Saturday 23 May 2009

37 Dials

So the question is, do you use photos for textures or recreate the textures from scratch?

It's a tough one, photos tend to look better if they are taken in the correct lighting conditions.
I often use photographs to create my textures but they often need a fair bit of work to square up if the subject matter is man made.

I took photographs of the dials for the 37, but did not use them. Instead I recreated them in Photoshop with various layers. I mainly did it because I felt the photographed dials would not sit in the surroundings as well.





Did I make the right call? which would you have used and why?
(BTW, for this and the Screen shot on RS.com I changed the FOV to show more of the cab in a single shot, so excuse the 'wang effect'. My new wide screen helps too!)
Derek

4 comments:

LucaZone said...

In my view, a mix of photos and scratch main textures breaks the illusion. The brain can tell them apart and it feels wrong. Having the dials remade is consistant with the rest of the look and feel of the cab.

empeck said...

My comment may be out of place since I haven't made even single addon to RS (yet), but I did many aircraft gauges for FS9, FSX and Targetware flight simulators. I always make dials from scratch, and I agree with LucasZone - I prefer consistant feel of cab.

Anonymous said...

It's very boring, but I agree as well. Consistancy is more important than which type you use, the brain really screams it out when things don't match.
On a building I made recently I used a photograph of a door when all the other textures were "manufactured" and it just looked wrong.

karma99

Anonymous said...

I think scenery is better with photos, but with something you see close up, you'd want the game engine to draw out all those glass effects and lighting for that consistent feel. There's also something about photos being the easy way out. Where's the fun in just applying a photo as a texture when you can draw it all out yourself :)

-steel9b