[Tutorial] TF2 Style Textures From Photos

[S.W.A.T.Y]

First of all, this tutorial was NOT made by me. It was made by someone called "Shanks" over at interlopers.net I just copied and pasted what he said there here. I thought it'd be cool to post it here since this is a tf2 mapping community and it would help a lot mappers with their maps.

After lots of messing around with photoshop I finally came across a technique for cartoonizing real life textures into a TF2 style. Hopefully this helps some of you who aren't very good at painting to create textures that fit the TF2 look.

Start with a texture that doesn't have loads of detail. The less detail, the better. I used this rock texture (which looks pretty fake already, likely from a zoo habitat or amusement park)

Apply Blur -> Smart Blur. Try the values I used, Radius 10 and Threshold of 30.

You should get something that looks like this. Most of the detail has been flattened out into solid colors.

Apply Stylize -> Diffuse. Make sure it is set to Anisotropic. This will give you a nice brush stroke effect.

When you are happy with the result, play with Levels or Brightness/Contrast to tweak the color value of the texture. Your end result should be something like this.

This is what someone else made using this tutorial.

Link to the tutorial
http://www.interlopers.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=29753

 

[Randdalf]

That looks more borderlands than team fortress. Does look pretty nice though.

 

[Rexy]

The rock texture is nice, but does it tessellate?

 

[Ida]

Looks rather good in my opinion. I'm sure you could make some good looking textures this way, especially considering how simple it seems to be. Not that I'll try, because I don't have Photoshop.

 

[senne teddy]

Actually, you fail to impress me, the outcome isn't that great.

 

[Boylee]

Actually, you fail to impress me, the outcome isn't that great.

First of all, this tutorial was NOT made by me.

:mellow: somehow I don't think he was trying to impress you.

 

[Blue552]

Thats awesome, will make it so much easier to make custom textures now.

Anyone able to translate it into Gimp?

 

[strangemodule]

Hmm, helpful.

 

[Tapp]

Now I just need some kind of free version of texture maker...

 

[Blue552]

Now I just need some kind of free version of texture maker...

The Gimp.

Gimp to PhotoShop is like Linux to Windows. It's free, just as good - but not user-friendly and not as popular.

 

[Freyja]

Wow, most of those comments above make me laugh. None of you have looked at Interlopers before? I mean, they have amazing tutorials.

Anyway, I've used this, it works well, but be careful. If you take a tesselating photo and use this, it can make visible seams, so you'll need to make it seamless again yourself.

 

[YM]

Wow, most of those comments above make me laugh. None of you have looked at Interlopers before? I mean, they have amazing tutorials.

Anyway, I've used this, it works well, but be careful. If you take a tesselating photo and use this, it can make visible seams, so you'll need to make it seamless again yourself.

Interlopers does have some epic tutorials. But this isn't one of them. making TF2 textures is so difficult to get right that you can't really cover it in a "simple to do" kind of tutorial. which is where this gets it so damn wrong. Photoshop filters alone get you crappy textures. A graphics tablet and custom brush settings with rotation, opacity and size control ect get you good textures

 

[Nutomic]

As i heard, valve made all of their textures drawn by hand, so you cant expect to get anything great just by playing around a bit in photoshop. Those textures dont look TF2-ish at all.

 

[Engineer]

Thanks for this tutorial, but i have a small question about tf2 textures.
How do i save them right.When i make a texture, save it, make a .vmt and it stil shows as checkers in hammer
Can anyone point me to a ''how to correctly save textures'' turorial?

 

[Nutomic]

Which programme are you using to convert? VTFEdit probably is the best, way better than using the valve exe's. Theres also a photoshop plugin, if youre using ps

VTFEdit (PS plugin is also on that site)

 

[Engineer]

Im using the PS plugin. But i still cant make it right

 

[gamemaster1996]

I saw this on interlopers too and yes i know you said it wasn't your's.

It's useful but many images wont teselate..unless there's some sort of photoshop plugin which makes it tesselate friendly

 

[eerieone]

PS: Filter --> Other --> Offset (offset both Y&X by half the original dimensions)
and then get some simple editing techinques going
if you want to make textures, you have to know at least how to make them seamless

the results i see below look like a great start, though still they need some tweaking to make it look more painted, since it now looks too obviously blurry

 

[absurdistof]

It could be sharpened though...

 

[lana]

Thats awesome, will make it so much easier to make custom textures now.

Anyone able to translate it into Gimp?

Gimp Tutorial:
1) Go to your Gimp directory
2) Delete all files
3) Get photoshop
4) Follow tutorial