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What is it about WOW textures?
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What is it about WOW textures? // Roundtable
Post by jayr // Apr 23, 2008, 9:09am
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jayr
Total Posts: 1074
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I forgot all about it but I've got the "Toon Textures" CD in my Total Textures collection. Looking at those helps to see what to aim for.
They do have some samples that you can look at up on the website that give some insight into creating these kinds of textures. Might be worth a look.
http://shop.3dtotal.com/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=199
Edit: I really think the key to this style is deep soft shadows giving contrast to clean colors and simplistic uneven shapes.
The one they do for forrests or trees has hand-painted tree textures on it too, they could work in this type of setting. |
Post by Eagle // Apr 23, 2008, 9:13am
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Eagle
Total Posts: 221
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Thanks for the link Rayman, I'm looking at the pdf now~ :)
always~
Vickie ;) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 23, 2008, 10:21am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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The thing to remember here is that it's a 2D painting style that makes these textures. Photo sourced textures aren't going to cut it. You have to look at what the dominant features are in the material, abstract it and exaggerate it's qualities.
If you look at the work of 2D artists you will see a lot of these qualities in their work. Creating WoW style textures actually requires a better understanding of abstraction in art than creating "realistic" textures.
Like Steinie said you need to think like a 2D artist or cartoonist. Reducing it to the bare basics you could start with laying down your base fill colors. On a seperate layer, mark in the details you want to feature. Then go in and layer different shades of the colors you've picked for the color palate for that texture in using more layers. Shadowing and highlights can be added on another layer using the burn and dodge tool. This style definitely requires a layer based program like Photoshop or Gimp.
The key thing to it is being able to look at your photo references and to discern the prominent features to abstract and to decide upon a color palette that best plays up the abstraction. Training your eye to do this is one of the most difficult parts of being a texture artist. It's a skill that I still have a very hard time with. |
Post by RAYMAN // Apr 23, 2008, 10:38am
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RAYMAN
Total Posts: 1496
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Creating WoW style textures actually requires a better understanding of abstraction in art than creating "realistic" textures.
Jack its more having the right tools to do so !
its painting on the object itself and baking the textures out directly !
With hit and miss painting you will never get them !
Here´s a link to what I said before and the pretty direct workflow !;)
http://www.luxology.com/training/video.aspx?id=34
http://www.luxology.com/training/video.aspx?id=33
Peter |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 23, 2008, 11:50am
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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I completely disagree, Rayman. While very cool, the videos you've linked are the opposite approach and will not help Vickie make cartoon textures. The WoW in game textures are hand painted 2D art. The shadows are not baked, but painted in by the artist.
Baking and 3D paint requires unique UV maps. In WoW, I can clearly see where parts of the map have been mirrored or re-used at different scales for different parts of a building. You can tell very easily by looking that the WoW textures are hand painted in 2D. |
Post by Délé // Apr 23, 2008, 12:36pm
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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From the screen grabs I saw it was hard to tell. Some looked obviously hand painted and some looked baked. On some of the characters, it almost looked like they had a sculpted model that was baked.
I do think that if you start with a basic toon texture, sculpt it, then bake the shadows in, it can achieve the desired result. It might be easier to paint them by hand in some cases though. Either way, I think the goal is to get deep rich soft shadows and achieve nice contrast with both shadowing and color schemes.
So really I think both methods can achieve the desired effect. On detailed objects like characters, baking might be better. On other objects, painting shadows by hand might be better.
I plan on trying both and seeing what kinds of results I get. I will post my results here. :) |
Post by Eagle // Apr 23, 2008, 1:28pm
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Eagle
Total Posts: 221
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Sweet! I can't wait to see them Dele, I'll do the same with what I'm working on~
Always~
Vickie ;) |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 23, 2008, 2:02pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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It's harder than it looks, didn't take much time, was trying to get a leather and some stone effects, so I collaged them together.
Made extruded parts of the patches, so they would have some depth and added some black lines. I think the black lines sort of suck, so may have to use some sort of map other than the lines to demonstrate the depth between the cracks. |
Post by RAYMAN // Apr 23, 2008, 2:16pm
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RAYMAN
Total Posts: 1496
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I completely disagree, Rayman. While very cool, the videos you've linked are the opposite approach and will not help Vickie make cartoon textures. The WoW in game textures are hand painted 2D art. The shadows are not baked, but painted in by the artist.
Baking and 3D paint requires unique UV maps. In WoW, I can clearly see where parts of the map have been mirrored or re-used at different scales for different parts of a building. You can tell very easily by looking that the WoW textures are hand painted in 2D.
Nope !
The picture that Vikie showed us shows baked textures and baked displacement with baked shadows !
There is a fantastic showreal on the site I mentioned but I cant find it !
but I´m looking !
Update : found it its in the luxology TV GDC Game developer conference 2007 press release video(more at the end) and in the client list blizzard is expressedly
shown as client !
Peter |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 23, 2008, 2:41pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Some modifications. :(
I give up for awhile and wait on others. :) |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 23, 2008, 3:25pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Okay one more then I quit ...
