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Section A, Colour
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When I tell you that colour should attract
two thirds of your attention whilst skinning anything, you will probably act like you already know. However, a
vast majority of skinners dont actually understand what this means. Many skinners think of "colour" as tones, or values. This is not what I mean.
In "proper" CGI terms, the diffuse map of a material should contain only the
hue and saturation of the texture. However, with our ingame lighting algorithms and whatnot, we tend to paint some "fake" lighting onto the diffuse map to make it look a little nicer.
Everyone skins in RGB colour. However, it is more appropriate here to talk in terms of HSV colour,
that is, hue, saturation, and value. The pure colour we are discussing in section A encompasses the hue, and saturation. Forget value for now.
To revise, the hue of a colour is basically, "whether it's a red or a green or a blue." The saturation is how vivid the colour is. Zero saturation results in a shade of grey. If you dont fully understand this concept, read up on the HSI/HSV colour system until you get it, then come back and read on.
Now, the most important part of making a skin look believable, espescially an organic skin like a character or other natural object, is the hue and saturation. Ever looked at one of your skins and thought "Why doesnt it look like Millenia's/Kimono's work?" - This is because the aforementioned artists are pseudo-masters in the use of colour. Usually when you find yourself looking at a skin and seeing it has a kind of "life" which you just can't put your finger on, It's clever little variations in hue which you can barely notice, but make all the difference.
To give an example, I will show the flats of the bakelite grip of my konovalov prototype.
I've eyedropped various spots on the texture to illustrate the subtle variations in hue and saturation which make
all the difference.
Depending on how you work, they key is good bases or overlays. You can use photographic sources for this, but i usually like to create mine at least 90% from scratch.
The most obvious way to get this the way you want it is to paint it yourself, but some quick ways of making an erratic arrangement of colours is using photoshop noise filters, cloud filters with many colours, sponge, or even with JPEG compression artifacts. The key is to think laterally and be creative.
With the basic concept covered, I will go over a few common "grey areas" where a lot of beginners, and even pros, often struggle.
Links are provided to photos of the actual material. Always Remember; Refer to Reality. Or "A.R.R.R." as pete the pirate might prefer to call it.
METAL:
Metal is probably the easiest material to make. Recently-manufactured metal has a tendancy to keep its colour fast, but this doesn't mean you don't still have to add variation. Just keep it very subtle unless the metal is old, or dirty/scorched.
The common trend with representing reflective metal is to use a blue or white coloured light coming from above, "to reflect the sky" and a more warm yellow or brown tinted one from below for the "ground."
NB: Nine times out of ten, metal will look better with some amount of colour in it. Greyscale chrome or metal always looks like balls.
1911s are gay, so are Kimbers
CLOTH:
Next easiest would probably be cloth. Cloth would only have minimal variation in hue on most textures, but it is a "step-up" from metal in that you'll usually find it varies a lot more in saturation. However, There's more to cloth than just colour. In most game engines, the key to making cloth look believable is your lighting of the rumples and creases in the cloth. This aspect of texture painting is not covered in this lesson. Sorry.
Lol Shirt
MODERN PLASTICS:
Modern or new plastics are pretty easy. Depending on the type you want to make, you can usually apply similar rules as with metal, but saturation is usually dropped a bit with the lighting. If you want a plastic to be matte, make your lighting broad and soft in gradient, also make it weaker in intensity. If you want your plastic to look quite shiny or glossy, make the highlights more abrupt, stronger, and thinner.
Textbook example of modern plastics in a weapon, the MP5.
OLD SKOOL PLASTICS (LIKE BAKELITE):
Old plastics, (referred to henceforth as bakelite, for simplicity) can be a little tricky because they tend to behave in a different way than youd expect when they react with light.
