Can you suggest some tips on how to create textures that look good on game objects. I've been making objects to populate my game over the last month or so and I'm finding that creating the textures that wrap around my polygon geometry is the hardest thing for me to do. For example I made a crossbow weapon and arrows. Making the texture for the shaft of the arrow was easy because I can use a general tileable wood texture. But the feather ends or the pointy tip..... doesn't look so good. Or another example is of a ghost that I created. See images at url below. http://www.marek-knows.com/Misc/gtTextures Suggestions on what I can do to make these look better?

Depends on what you mean by 'look better.' Art is subjective :)

I'm sure if you throw a couple of tastefully-done normal maps (read: not a sharpened noise filter) on those, it might make the surfaces a bit more interesting. I also notice that you don't make much use of any transparency. Adding an alpha channel for the arrow flighting (a fringe or sorts on the outer edge would look nice, methinks, maybe a small gap in the middle or two) would likely improve the overall look.


You're missing some grunge, too. I think that might be the defining characteristic. Google some grunge brushes for Photoshop or whatever your paint program is and go to town. Look at photo references for pattern ideas, etc. Even a small amount of convincing weathering can make objects look far more believable.

Check these out (I was looking for a different site you might have found useful, but these seem pretty good:
http://www.cadmonkey.com/tip5.htm
http://www.grungetexturereference.com/
)

The way I would do something like the crossbow feathers is, unwrap the texture, color one side of one feather (should be white with dark diagonal stripes) copy and paste this to the other 5 feather sides (if you did not model them identically you did it wrong).

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
The way I would do something like the crossbow feathers is, unwrap the texture, color one side of one feather (should be white with dark diagonal stripes) copy and paste this to the other 5 feather sides (if you did not model them identically you did it wrong).

That's basically what I did. I'm just not sure what I can do to make the arrow feathers look better. I'll play around with the alpha channel to make them transparent so that the edges of the geometry are not visible. This should help to make it look more realistic.

Any suggestions where I can find feather reference textures that I could use?

Google image search is THE place to look for reference images. Arrow fletching is made from the larger side of a tail or primary feather, which is a stiff straight feather. But, you will not be able to see any level of detail on a 3D representation of a feather unless you have a good reason to use a super close up of one. That's why I say just put diagonal dark stripes on the white background.

the crossbow feather should be simply a "quad" textured with the picture of a nice feather cropped over with alpha values.

Awesome tips there InvalidPointer. I've been wondering this kind of thing myself, didn't know it had a name. First place I saw it was Star Wars: Galaxies where they did an excellent job of it.

check out cgtextures.com for some nice texture.

For your skeleton guy, it might be cool to grab a picture of some blood splatter and blend it over his bones.