Not getting it there, but the effect is interesting.:p |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 23, 2008, 3:40pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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I'm not aware of a baking program that lets you bake to textures where every face doesn't have it's own UV space.
I'll give you a direct example. Go into the cathedral in Stormwind and look up at the ceiling texture, you can clearly see that it is mirrored and reused elsewhere in the model.
Go into the Inn in the trade district in Stormwind and stand so that you can see the textures inside the stairwell and you can see that sections of the wood texture have been reused at different scale.
Anywhere that there are stairs you can see that the same section of texture is duplicated over the stairs.
If there was any "baking" done it was either done by hand or the UV and the texture both were totally reworked by hand after the fact.
If you guys are determined that it's VRay or Mental Ray raytraced texture baking, then circle on the image where you think the baking happened. The problem is even if you wanted to use texture baking, that texture baking would add realisting lighting and shadowing which would destroy the whole cartoon look.
The point of Vickie's original post was: how do you make cartoony textures? Realistic texture baking and photo sourcing are not the answer! You make cartoony textures by hand using classic 2D art techniques in a paint program. |
Post by RAYMAN // Apr 23, 2008, 4:08pm
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RAYMAN
Total Posts: 1496
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Hah ! now I understand why you were mislead Jack !
You didnt understand the baking process that I was talking about !
Those hand painted objects are render baked ......
You hand paint an object and bake the light information into
the UV map(subtle falloff on the walls).
If you look at Vikies picture with the gothic arch you see the pillars
that are painted displacement and those too are baked (normal and light
and specular in 1 go (green vine ).
With modern applications like Modo you can do that !
Its sort of like you would savea rendered map that came out of Zbrush !
Peter |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 23, 2008, 4:11pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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heh, can't leave it alone.
Did some tracing and I used the original as the bottom layer, a monochrome trace as the second layer and gave it 90 percent transparency, a grayscale trace for the top layer and gave it a 50 percent transparency. Results in image. |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 23, 2008, 4:32pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Interesting texture work James. ;)
I can see where you coming from Peter, but if that were the case then they would have to model a high res model, bake it as a template for the texture artist to use, and then airbrush over the 3D render to cartoonize it. Then copy into the model's texture just that section of the baked texture that is needed for that particular part of the model. Why go through all that work when it would be simpler to just paint it in the first place?
We'll just simply have to agree to disagree. I feel that what you are seeing as baked geometry is simply good 2D work. I'm not seeing any evidence of a directional light source in the shadowing or highlights, it is all basic "put the shadow under where the detail sticks out" and "darken the areas that go in" stuff. The shading around the filigree and scroll work look very much hand painted to me.
Another point to keep in mind is that these textures are VERY low resolution. A rendered texture is going to develop speckling and randomness when resized to this low a resolution.
Regardless it's obvious that the texture artist did a great job stylizing the texture, as indicated in that we can argue over it. ;) |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 23, 2008, 4:40pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Colored the traced image a bit, to see the effect with colors.
Promise! the last one for today! :D |
Post by RAYMAN // Apr 23, 2008, 5:23pm
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RAYMAN
Total Posts: 1496
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Interesting texture work James. ;)
I can see where you coming from Peter, but if that were the case then they would have to model a high res model, bake it as a template for the texture artist to use, and then airbrush over the 3D render to cartoonize it. Then copy into the model's texture just that section of the baked texture that is needed for that particular part of the model. Why go through all that work when it would be simpler to just paint it in the first place?
We'll just simply have to agree to disagree. I feel that what you are seeing as baked geometry is simply good 2D work. I'm not seeing any evidence of a directional light source in the shadowing or highlights, it is all basic "put the shadow under where the detail sticks out" and "darken the areas that go in" stuff. The shading around the filigree and scroll work look very much hand painted to me.
Another point to keep in mind is that these textures are VERY low resolution. A rendered texture is going to develop speckling and randomness when resized to this low a resolution.
Regardless it's obvious that the texture artist did a great job stylizing the texture, as indicated in that we can argue over it. ;)
Jack look at the baking in this video !
Illumination baking is in the middle with physical sky and
more at the end you will see some awsome results using normal baking !
You can even read Blizzard inthis video as using it !
http://www.luxology.com/training/video.aspx?id=190&auto=1
Peter |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 23, 2008, 6:44pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Very cool stuff Rayman. I definitely think TrueSpace would benefit from having texture baking and that closed loop selection tool is definitely useful.
I saw that Blizzard is listed as a Luxology client, but the video didn't say which game or processes that Blizzard uses the software for. Keep in mind that Blizzard does photorealistic cinematic videos as well as 3D content for game production.
And I agree that they *could* create baked texture templates with filigree and scrollwork detail then go back and paint over them, but I'm sure you noticed that the results in the texture baking were *photorealistic* NOT *cartoony*.
