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Hello there, I know I will probably not get too many posts here, well well.

Here is the deal, I am a 3d artist, however i am worthless at painting textures or painting in general, therefore i could use some help. up to now i have used dodge and burn (i use photoshop) to create highlights/shadows, however this usually ends up in a blurry/smudgy picture and therefore i would like to learn other techniques, i have googled around a lot and usually i find possibly a video "tutorial" in where they paint but doesnt really tell what brushes/brush setting they use, why they are doing what they doing there, What should i think about? What should i think about when putting together a basic sketch in photoshop? What poses are great to begin with?

What i am eager to learn is basicly to paint a sketch and then color it out, and what poses for human is great?

ugh i guess what i am saying is that i made this thread in hopes of help, I have googled and googled and googled but i dont get any more clever about this? And therefore i was asking you guys for some help.. I know this isnt an easy matter and if i cannot get some help with painting 2d iam gonna rip my hair of XD

ugh i can see now that this message got very messy >.> I use photoshop CS3 and a wacom tablet (Intous 4 small) and i am aware that you will not become king over a day, however tips and tricks and possibly just pictures showing workflow with explanations helps a lot, and i also believe that I am not the only one who will benefit from stuff like this, So if anyone here on TGC is willing to help a looser like me, then please do =)

any questions? I believe you guys might have lots, since this got plain messy :S

Well I used to use MS paint, until I was smart enough to switch to Inc-Scape. I'm am by no means a professional 2d Artist, but I have learned alot within just a couple days. I guess I would have to say the process I use would probably be something like:

1. Draw basic lines that make the outline of what you wish to draw

2. Fill the individual parts with colors you desire.

3. Then put in a little gradient here and some gradient there. I think gradient makes everything look great, but thats just me.

I am a extreme beginner, so I doubt those three instructions helped much, but if you are interested in Inc-Scape I bet your find much better help and tutorials here.

I hope I could help!

I tend to work in layers. I'll export an image of the UV map mesh, and use that as the top layer, and have a backdrop layer under that which usually just holds the base colours - that tends to contain all sorts of textures, like fabric, or plain old grunge depending on the model. CGTextures is a great site for grabbing base layers.

Then, once the UV map and base layers are in, I use a lighten layer and a darken layer. The darken layer is filled with white, and the lighten layer filled with black - then the shading is added onto the darken layer as black with a soft brush, and lighting is added as white with a slightly sharper brush. By doing this, you can use just black and white to do all the main details, and it's nice and easy to add thick lines and blend them out, or just experiment. One benefit in this is that you can then adjust the transparency to reduce the detail layers effect.

I use Deep Exploration, even just the demo is fine because it's not vital for exporting or anything - what DE is good at is previewing your work as you paint. I load up the model in DE then as the texture is saved it is loaded into DE automatically and shows you your model with the changes.

I think it's best to experiment, and don't be afraid to start all over again, if you are not 100% happy with the results. If you can establish a style, something you use in every texturing job and stick to it, then you can maintain continuity and your textures will fit well together. There's nothing worse than having lots of different techniques in the same game.

wow i thought i would be flamed for this thread for some reason, thanks for all the tips^^ ill read these ones asap (meaning like tonight or tomorrow) well thanks anyhow =)

I love creating painted textures.

As far as painting textures, I've attached a .zip with a tiny collection of tutorials. And here is a link to a tutorial I made once upon a time...

Photoshop Stylized Rock Texture Tutorial

As for just general painting, you might check out [href]www.3dtotal.com[/href], they have some eBooks on painting that you can buy, and that are very helpful.

Speed Painting Series
Elements 2D


Other than those, one general technique I use a lot when texturing, is to hard paint the colors, say highlights and shadows, and then smudge/blend them back into the texture, using bordering highlights and shadows to make hard lines.