Photoshop for Game Artists | Painting a Texture Map for a Character

Character Mapping

Be a hero and research your textures first!

In Lesson Six, we walked through how to create a texture map for a soldier character starting with a UV template. You will now make your own texture map for a new character model.

This exercise is a chance to show all you've learned in this course so far, developing textures to complement those developed by your lead artist.

And to wrap up our lessons on Photoshop actions, I'll be teaching you a final action and asking you to compile a file that includes all the actions you've created in this course.

Design Scenario

You're working in a game development team on an exciting game title. In the game, a SWAT team is up against aliens who are wreaking havoc on a city. The aliens can morph to look similar to the SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team members, making the humans' job that much more difficult.

Your lead artist has painted an excellent texture map for a 3D model built by another artist on the team. This first SWAT team member has been completed and is now in the game, but at least one more SWAT team member needs to be created before things can really get moving.

You can choose to create a human SWAT team member with a different uniform and accessories than the first, or you can create one of the aliens who has morphed to look like a SWAT team member. For the latter, consider ways that the figure can be somewhat recognizable as an alien bad guy, like an alien federation logo on the chest or creepy eyes behind the mask.

We have provided the SWAT model for you which you will use for either a human or alien character. Download the SWAT model here.

This should give you a sense of the art style and functional requirements for your character map, but your map should look different and reflect your creative concepts and research. Download and example above courtesy of TurboSquid.com and Dave Gibbons.

Do your best to make sure that the texture you paint makes the 3D model look like a unique individual character—not like the other character created by the lead artist—but in a similar artistic style.

Start your project by compiling reference textures for the character, whether it's the human SWAT team member or the alien impostor. For example, you may want to look for close ups of tool compartments, logos, and masks.

Exploring Your UV Template

With your research complete, you'll want to become familiar with your UV template and model. Each model download above comes with a Maya file that is linked to a JPEG map, just like your minegun in Lesson Five.

You may recognize right away that your model has many more polygons than the soldier in the lesson. But you probably also recognize most of the major shapes of the model in the UV template as well.

This scaled down version of the SWAT template shows that there are many polygons, but just a handful of simple basic shapes to worry about.

Marking the various parts to identify them can be a good way to start. The torso is pretty easy to identify, for example, and you can probably find the pockets on the character's left upper chest. You can easily test that theory and see if you're right...

Testing Your Texture in Maya

Load your model into Maya and select it by clicking on it. Press 6 to display the texture on the model if it is not already displayed. If the texture still does not display, we'll remedy that in a moment.

Click the lambert1 option, and then click that option. (If you do not see the tabs and side panel at all, press Ctrl-A.) This accesses the details of the texture.

Click the arrow in the upper right tab to access the lambert1 tab.

Next, click the button beside Color which will give us access to the file attributes of the texture.

The button next to the Color slider lets us access the file attributes that tell Maya to display this texture.

If you weren't able to see the UV template texture when you pressed 6 earlier, click the folder icon next to Image Name and browse to your downloaded JPEG texture.

As you work on your own texture for the character, save it using the same name and format as the original texture provided. When you have updated the texture, and want to see how it looks on the model, simply click the Reload button, circled in red in the image below.

Reload the file to show your latest saved version on the model.

Reload as many times as needed to test your texture.

Using the Checkerboard Method

Another approach that can help you become familiar with the various parts of the UV template is to apply a checkerboard. You can download and try this file.

This checkerboard is designed so that each square has a unique combination in the color of the square and the color of the number—there is only one red square with a black "1" for example.

Click here or on the image above to download the full size version.

I placed the UV template over the checkerboard pattern for easy reference.

Here is the model with the checkerboard applied:

Painting the Map

Once you're comfortable that you know your way around the UV template, you can begin creating the texture map. In the example below, I started by adding a layer of green, partially transparent so that I can see the template, and a layer of camouflage, also partially transparent.

Combine the processes you learned in Lesson Five and Lesson Six to work through the entire map, testing on your model as you go.

Student Hadil Rahim created a solid texture, shown below. It has good color and contrast and nice, sharp detail. It also registers well with the details of the model.

Click here to view the student's reference images and other views of the soldier.

Saving Your Files

You should have created your texture map in PSD format using multiple layers. Flatten that image and save it in JPEG format.

Apply the texture map to the provided model in Maya, and render a JPEG with dimensions of 1024x1024. To do this, click the Render button in Maya . When the scene is finished rendering, chose File > Save Image and choose JPEG as the output. Name it swat-render.jpg. If you have trouble rendering in Maya, take a simple screenshot of your Maya view instead and save as a JPEG in Photoshop.

And now for our final installment on actions...

Making an Action to Perform a Repetitive Task

Your art director uses a particular approach to make textures that tile. Within that approach are a series of tasks that your art director believes can be automated. She has asked you to create that action. She doesn't need to show you her entire way of working, just the part she wants you to automate. You will need to duplicate the results of the steps she shows you, but you don't need to repeat exactly the same steps to get there.

She demonstrates using a file named "brick.psd", and you are given a copy to take away with you. You can assume that the user has selected the portion of the image that he wants to tile. The region selected should be 512x512 pixels for the action to work correctly with this image. An example is shown below. But, your script should do its job no matter what the resolution of the selection. She gives you another file, "brick256.psd", to try with a selection of 256x256.

So, with the situation shown above as a starting point, she presses Ctrl/Command-C to copy the selection, then Ctrl/Command-V to paste it into a new layer. She moves that layer to the upper left corner of the window. See below.

She now creates three duplicates of the top layer, and, using the grid as an aid, arranges the four total new layers two-by-two in the upper left corner of the image window, as shown below.

She then merges the four new layers into a single layer. The screenshot below shows the results that your art director wants from the action you are to create.

Remember, you don't have to arrive at this result the same way she showed you; actions sometimes need to do things in a different way than you would manually, as the action "tile uwt 1024 UR" from Lesson Six demonstrates.

Name this action "tile 4x4".

You have all of the insights and strategies required to accomplish this task. You'll just need to put them together in the right way to solve the problem. Think through the process, write down the steps. There will be steps that you know how to accomplish with an action, and other steps that you don't. You'll have to solve the problem presented by the ones you don't. Often these will be the things that you can do easily, but an action can't do in the same way.

The way you find to do that task may change the way you do other things in the action. On the other hand, if you are getting stuck with this approach, actions are quick and easy to generate, and just as easy to throw away and start over, so jump in and try it! When you take this approach, really remember to treat it as a learning experience, and be ready to throw away your action and start over several times—this will be a long one, and it is easy to lose track of what is in there. It is often good to re-record your action one last time after you have come to understand how the whole things works. You can often be more methodical this way.

Remember to test your action with a texture image and a selection of 256x256.

Saving Your Files

OK, now I want to see all of the actions you made during this course! That includes:

	F12 flatten from Exercise One Null from Exercise Two Darken 50% and Save from Exercise Three Cut image into tiles from Exercise Four Save minegun texture from Exercise Five Tile uwt 1024 UR from Exercise Five Tile uwt 1024 UL Tile uwt 1024 LR Tile uwt 1024 LR Tile uwt 1024 UR + Add corner tabs from Exercise Five Tile 4x4 from Exercise Six

Save your set of actions using your name—for example "Todds Actions.atn". Check back the Exercise Three's section on Working with Actions if you're rusty on how to do this.