Texturing 3D Models

[Owl53]

Hi,

Being perfectly honest, I'm a programmer, and as a result I have very little experience in creating 3D Models. For my own personal projects though I would like to create my own assets and therefore I need to work on improving my texturing skills. I've mostly used Maya in the past for the modelling, but I'm currently using Blender, but texture wise my models so far have been limited to just basic diffuse textures. How do I go about creating more realistic looking models? Do I need to start looking into specular, normal and bump maps? Is that the next step on from basic textures? It really isn't something I have a great deal of knowledge about, so any suggestions on how to improve would be great.

Thanks in advance!

[xrgo]

Hello! PBR (physically base rendering/shading) is the thing now, study a little about that and then check substance painter, quixel, blender 2.8 (eevee), armorpaint, etc. I recommend metalness workflow (simpler, less textures/channels)
Ogre 2.1+ supports PBS by default, not sure about 1.X, but you can always implement it yourself

cheers!

[Owl53]

Hello! PBR (physically base rendering/shading) is the thing now, study a little about that and then check substance painter, quixel, blender 2.8 (eevee), armorpaint, etc. I recommend metalness workflow (simpler, less textures/channels)
Ogre 2.1+ supports PBS by default, not sure about 1.X, but you can always implement it yourself

cheers!

Thanks for the suggestions! I will definitely start looking into these. The one other thing that I was also wondering is - how is the additional data output to Ogre? Currently I am just exporting my basic models as an OBJ with texture then converting them using Ogre-Assimp into .mesh 's. Will each program you suggested store this additional information in a file (e.g. .mtl) with the more complex materials that I can link when using Ogre-Assimp? Or does it work differently with PBR?

[xrgo]

not sure if there's any exporter that works with ogre's pbs, but you can always write your own code, or material scripts, or use this nice editor: viewtopic.php?t=84816 and I think you can also export materials with dergo viewtopic.php?t=84227

[al2950]

Hello! PBR (physically base rendering/shading) is the thing now, study a little about that and then check substance painter, quixel, blender 2.8 (eevee), armorpaint, etc. I recommend metalness workflow (simpler, less textures/channels)
Ogre 2.1+ supports PBS by default, not sure about 1.X, but you can always implement it yourself

cheers!

Also add to the list '3D Coat' it's a lot cheaper than substance painter and as a programmer myself I have enjoyed using it. However the PBR docs and blogs on substance painters site are great, eg:
https://www.allegorithmic.com/pbr-guide

[Owl53]

not sure if there's any exporter that works with ogre's pbs, but you can always write your own code, or material scripts, or use this nice editor: viewtopic.php?t=84816 and I think you can also export materials with dergo viewtopic.php?t=84227

That editor is awesome! I'm sure that will prove very useful once I've upgraded to Ogre 2.1.

Hello! PBR (physically base rendering/shading) is the thing now, study a little about that and then check substance painter, quixel, blender 2.8 (eevee), armorpaint, etc. I recommend metalness workflow (simpler, less textures/channels)
Ogre 2.1+ supports PBS by default, not sure about 1.X, but you can always implement it yourself

cheers!

Also add to the list '3D Coat' it's a lot cheaper than substance painter and as a programmer myself I have enjoyed using it. However the PBR docs and blogs on substance painters site are great, eh:
https://www.allegorithmic.com/pbr-guide

Thank you to both of you! I definitely have a lot of programs to consider aha! As for the documentation suggestion "https://www.allegorithmic.com/pbr-guide", I had found that one myself after xrgo's suggestion of starting to look into PBR, so I'm glad to hear that's a good source to learn from. I think that once I have read more into it I will start the process of upgrading to Ogre 2.1 (I'm currently using 1.11) for the PBR support.

Thanks!