Tips & Tricks to create textures in the PureBDcraft style

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Post 24 Jan 2013, 14:54

Hi,

The BDcraft community is amazing and because I can't do all the PureBDcraft patches to support Mods as I would, I decided to post some tips & tricks to help you create some textures which looks like the original ones.

About colours

  • Always use only 3 colours for shading (to add relief)
  • Always use a dark variation of the dominant colour for each part of your item (for items only)
  • Never use flashy colours (except if the subject is a light or is fluorescent)
  • Never use gradients (except it the subject is the light or a fluorescence)
  • Never use colours with a too high contrast/saturation

About look

  • Never use any curve (except for Nether specific textures and/or to give an "organic" feel)!
  • Add a small opaque border around your items (1px at 128x and below, 2px in 256x and 4px in 512x)
  • Add a thick dark border around each part of your texture which has relief (~8px for 128x)
  • Never use more than 8 angles for "normally" round shapes
  • Try to create relief or 3D effect with shading
  • Use transparency for wet things (example: Mooshroom dirt)
  • Only use transparency inside your texture. Minecraft is very bad with transparent background
  • Always delete the anti-aliasing of your textures. Minecraft is very bad with transparent background
  • When adding relief to your texture, think as only one light exists in the upper left corner of your texture. Then, highlight all the sides the light can see.
  • You should always try and work in 512x and then resize to 128x to see the result. If you have many edges that seem to create a curve, delete some of the path's points!

About technical stuff

  • Use vector tools
  • Use Photoshop if you can (you work in Vector but you still need to rasterize the result and Photoshop allows you to see the result in real-time)
  • Use layer effects to help you with shadows

Infographic

Image

If you have questions about creation, do not hesitate to post them here.
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Post 01 Aug 2013, 23:20

I just don't get it idk how to make textures or use whatever this vector stuff but everyone tells me to use my artistic knowledge Ina computer what I need is a super in depth tuitorial for the shading and shapes I'm sooo confused someone help me
-sapphire
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Post 08 Aug 2013, 17:37

Pretty slick
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Post 29 Nov 2013, 16:20

Maybe what would help a whole lot is if one of the better texture artists here were to make a lengthy Youtube video (or series of videos) in a tutorial fashion, demonstrating the creating of these textures from start to finish. I bet if that were made, a lot of people would start chipping in on texture creation.
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Post 29 Nov 2013, 17:45

Recon wrote:
Maybe what would help a whole lot is if one of the better texture artists here were to make a lengthy Youtube video (or series of videos) in a tutorial fashion, demonstrating the creating of these textures from start to finish. I bet if that were made, a lot of people would start chipping in on texture creation.
Sparkst3r already did a basic tutorial here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7_wNQ5L ... 3dycnHLmz2
ep5 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8iaVe2ZDnY

We all know if Sparkst3r can do it any one can anyway. Right? :P
Profile pic by TsaoShin: https://www.deviantart.com/tsaoshin
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Post 30 Nov 2013, 00:58

Wow, that's pretty cool to see. You guys do a lot of work. Me personally I doubt I'd be much good at coming up with new and good looking artwork, since my personality is exactly the same as Direwolf20. You've probably all seen how "artistic" he is in his architecture. ;)

The videos do give a good idea how much work you all put into each texture though, and there's got to be tens of thousands of them... I'm a bit surprised that he used Photoshop rather than Illustrator to make the textures though. I guess I assumed that since Sphax is a vectored look, that Illustrator was used to make them. Also, Sparkst3r isn't using Spacebar to pan. Anybody catch that? ^_^
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Post 30 Nov 2013, 07:56

Recon: Photoshop is better than Illustrator in the case of textures because what we want as result is rastered PNG textures. Photoshop directly shows what the vectorial texture will look while working. That allows to make "pixel perfect" vectorial textures. ;)
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Post 13 Dec 2013, 03:55

I love this texture pack and all the wonderful patches that the community here at BDCraft have made! With that said I'm a bit of a newb but I love to help where I can! If one of you amazing artist would give a moment of your time, I'd like to ask for some direction on your opinion as to where you may have started or where y'all think is a great place for me(along with anyone else looking to get started) to go and learn so that I may help the community! Links to your favorite software for texturing or anything would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you all in advance for taking the time to read this post and hopefully respond! Also i hope this is the right place for the topic... :-?
Last edited by HanFox on 13 Dec 2013, 03:55, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Post merged.
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Post 16 Dec 2013, 20:18

I seem very confused on finding that "PhotoShop" application of course i heard of it a lot but is it the adobe one or the others that seem scams or a infamous hiding in the shadows one F:

-Bleu
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Post 16 Dec 2013, 20:33

bleualtair wrote:
I seem very confused on finding that "PhotoShop" application of course i heard of it a lot but is it the adobe one or the others that seem scams or a infamous hiding in the shadows one F:

-Bleu
Yes, it's the "Adobe one": https://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html

However, the latest version is not free (it's actually very expensive).

You can actually download Adobe PhotoShop CS2 for free, because it's very old, but still very powerful and you can definitely still make BDcraft textures with it: https://www.techspot.com/downloads/3689- ... p-cs2.html
Profile pic by TsaoShin: https://www.deviantart.com/tsaoshin
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