Many new artists are eager to design game characters. But their enthusiasm often quickly fades away because the character design is a very important matter, and one can’t work on it alone apart from the rest of the team. That’s why we made for you this guide on the character design using
The main rule is saving texture space by cloning elements. It helps to make the model more detailed and reduce the amount of texture work. All identical or almost identical elements should be mapped to the same place. Even if the geometry of an element is slightly different, the texture will be mostly the same.
Identical elements with different lighting should be mapped to different parts of the texture or their lighting will be the same. Identical elements with different lighting should be mapped to different parts of the texture or their lighting will not be different.
For the semi-circular elements such as branches, ribbons and everything curved, I recommend mapping as a line to save texture space which otherwise will be wasted. The texture will be stretched but its density will be higher, resulting in fewer seams.
In relatively large and clearly visible squares you should by all means avoid major texture stretches. Otherwise, a texture painted this way will look bad and be harder to paint. In such cases you’ll have to use seams and they will be in the most noticeable places, but again, it only applies to large squares!
With small and scarcely detailed elements stretches are pretty much acceptable if they help you solve more important issues — to get rid of a seam, for example, or make the texture painting easier. Other stretches must always be fixed.
The best way to check mapping is using this template:
When possible, try to place seams on the inner parts of the elements or on the spots where they will be harder to see. For instance, a seam on the arm is best to be placed on the closest to the body side, seams on the fingers — where they are close to each other, a seam on the palm — on the side opposite to the thumb, i.e. if the hand is hanging, the seam will be at the back of it. Some seams are difficult to avoid, such as on the shoulder where the arm detaches from the torso. If you don’t have it, there will be a seam on the side of the torso. Symmetry seams in the center of the model are just impossible to get rid of but quite easy to hide.
Try to minimize the number of seams. When possible, you should place small details together with larger parts, don’t scatter them across the texture. It may result into some stretches but it is better than having a lot of seams. Unless the stretches are critical, of course, i.e. they prevent you from painting required details.
Try to avoid the seam between the surface and the alpha coming out of it. If the alpha covers all or almost all the surface, it would be better to make it an extension of the surface in mapping. This way it’ll be much easier to paint the texture and make variations because you won’t have to struggle with seam blending. For instance, fur around a horse hoof:
If alpha doesn’t fully continue the body (such as brows or a flock), it’s better to map the alpha separately to avoid cutting the surface with excessive seams.
You should use various mapping density for different elements.
There’s no point in adding too much detail to the elements that are not visible. Therefore, their texture density can be two or three times lower. I mean such surfaces as the inner part of a hood, cloak, a shoulder or knee piece, etc.
The same could be applied to the places that will be filled with simple color and smooth gradients without any detailing. Usually they can be seen in the concept but don’t be afraid to ask. If all these hidden surfaces are visible in animations and they need detailing, you’ll need to make proper mapping for them, so be sure to ask about it!
Always make high detailing for the head of the character, especially the face. It means that you need to enlarge the face in mapping by 1.3-1.4 times and other head-related elements — by 1.1-1.2 times, including the hair, headwear and other accessories. Of course, if it doesn’t go against the point above, when, for example, there’s a black hat that doesn’t need any detailing.
The bottom of the character (below the knees) can be reduced in mapping by about 0.7-0.8 times. The part from the waist to the knees — by 0.8-0.9 times. But don’t reduce any objects hanging around the belt.
When it comes to other elements, I recommend making them with the same detailing. Small and visually unnoticeable defects are acceptable.
It’s advisable that the space between the mapping elements is about 3-8 pixels. You’ll need to find out the resolution of the future texture and plan this space accordingly.
Try to minimize empty areas, first of all, by rearranging elements. If it’s not possible, you can slightly enlarge small elements.
The texture DOESN’T HAVE TO BE square. You can make it prolonged, with ratio 1:2, 1:4 or 1:8, for an area that covers half or quarter of the width of the square and its full length. After that, stretch it along one axis covering the entire square. It can be useful when you need to map long objects without cutting their mapping into pieces, or to increase the texture density twice instead of four times (for example, when you make both sides of the texture twice longer).
It is recommended to make straight mapping for straight elements.
If an angle is more than 60 degrees you’ll have to fix unwrap stretches there.
To check mapping, I recommend using a scale of the checker that will make stretches very noticeable.
First of all, a texture artist should be an artist. When you paint textures you do not just mechanically transfer the concept to the model but create an artwork! The texture must be elaborated better than the concept. But don’t go too far with it. You will most likely need to change the lighting, increase detailing, but generally the model and the concept should be very similar.
Sometimes, in order to optimize the artist’s work, the texture approval has two stages. The first stage includes painting everything that is clear and visible in the concept. Any hidden or unclear details must be ASKED about in advance and then painted in a draft, with no surface details in order to get an approximate structure that shows how the planes are placed. This draft can be further improved and finished in the second stage, after getting the first approval and feedback.
