DrK on 14/8/2010 at 14:43
This is a tutorial I made for Digital Nightfall a year ago, I wanted to post it here, but forgot :p
It may interest a few taffers around here.
How to dirty/darken a texture, 3 easy steps with photoshop.
I used this texture as a base :
Inline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/a.gifBefore you start, make sure you are in RGB mode, you may have surprises with indexed mode or whatever.
First, you go to adjustments - brightness/contrast.
One good thing is to put 50 to contrast in the first place. Don't be scared to lose details or to have ugly colors. If really it's too ugly, just mess around with contrast to have something bearable.
Inline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/b.gifThen, go to adjusments - Curves. Make sure to darken a little more the dark colors. It eventually adds to the contrast and most of all it darkens the whole texture better than using the brightness options imo.
Inline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/c.gifGenerally that's it. But if your texture ends up with burned colors, you may need to work with its saturation.
Go to adjustments - Hue/saturation, and lower the saturation by -50. Personally, I like to play with a range between -40 and -70, but usually -50 does the trick.
Inline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/d.gifTadaa ! Now it's all about tweaking the settings, just do it your way.
This works with most of the textures, especially dark/grey textures. However it can be tricky with colored or white textures, and with texture which are too simple, without many details.
I'll give you another technique which is a little more complex.
DrK on 14/8/2010 at 14:44
First you must find a few textures which represent dirt, ashes, rust, some templates you could use everywhere.
Personally I use these 5 textures almost all the time. This one is by Vigil, perfect to add details or a metalic/rust feel, but not really suitable for textures which would cover large walls, it's more for details.
Inline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/metal3.gifThe others are from the internet or my personal collection, which I eventually already modified. This one is perfect for stone.
Inline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/003marbre.gifThis one for dirt/dust.
Inline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/murcim008a.gifThe other 2 are for many uses.
Inline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/046metal.gifInline Image:
http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq348/El_kubiaco/murcim010a.gifSimply take your base texture which you first modified, and then create a new layer where you add these textures. Add to the new layer a blending/transparency option so these textures add themselves over the original texture. Overlay is often the best option. Now play with the settings, the opacity, the saturation of both textures, their contrast...
nicked on 14/8/2010 at 16:12
:thumb: Good tutorial! I'd also add a quick and dirty trick of my own:
1. Open texture, and ensure colours are black and white.
2. New Layer over the top of the original.
3. Fill entire layer with plain black.
4. Filter > Render > Clouds.
5. Then play about with the layer style and opacity (multiply at a medium opacity often works well)
Doesn't work for every texture, but it's a quick way to add some variety and depth to plain images. You can also vary the colour for different effects (green can give a mouldy, rotten effect, reddish-brown for rust etc.)
SneakyGuy101 on 28/9/2013 at 22:42
This is an Awesome way to make your textures more detailed and have a more realistic look to them:eek:
I love it and I've been using this tutorial for my halloween missions textures and it makes it look far more scarier. Thanks;):thumb:
DrK on 28/9/2013 at 22:53
You're welcome. Overall it's rather simplistic, yet it does the job right on small textures somehow. That's how I discovered photoshop 10 years ago.
However with NewDark, when you use 512x512 textures or higher, you would have to use more complex tricks to "darken" a texture in order to have a decent result.
But hey, this tutorial is a good way to start I guess.
R Soul on 28/9/2013 at 23:23
Another useful trick is to duplicate the background layer and then experiment with the blend mode and transparency.
Photoshop and Gimp both have a 'render clouds' function. In Gimp there's a 'tileable' setting. I've read that photoshop doesn't have that, but I found a quote on (
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/729904) this page:
Quote:
If you render clouds on a document whose size is a multiple of 128, you get tilable results.
