever seen. But if people aren’t smart enough to realize how useful it is then it their problem i guess. It just makes me mad when people aren’t grateful for free things, but that’s the internet for you.
Great tutorial….and the one at cgsociety is also really informative.
where did you get the brushes used in the tutorial?
This is an excellent tutorial, thanks!
Do you think you could make a tutorial for making the metal plate normal map, I assume you made a 3d model of the floor section then rendered to texture?
Racer445 has already created a high poly and normal mapping tutorial here at CGTuts+. They can be viewed at the following links:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-art/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max/#more-925; and http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-art/an-introduction-to-subdivision-high-poly-modeling-tools-and-techniques/
Great tutorial but your voice is really boring
For heavens sake…
Great technique. By the way is there somewhere I can download the brushes that used?
This tutorial is good, but it’s bad because it’s speed up. A lot of times I can’t even see where the mouse is.
This tutorial was originally made for a client that wanted a very compact video with loads of info crammed into under 20 minutes. It’s very cut down, however it’s only slightly faster than actual speed. I just work quickly.
Great Tut man.
Good result keep on the good work, thnx for this ^^
I need a tut on how to effectively apply these textures to models or in my case, text.
The only thing you need to know in order to apply these textures to a model is how to properly UV (unwrap) a model. There are several tutorials on CGtuts+ that will teach you this skill..and many others around the web too. If you tell me which application you are using, I can probably point you in the right direction.
3Ds Max
Great Tutorial. Definitely learned a bit from this.
Thanks for the share =D
This guy is really full of himself! I think that he mentioned, at least 3 separate times, that most metal textures out there look like stone and that his looks convincing. He also mentions in his normal map tutorial that he creates flawless normal maps. Way to pat yourself on the back, lol. Sure, it’s great if you want to produce average looking textures, but I’d recommend Stefan Morell’s free tutorial…made by a humble pro, and it’s free.
Well actually, the title “How to Create Flawless Normal Maps” was assigned by me (the editor). But I do agree that Stephan Morell’s texturing tut’s are tops.
My point was that often times people just throw photos of concrete on top of each other and call it metal. This method I show is not the best by far, but certainly better than simply throwing photos on top of each other. :)
Stefan’s tutorial is great, and he’s a great guy to work with. Keep in mind that he primarily works in film, however, and his techniques are sometimes more oriented to that crowd.
As Kaleb mentioned, the title “Flawless normal maps” was not assigned by me.
Racer you’r a goddamn inspiration, and I love your stuff! Thanks a ton for this video! :)
So you seem to think most ppl use concrete photos to make metal textures? Interesting.
Primarily works in film!? Hmm, for some reason I thought Stefan worked for SmithMicro (Poser) and did most of the stuff we see just for fun…are we talking about the same Stefan Morrell?
And everyone knows the tutorial I’m talking about is for game textures, the one Stefan made, right?
Using concrete and stone photos to make metal is more common than you may think. The reason for it is because they have a little bit of color and not too much grunge, and aren’t super contrasted, allowing them to be a good starting point for a texture. That’s all well and good until it gets too grunged and contrasted which becomes a mess, and that happens all too often. Have a peek at some more beginner oriented forums to see what I mean.
Yes, we are talking about the same Stefan, he’s a freelancer and does quite a lot of prerendered work, and his textures work best there. His techniques do work in realtime as well, as both of us work on the same mod together in our spare time and his art looks quite nice in engine as well. He adapts well to either situation.
I never meant to imply that my techniques nor my art were better than anyone elses. All I wanted to do is steer new artists away from abusing photo overlays. That’s all.
THANKS a lot…!
the tutorial is very similar to this http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=373024
a ripoff maybe ?
Stephan Morrell’s tut did come first, and Racer445 could possibly learned some of his workflow from it (or someone who learned it from there), but he has created his own asset, painted different textures with different brushes, and adapted what he learned into a new workflow that is his own. So no…this is not a ripoff.
dont fool urself the design of Racer445 w/c is shown in his tutorial is very simiilar
http://stefan-morrell.com/Part7_Tips.jpg
http://stefan-morrell.com/Part4_Bumps.jpg
u said Racer445 used different brushes and textures yeah sure i can even make my own grunge brush with little twist on the preset settings. the whole thing and concept was a ripoff and no matter how many words you say it is very similar to Stefan-Morrell tut at the very first look. when i open this page tut at the first time i instantly remember someone already made this
the least Racer445 could do is give credit wer he got the idea or make his own design or concept for his tutorial
I’m sorry, but I must once again disagree.
First, the design of the asset is totally different. The color, the actual shape and material of the panels, and the overall level of wear and tear are all different. The only thing that is similar is that it they are both tiling metal floor tiles (which are extremely common in games)…and perhaps the circular shape in the center too.
Secondly, of course they look similar “at first glance”…they are both hard surface texturing tutorials, and both use a floor tile as the subject. But if you actually read through Stephan’s tut, and watch Racer445′s video, there are only a couple very small similarities (like using an occlusion map, and converting the diffuse layers to create the specular and normal bump map, and using custom brushes for damage)…but these are techniques that are standard for hard surface texturing anyways. As for the way that Racer445 uses his layers, filters, stacking, and overall process in general…they are completely different.
In other words, just because a tutorial has a similar “subject” to an existing tutorial does not make it a ripoff (just think of how many car rim or cell phone tutorials there are). As long as the author uses his/ her own design and workflow, it is effectively an original concept.
Labiem your naive if you think that even the creator of that tutorial you posted came up with the methods he uses in his tutorial, i think you’ll find that these methods are often used by many people and everyone learns from somewhere, infact i use pretty much the same methods as racer445 has used, and i learnt from neither of these tutorials, good job on the tutorial racer445, will teach alot of people a good way to create and manipulate metal.
and as for the concept, well its pretty much a standard metal floor texture, you can find similar in alot of sci fi games
Thanks! Do you have any of your brush packs available to download?
Just come across this tutorial. Have not dealt with FLV before so can you tell me what program is needed to run and view the video and how to run and view it.
Thanks.
Plz attach the tutorial files Normal , Ambient, Color map, for start.
Is there anywhere I can see this not in video form? I have immense trouble following video tutorials.
Hi,
i have a question..
at one point you import the metal layer with the pattern option. But this layer is under the Color layers… so what did you change to see it ontop of the colors… i dont understand how you did it…
Awesome Tutorial………..
Thanx……..