Hey all,
Just wanted to know if anyone knows how to keep a really detailed texture at a 256x256 texture size . I know that you should always unwrap at double the size 512x512 then save the image back to 256x256 when your finished. But everytime i do this .. i seem to loose alot of detail in the texture. [V]
Thanks for that HazarD. I've noticed that when you work with such minute texture maps , using a paint brush always gives you a feathery approach no matter how small the brush, so i paint with pencil brush .. though this leaves very hard edge. Would it be a matter of using the pencil with a low opacity to blend from one pixel to the next ?
Sharpen, contrast and simplify!
As was mentioned the unsharpen mask filter can be quite handy in sharpining up small textures that are blurry, but its also handy to go in with a pixal brush and tighten things up manually.
When doing this its also a good idea to get some nice contrast in there. Having good contrast can help define things a little better and make things pop a little more. Strong shadows can help separate different things in the texture. Be carefull however, if its too strong it may start too look a little cartoony, so make sure it looks natarual!
Simplfying detials is pretty obvious. Youve only got so many pixals to work with so dont expect to be able to get heaps of detial there. Only use the colours you need to suggest the detial you want, no more.
Finally, if you have got quake 3, look at some of the skins in there be Ken Scott. They are amazing to look at and in my opion are some of the best game textures ever to be produced. Even with todays technology the still hold up amazingly well.
One thing you could change is the compression when you scale down, found at the bottom of the resize image options window.
Its normally set at bicubic, try sharpen bicubic or nearest neighbour.
Also make a few copies of of your texture using different compressions and the unsharp mask filter, then layer them on top of each other, then delete the bits you don't want and keep the other bits you do want. :)
Like Hazard said, paint at the 256 resolution, the whole paint double thing is ok when going from 1024 to 512 and can work from 512 to 256 but generally lower resoltion console games need a bit of pixel painting.
Anyway 256 is heaps, Try keeping a 128 indexed looking nice. :(
Hiya Kratos,
A cheap (but only sometimes helpful) fix is to use the sharpen filter in PS - that might help clear up some edges but there really is no substitute for getting in there with 1 - 2 pixel sized brushes and taking to it like it was pixel art - especially for 128 --> 256 sized textures.
Edit: If your loosing detail completely - then its probably best you rethink your texture, ie 512 dropping to 256 means you can pretty much forget those tiny little wire details that maybe be only 1 - 2 pixels wide in the 512 - as quite rightly when shrinking down you'll loose them completely. If you really are going for the maximum detail and sharpness, paint at true res *IF* the 256 has really minute detail.