Author Topic: First attempt at floor image  (Read 1185 times)

foxgamer

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First attempt at floor image
« on: September 15, 2007, 06:36:12 pm »
Hi all!

I'm not a graphic artist or anything like that, but I do try my best to help wherever possible, so I thought I would try and create a simple graphic to begin with and post it here so that I can get critiques on it. Any suggestions or critiques are helpful, even bad one's. As I said, I'm not a designer and I'm not entirely sure what is required, so I thought I would start with something simple and work from the responses that I get. So, please, do not hold back on your critisism (insults not withstanding, trust me. I'll ignore those).

So here is the graphic that I have initially worked on;

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LigH

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Re: First attempt at floor image
« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2007, 07:29:53 pm »
This sample is quite small, so hard to rate. Looks like glossy cobbles... good idea; but you know textures should be tileable (seamlessly repeating).

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Hectate

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Re: First attempt at floor image
« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2007, 09:12:56 pm »
On the positive side it looks like it would make a good texture. It reminds me of an old polished rock road that has been beaten into the dirt and then abandoned for a long time.

Constructively though, It does appear to need further work before it can be used on a larger scale. As LigH pointed out, it needs to be tileable. I've found that the best way to do this is to use an "offset" feature (names vary) to slide all the edges of the image to the middle. The result is that the parts of the image on the edges afterward are naturally tile-able. Then once you erase the seams in the middle (by painting/cloning over them) you have a seam-free image. I used to have a tutorial on how to do this, but it's not available anymore online. I'll remake one since I haven't seen one anywhere.

Another note is that the image seems to have smaller "rocks" nearer to the top edge. This leads me to believe that the original source was a photograph. Now, photo's make great textures, you just have to be careful. If it IS getting smaller due to perspective, then this will show up in the tiled texture as horizontal bands. The idea is that you want to take a photo that is as flat as possible and then let the game engine create the perspective from the texture. The best way to do this is to get farther away and zoom in (if you have a good quality camera this is a good option). This can be difficult when photographing a ground/floor texture. Unless you have a ladder or building you can conveniently climb, you may have to begin with a smaller sample of the ground and then just manually tile and then alter it to expand it's overall size.

I hope these comments help. If anything is unclear, let me know and I'll be glad to clarify.
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foxgamer

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Re: First attempt at floor image
« Reply #3 on: September 17, 2007, 12:42:28 am »
Thank you both for the comments. I see what you mean by the 'perspective' effect. Unfortunately, it was from a picture I took on holiday so I might finding another texture to use and try getting a larger area to photograph. I have done a little search on the 'offset' effect that you have mentioned and I understand what needs to be done to make it tiled so I think I could get to the next stage in the process before posting my next again.

Thanks again :)
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Ver

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Re: First attempt at floor image
« Reply #4 on: September 17, 2007, 02:46:00 am »
The visual quality is good, but it doesn't tile, and that's essential for a texture (particularly floor).