Blending Techniques - How to Avoid the Lick and Stick look of building textures

So I am looking at some building texture sets that are for sale at one of the big texture stores for quite a lot of money and I noticed that the majority of these textures were made by taking components from different photos and then pasted together into a composition of sorts to make walls with windows and various trims and architectural details.

Many of them look like somebody just took a photo of a window and "lick and stick" popped it onto a Wall and it is obvious that the 2 components came from different sources because the Blending of the 2 source images or was done poorly, if at all and often totally out of scale.


My question is


What are some blending techniques that Texture Artists use use to make composites from components that have different lighting and shading and color hues look like they belong together?

Good question. There are as many answers, though, as there are photos to combine. It all depends on what's going on in the two images. There's no magic "make these match" button. It's a question of artistic judgment, far more than of tool knowledge.

It starts with taking a good look at both images, and noting the differences and similarities. Do they have similar coloring? Is the lighting on both coming from the same direction? How intense is the light in each? How similar is their photographic distortion, meaning is one more fisheyed or more orthogonal than the other, due to differences in camera lenses? Does perspective match between the two? Are they both similarly focused? Do they have the same kind of grain to them? And that's just for starters. There are a million variables.



Here are some basic tools you should get familiar with, to get started (assuming Photoshop):

You'll find the Match Color tool (Image -> Adjustments -> Match Color) to be very effective at making two differently colored photos look similarly hued. It doesn't always work perfectly, but usually it will provide you with a good start. Here's a pretty good tutorial on it: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-editing/match-color/

For evening out lighting, you'll find the High Pass filter to be very effective. (Filter -> Other -> High Pass)

For fixing perspective problems, the vanishing point filter can work wonders. (Photoshop Extended only: Filter -> Vanishing Point)

Layer blending options can be great. A drop shadow here, a bevel there, and things can jump from "lick & stick", as you put it, to plausible co-existence.

Adjustment layers are essential. Spend some time learning about their various types, and what they all do.

Don't forget about good old fashioned hand painting. There's often no substitute for it.


Those are a few things to get you started. I'm sure others will recommend more. And I'll take this opportunity, once again, to plug Luke Ahern's book, "3D Game Textures: Create Professional Game Art Using Photoshop". It covers just about everything I mentioned, and a whole lot more. It's a must-read for any budding texture artist.

I found a good "Match Color" tutorial for GIMP at http://www.flickr.com/groups/gimpusers/discuss/72157600180607090/#comment72157600180641805.

Thanks for the tip - no way will I ever be as good as you, but I do try to keep learning, and this is a pretty useful basic technique.

Tools I use a lot, variations is good, it will give you different shades of colors, which will help you get rid of obvious mixes. Also if you are working in 512x512, the offset is amazing, irreplacable really. It's in the other, try using a 256x256 offset on a 512 texture, it will show you your seams, and this is the only real way to make them truly seamless.

Also I use transform>distort a lot too, especially with guides, it is the only real way to square off an image you need to use. A lot of cases people don't bother to make sure their lines are square, that is my biggest complaint.

But the biggest texture secret, photo sourced images just don't look real. The more real the source, the odder it looks inworld. You need a higher saturation of color as well as contrast. Even hand drawn shadows i think will look so fake, look amazing in SL. It really is about practice.

/me always reads every word from Chosen. One of the true experts here. Always informative and enlightening to even the most seasoned texture masher.



Thank you Chosen!

Maybe that's it .. more cartoon like is better? I noticed some of the stuff I have is so real looking it makes regular stuff look cheesy and therefore out of place. I had someone demo a castle for me on my land that I was thinking of buying and when it was rezzed ontop of my base and retaining walls - it looked so horrible fake - I laughed and said no thanks ..


Yes I agree - Chosen 1 appears to be a Texture Rockstar God in here... \m/ .. it is greatly appreciated that he takes the time to discuss these topics. I keep learning things and then forget them after a few times of making a different texture type, and his list style of answering is great for remembering and also provide new ideas. btw.. keep plugging the book.. it takes someone 21 times to see an ad before they really notice it.

Specifically, I am looking for ways to change the apparent depth of the components to make them blend better. What I am mostly interested in now are Windows and Walls with Windows in them. (not the alpha kind) I do see that most wall textures are alpha which makes them easy to use, but that creates nightmares. Since I am setting it up to where a Window will burn up a few prims it is important that I make the wall textures more complete.. just a great looking wall with a hole in it and a window insert is not good enough anymore.




Also I just noticed some of the insane filters that Gimp has - looks like I will be running some tests