Photorealistic texture baking of hi-res models into low res models will not create a stylized texture. It will create a photo realistic texture. So even if they did use that technique for some of the work, the artist would still have paint over it to stylize it to match the rest of the painted texture. |
Post by Délé // Apr 23, 2008, 7:49pm
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Délé
Total Posts: 1374
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Well, I went to the WoW website and looked at dozens and dozens of the screen grabs that they had there. Much better than the google images I found. I think most of the scenery does look to be hand painted shadowing rather than baking. It still looked to me like some of the characters and smaller detailed objects might have used baking. It's hard to tell. It could even be that some of those things are painted so well, it looks like baking. In any case, after seeing much more of the scenery I do think that most of the shadowing is hand painted.
I think that I've got a very clear idea now of how the "look" works. Now I have to try to make a little scene to see if I can replicate that look. I've got a couple decent textures going already. ;) |
Post by Jack Edwards // Apr 23, 2008, 8:39pm
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Jack Edwards
Total Posts: 4062
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Is that a tutorial I hear in the works... ;)
Like Vickie, I'm definitely looking forward to see what you come up with. :D |
Post by JimB // Apr 23, 2008, 8:47pm
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JimB
Total Posts: 341
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This forum talks about using a macro to improve wow graphics,check out the before and after images,could this provide a clue?
http://wow.allakhazam.com/forum.html?forum=21;mid=120892957199374714;num=6;p age=1 |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 23, 2008, 9:10pm
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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Tankgirl trueToon. :D |
Post by Eagle // Apr 24, 2008, 4:43am
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Eagle
Total Posts: 221
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I think the pictures you guys are showing are very nice and all, but they are
still too detailed. I have been stuck in that mode for a long time and it’s hard
to get out of it. What I did was hand paint 3 textures that are very colorful
and bright and then added deep colored lighting to the realm to give it some
dynamics. So far I have discovered that the geometry plays a huge part in the
overall look (like Tom was talking about) and the textures need to have some
3dness to them. I was able to get a little of this using Dele advice on texture
making and came up with this.
http://www.eaglesoftworxstudio.com/Witch_Gate/WOW_Look.jpg
I still have a ways to go before I get the true WOW look. Like I said, the first
few shots are not going to be so good, but the direction I'm going is right
I believe~
always~
Vickie ;) |
Post by TomG // Apr 24, 2008, 4:44am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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I think the bump mapping in your images takes away from the results James. Not sure WoW has bump mapping on it at all, most of the surfaces appear to be flat (though I havent looked in detail yet) other than the shadowing to give the sense of depth.
You'll note the bump mapping is adding more noise and detail, and I think the idea is to have less noise and detail. Simplify down to the basics. I think many of your renders would have been closed to the end result without the bump mapping :)
I'd be interested to see!
PS - I dont think baking was used. Textures are used and reused, and appear stretched and rescaled. Performance is a big issue, and they simply cant afford to have the "correct" texture for each unique object, and have to reuse a texture to reduce download and load times. Note that in a MMORPG this is less important than in an FPS - folks in MMORGPS are more concerned with interacting with each other than the sheer technical wonderfulness of the environment (something that FPS fans seem to relish, eg Crysis, Half Life 2, etc, all raising the bar in real time rendering in their time).
I think bold geometry (that avoids right angles and straight edges and is a little "warped") plus bold simple textures is the key. We'll see as we progress though!
Thanks!
Tom |
Post by TomG // Apr 24, 2008, 4:46am
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TomG
Total Posts: 3397
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Vickie just posted same time as me - very good image! Well on the way! Break up the straight lines on the bridge - just make it bulge out here and there so its "warped" - and on the steps and similar, and this will be capturing the overall feel very well!
Good work!
Tom |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 24, 2008, 4:57am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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I think bold geometry (that avoids right angles and straight edges and is a little "warped"
But, but...I like warped, I am warped, I live for warp-ness. Long-live the Klingon-Ferengi hybrid breed of Warpers! er...nm
Looks great Eagle!
Hmmm, no bump maps, real texture work...
I'll study along with great attention and mass quantities of caffeinated beverages. |
Post by Eagle // Apr 24, 2008, 5:01am
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Eagle
Total Posts: 221
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You are right Tom, I need to work on the models and get away from the straight line. I will do that and paint some more textures :p
Here is a shot of what I am building;
http://www.eaglesoftworxstudio.com/Witch_Gate/WOW_Look2.jpg
The lights make all the difference for the dynamics of the level.
always~
Vickie ;) |
Post by jamesmc // Apr 24, 2008, 5:10am
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jamesmc
Total Posts: 2566
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oO!
Looking good Vickie!
You know what this reminds me of?
Of course, I may be wrong, but it reminds me of India Mural art.
I'll have to look up what its called, but I think there is a genre connection here. |
Post by TomG // Apr 24, 2008, 5:21am
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TomG
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Good call on the lights btw Vickie. Spot on that they use strongly colored lights, its almost a disco in there :)
The strong green and blue lighting like you have here is most definitely a major part of it. I think in the absence of realtime shadows it helps define the 3D shape of the objects, having strong different colored lighting from different directions.
Anyway this is definitely capturing the look of it all, looking forward to seeing more!
Tom |
Post by trueBlue // Apr 24, 2008, 5:33am
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trueBlue
Total Posts: 1761
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How about using Ambient materials? |
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