Targetware: 2D Textures

Technique Ideas from TR Artists

This section offers some suggestions pruned from the Target Rabaul forums over the past couple years. While these suggestions were originally meant for people just getting started with texture painting for Target Rabaul, even experienced artists may find value in reading through them.

Yak: Ask an experienced artist to send you a sample photoshop layered file, so you can see how the pros do it.

Yak: Don't be afraid to try out new techniques, experiment with different brushes, effects, filters, etc. But don't get overwhelmed by the "tech" of your paint program: in the end, a good scheme will involve a lot of manual labor.

Yak: Export regularly while painting, and check it in game. One thing you can do is run TW in a window (Mac users: just run TW Debug version), and keep it up while you are painting. Have your plane or object loaded in an offline scenario. When you are ready with a new version, save it, go over to the Targetware window, and force the texture to reload by using the update command.

Blowhard: Paint at a larger size than your target size. For example, if your target texture size is 512 pixels by 512 pixels, paint at 1024x1024 or 2048x2048. Then reduce the image to your target size when exporting. You can't get smaller than one pixel but you sure can reduce them.

Blowhard: Use multiple layers when you create your texture. How many and what's on them is up to you. The important thing is to have your colors, details, markings, weathering, shading etc on separate layers so you can adjust the opacity of each and determine how each layer will affect the others. Do yourself a favor and label each layer so you can tell what it is at a glance. When you get up to 60-70 layers in a file, those labels will come in handy.

Blowhard: Always be looking and everyone else's work. What do they do that's good and what do they do that you think should be better. Is there something you'd like to see that no one else is doing. Always be looking for ways to improve over other peoples work as well as your own.

Blowhard: Be subtle. Look at real war time photos. Look at what details show and what doesn't at a medium distance.

Blowhard: There's a million and one ways that anything can be done and still end up with good results. One thing I can tell you is that it helps to already have a good grasp on painting/drawing techniques without computers. Being a good plastic modeler helps too.

Popgirl: And the greatest tip I can give is to be patient with your work. Alot of the texturing you see in TR is the result of hours and hours of time just for one texture. A lot of times when I'm doing a texture I'll make 3 or 4 passes on it, with a few days in between... constantly layering more detail in. And if you find yourself starting to rush, or get frustrated just do something else for a few days and come back to it later with renewed perspective.

Popgirl: In response to your F4u question, one thing that may help is instead of painting "a wing" of an airplane, visualizing it for what it is " metal sheeting riveted onto a frame" You can see the attention to detail, and can nearly distinguish the individual panels.

Oscoog: I had never done much of anything for games before coming here. Been using photoshop since version 2.0 (all self taught) for image manipulation/editing and I simply apply the techniques I have learned from doing that to get the "look" I think I want to go for. Look at it in game, go back and edit some more, rinse and repeat as required. I have found it gets much easier/more straight forward to get where you want to go, the more you work at the same kind of thing, you begin to develop a set of tested favourite techniques/effects.

Thanks to TR Artists Blowhard, Oscoog, and Popgirl for their suggestions.