Basic Texture Requirements
Advice number one: paint texture 2 or 4 times larger than you need and then reduce it to a required size. This way it will be easier to paint small details without getting into pixel art. To save the details after the texture is reduced, you can use the Unsharp Mask filter.
Texturing must be done with respect to geometry. In other words, each element must be painted in the exact place where it was modeled. The texture edges must also match those of the model. But don’t try to emphasize any small number of polygons: elements which are supposed to be rounded, should be painted roundly.
And try to hide the angularity of the model in the places where there should be none and the surface is supposed to look smooth, with no edges. You should do it where possible in order not to affect other angles in the model. It could be done by going a little beyond the edges and painting slightly off the geometry. For example:
Avoid the mistakes like that:
They might help to make the surface look smoother from one angle but it will look really bad from another.
Don’t bring into the model any perspective distortions that are featured in the concept. Circles should be circles, not ovals. When you need to paint any volumetric elements (dimples or bumps) on an even surface, which are not created by polygons, be sure to paint ALL their side edges, including those not visible in the concept. It will let you create an illusion of volume from any angle, not only from the one used in the concept. It will let you create an illusion of volume from any angle.
The final textured model should look volumetric and wholesome. It should not look like a collection of volumetric pieces disconnected from each other. A well-made model is a rather precise reproduction of the concept but more elaborated and with higher detailing. It’s often better than the concept itself. You need to learn how to imitate materials authentically and recreate their properties: surface details, gloss, wrinkles, cracks, seams, etc. Don’t forget to take into account the forces, light and other factors influencing the materials. Here is an example of a textured model far better than the concept:
And here is another example of how an artist worked hard according to the feedback but couldn’t make some decent fur. The final result was made by our best artists.
Try to make the textures picturesque. It can be achieved by making the color and light/dark spots prevail over sharp lines. It also comes from smooth transitions, open and gradual integration of volumes in space, symmetry, dynamics of the layout and separated composition elements and forms.
Keep in mind the white balance of light and shades. These are basic rules of visual art: when an incident light is warm (light! don’t confuse it with the color of an object!), the shadows should be cool. But if the light is cool, the shades should be warm. As a warm light or a shadow moves away, it gets cooler and cool — warmer. Accordingly, the cool colors will get warmer as they are moving away, and the warm ones — cooler. The darkest undertone, when lit, is lighter than the lightest undertone in the shadow. The most discolored undertone in the light has more color than the most colorful undertone in the shadow. The warmest undertone in the cold light is cooler than the coldest undertone in the shadow.
Use «clean» colors. The feeling of a «dirty» color comes around when this color is made darker by reducing the tone, i.e. it’s shifted towards grey. There is a better way to do it — by adding cool colors to the shadows, purple or dark green.
The same rule can help you avoid making the model monochrome, pale, colorless and achieve attractive and bright game visuals. You can add various tints to the texture areas of different brightness, such as the belly of TermiteQueen.
It looks very cool and interesting. Or let’s take this mortar for instance. It doesn’t seem to have anything special but it looks good:
When you think the detailing through, don’t forget to rely on references from the real world. When you design creatures, keep in mind the animal anatomy such as the muscle and bone structure and how they influence the look of the creature. If you’re familiar with anatomy, you need to consider the body build: a character can be fat, slim, old, young, tall, short, strong, weak, etc. The same applies to the insects because they have their own biomechanics. Even vehicles should be designed meaningfully, with respect to common sense and logic when you design its mechanical joints, pistons, tubes, etc.
Even if the game has a rich color scheme, using pure colors is not recommended. For example, in Allods all objects should have a gradient of a tone and/or a color. Usually it’s top-down, from light to dark. Inner gradients are also acceptable on the larger elements, but don’t add too many of them or bring too much variety. The local color should be easy to see and excessive gradients cause a sense of dirty color.
An important rule: textures must not be graphic, unless it’s specified in the concept. It’s not recommended to use solid color stripes to mark the borders. Instead, you can do it through gradients and different tones of the planes.
Try to bring more diversity of form and volume into the whole texture — uniformity looks bad and dull. Look at this overly monotonous belly of the bug:
It would be better to remove the plates on the chest and combine them into a single piece. Besides, it’s anatomically incorrect, and you can’t come across something like that in the wild.
Sometimes you need to add something that is not present in the concept to make an element complete. Mostly, it’s done using feedback, less often — by using additional information included into the work specifications. Independent actions are not always welcome, but if you take the initiative and offer something like that it will be met positively, even if your suggestion is not implemented in the end.
In the concept, you can see a hint at some chipping plaster but it’s not as evident as in the texture.
One of the most frequent texture problems faced by the beginner artists is wrong lighting setup when the tones of materials and planes with different positioning are not separated.
You should rely on the concept only in terms of the whole idea, materials, color, and form. The lighting is usually up to you. The concept often has an accent put on a single area to improve the artistic value of the whole piece. But in the texture, I recommend creating lighting from all sides at an angle of 45 degrees.