I've found that bakelite has a tendancy to retain quite a lot of saturation in its shadows, you can see i've illustrated this on the grip texture shown earlier. Furthermore, Bakelite tends to be quite glossy in appearance, so the highlights are fairly sharp and fairly white. (This might sound vague and stupid, but I will delve into different surfaces in section B) Bakelite will also have a lot more hue and saturation variance than other, more modern plastics.
Picture of real bakelite
SKIN:
Skin is something I think you can never be a master at. But I figure I know a thing or two about painting it, so I'll share my findings, developed through years of trial and error.
The first, and biggest, fuckup people make with skin, is failure to put variance in their hues. It's the most fundamental part of making skin textures, and the thing will just never look right if you don't accept this.
Human skin isnt just fleshy pink in colour, there's splotches of red, blue, yellow, green, purple, brown. Start with a good base and you will be on the right track. Just remember to keep it subtle. Experiment and see what works best for you, and remember what I said about thinking creatively.
The next most important part, is the use of red. If you are painting skin, never ever ever draw your shadows with a black brush. Ever. The darkest colour you will ever want to use would be a dark brown, like the colour of dark chocolate. Hints of red for shadows quite literally brings skin to life, and gives it a warm glow. Give subtle red hues around any skeletal joints, and around orifices like nostrils, mouths, anuses (if you decide to texture an anus that is... sicko) Faces are where this counts most. In fact, painting faces realistically is worthy of a whole tutorial of its own, so be aware that I am only covering the basics to give you a shove in the right direction here. A.R.R.R. On the same note as using a dark red for shadows, try using a light straw-colour for your highlights on skin. I find this usually gives good results.
This photograph illustrates use of a "glowing red" style of shadows. Note the red hues around the joints in the fingers.
RAW WOOD:
Ah, Rosa's favourite
Raw wood is probably one of the trickiest things you can ever attempt. Mostly because there is just so much variance among different types of woodgrains.
Because AK wood is where people usually want to make nice looking grains, I will use an AK as an example. The main thing people tend to fuck up is using a wood textured base. Big mistake if you want it to look anything like the real thing.
The best results when texturing wooden stocks or furniture, is to hand paint the entire thing. I know, that isn't what you wanted to hear, but it's the hard truth. I could write a whole other section on painting the actual woodgrain, but i'm here to tell you about use of colour. The most simple way to explain this is to think of the rings in the woodgrain as coloured darkly, and the rest of the fibre or "flesh," if you will, would be a more typical "pine" colour. The closer a ring is to the surface, the closer you will get to the colour of that ring. One edge of the rings in a woodgrain will usually grade into the base wood colour more abruptly. When considering an AK stock, the edge facing "out" of the stock usually has the abrupt transition in colour. Look at the picture if that doesn't make sense. Youll usually get a lot of variation in saturation for wood, but you can try hue variation too, experiment a little.
Untreated AK furniture.
STAINED WOOD:
Possibly one of the most complex materials, in terms of how many painted layers you will need to apply.
With stained wood, you will want to start with a raw wood base. From there you would overlay whatever colour you'd want the stain to be, and adjust until it looks about right.
Now, for the part where most people fuck up. Think about the process of staining/laquering/varnishing wood. If you haven't done it before, the stain is usually a somewhat viscous liquid applied by a brush, or perhaps the object is simply submerged in the substance.
To make convincing stain or varnish, you should observe the actual contours of the object you are painting. The best way for me to illustrate this is to use the most extreme case available. The SVD/Vintorez style stock. There are a ton of curves and contours to paint, and the varnish takes to them each in a different way. Notice that crevices, and other convex surfaces, will attract a thicker gathering of stain or varnish, making it darker and closer to the hue of the stain. Inversely, concave and even flat surfaces will tend to thin the liquid out, revealing more of the underlying woodgrain.
The following picture is about the best example I could find, unfortunately. If you look closely you can see that the varnish gathers in crevices, and thins out over flat surfaces.
The effect is seen here on the VSS stock.
MOVING RIGHT ALONG CUNTS
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