In other words, the upward planes should be brighter than the slanted ones, and the darkest planes are those which are directed downwards. However, the brightness of dark/light should correlate approximately within the limits of that area of gradient where the body part of the character is situated. For example, you shouldn’t make the area between the chin and the neck too dark, it should be slightly darker than the shoulders. The shoulders should be a bit darker than the top of the head and so on.
Generally, a texture should be very similar to the concept but it should have a different lighting.
It’s better to avoid making the general lighting too intense. At the same time, it should read well and highlight the shape of an object.
It makes sense to divide the lighting of the elements into two parts: the background and the foreground. The surfaces situated deeper, i.e. in the background, should be darker than those in the foreground.
The surfaces with various angles should be visibly different in tone, i.e. in lighting intensity. In this example, the top surface should be brighter than those on the sides because the general light comes from the top. Besides, you need to emphasize the geometry instead of hiding it by lighting everything equally.
It should be easy to read the materials. This means, you need to separate them by tone and saturation. It’s important to understand the peculiarities of each material, whether it is expensive and carefully finished or simple and has some marks of rough forging, new or old, polished or opaque, etc.
Don’t forget about vertical gradients of brightness and saturation. In the real world, the sun illuminates the objects from top to bottom and we perceive it as a natural lighting. For this reason, the lighting of the model should be brighter at the top and darker at the bottom. The same goes for saturation.
It’s important to keep in mind the usual pose of the model in the game. Just like with clothes modeling, the pose is very important for lighting. Let’s suppose, the hands of the character are mostly down and don’t lean forward or spread. In this case, the brightness and saturation gradients should go along the arms to the palms.
It’s recommended to avoid black shadows and white reflections. Games can have their own lighting that will make the bright areas even brighter, that’s why you should keep the brightness of the textures between 40 and 230. In other words, your textures should look like on a bright cloudy day.
Sometimes, the concept doesn’t have the lighting and volume for all the elements, but only for the main ones. In this case, you add the volume to such elements by yourself.
Try to set the highest contrast at «the points of interest» instead of distributing it evenly across the whole model. For creatures and characters, it might be the head and the top/front part of the torso, though not always. You need to analyze the concept to find out what exactly the artist wanted to highlight. Closer to the legs, the contrast and the general tone of the texture should be reduced.
Don’t neglect the light reflections from adjacent surfaces. I don’t mean the glares that come from the light sources, they obviously should be present. What I mean is the areas of the surfaces that reflect the light from either one or more sources and serve as sources of light themselves, just dimmer.
You need to be careful when working with glare. Too much glare can create a sense of a mess and break the form and lighting of the object if arranged inappropriately. The same goes for reflections.
When painting feathers or fur, don’t evenly cover all the surface with identical feathers or strands or spend too much time on painting small individual hairs. It’s recommended to keep to the general lighting and avoid breaking it with small details of high contrast.
To reduce the uniformity of fur and feathers, use gradients, alternate between the contrasting and non-contrasting areas and high/low detailing, and combine such ares into one mass. Here is a good example of the materials use:
Detailing
The goal of the texture artist is to create an illusion of volume, numerous polygons where there are, in fact, only a few of them.
The centers of composition and the points of interest should be more detailed in comparison to the less important areas. It doesn’t mean though, that other places can be filled with color and left unreasonably empty with no surface details. The model will look unfinished in this case. When it comes to mapping, for more detailed areas, I recommend setting higher texture density.
In «Allods» there’s no photorealism, and the surface details are created with color patches. Often, you can use surface detailing, but only to complement the main details after the general lighting and color have been established.
Concepts serve only as references, and different artifacts which they may contain such as inaccurate brush strokes and rough transitions should be transformed into the neat surface details and light gradients. You should not mechanically transfer them to the model as is.
Your main reference for detailing is the texture size. If it’s large enough, you should increase the level of detailing. Avoid the blurred textures if their resolution allows you to improve their quality.
The details shouldn’t be too small or too uniform. There always must be some large, medium and small detailing. The best strategy here is to move from the general to the specific, from large detailing to medium and then to small. Don’t begin painting the folds before finishing the general color and tone.
Avoid excessive contrast of details which otherwise can break the general form, influence the general brightness and saturation of elements, and make the colors «dirty». Soot, patina, wear, scratches and other marks of time bring life into the texture, but when you use too many of them, you get a messy, dirty image.
Go for the kind of detailing suggested by logic. For cloth, for example, you can use seams, folds, wear marks, and patches. For metal — dents, scratches, peeling paint, faint or polished areas, etc.
Be careful when detailing the areas near the central line of the character to avoid making symmetry too evident.
When working with alpha, first of all, you need to create an interesting silhouette instead of cutting it into small pieces of the same size.
In order to avoid unwanted borders around the details cut in alpha, I recommend filling unused space with a color close to the color of the texture used for the opaque elements.
The size of general elements (liners, rivets) should not vary. In most cases, the borders should have the same width across the whole element. The repeating elements should be the same size but can have different shade and/or form because the monotony looks dull and often unnatural. Yet, if you make the buttons vary in size, it will look absurd unless it’s intended to be that way.
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