Digital Texturing & Painting First Edition

As a well-versed member of the "Google Images & Clone Stamp" school of texturing, I know full well that knowing all the technical ins and outs of a program doesn't guarantee good results. A strong grounding in fundamental art principles is needed to make proper use of all the technical bells & whistles.It can be said that Digital Texturing & Painting is too art-heavy, but it's such a critical aspect of good CG that's either glossed over or omitted in other books. Being able to break down & understand all the many elements of a texture so it can be recreated and controlled is of the utmost importance. And learning how to go beyond photos and start working with the infinitely unique number of real world textures you can find or create adds new levels to your texturing work.The art-based sections as well as the more technical preparation section are geared toward making you think about every aspect of the work and how best to execute it, rather than creating bland textures that have been done a thousand time before.Although the specific texturing examples are rather short, the author covers the basics of several texturing methods. NURBS, polygons, using projections, using 3D paint software, tiling textures, using Illustrator, using Photoshop, making & scanning in real world objects or just making things from scratch. And the included CD has the PSD files for you to poke around in a figure out how the maps are put together.Digital Painting & Texturing has the breadth & depth to be a helpful book for texture artists of all levels.

But it's not a tutorial! ;)There isn't a whole lot in the way of instruction on workflows or techniques, and virtually nothing at all on specifics like software and tools, but it's an excellent resource in learning how to simply think about texturing. If you're anything like me, you may not have historically put a whole lot of thought into why you're making your textures the way you're making them - you want grungy, so you paint with grunge textures; you want worn and old, so you paint with worn and old textures, etc.But Demers almost approaches texturing as an avenue for storytelling; he teaches you to ask questions about the history of the object you're texturing - how human influence and the effects of time and weather have played a part in shaping its appearance. By learning to think this way and ask the right questions, you're on your way to creating more convincing textures, whether stylized or photorealistic.I would highly recommend it (along with Digital Lighting & Rendering, get both if you can) to anyone who knows how to use their painting/texturing software well enough, but needs a solid art lesson in texturing.

What strikes me about this book, is the seriousness and devotion that Owen Demers has for this topic. I have seldomly seen such wonderful piece of work. My congratulations to the author and publisher for accomplishing such a thoroughly high quality release!This book is really what ALL artist should be forced to read at any point, but preferably the beginning, of their careers. It focuses on developing the art of seeing as the most important tool in your arsenal. Once you can SEE, then you can reconstruct any complicated or simple texture. This is of course a project so great that a lifetime is not enough, but nonetheless, I have never seen it handled better than in Digital Texturing & Painting. I love the idea that traditional artists will be able to find tons of insights in this book for digital artists. The new are teaching the old. But again even though the explicit theme of the book is textures for 3D purposes, the teaching is that this is just another tool, the underlying priciples are the same as in all visual art.This is one book you should run to get now. Simply because it will make you a better artist, in whatever field you are, now and for good.

I wish this book had more to sink my teeth into. It's written like a textbook, and the information is kind of sparse and stretched across too many pages. The book starts off with promise, talking about the art of "interviewing" objects to understand what they are made of, how they react to their environment, etc., which I found the most helpful, but still didn't necessitate 90 pages. The next 30 pages are devoted to basic color theory, which seemed way too basic to anyone already interested in Texturing/Painting of any kind, and the following 30 pages are of masterworks, whose descriptions I felt sometimes guided the reader in the right direction, and sometimes were off topic and generic. The next section is helpful for anyone interested in working in the industry, with many considerations for content, color, audience, art direction, etc., but I still feel it could have been condensed and some more in-depth topics addressed in the same 45 pages. After that are the Maya tutorials which I personally found helpful (even though I intend to use Photoshop for my texture exploration), but which are probably already under the belt of someone who is familiar with modeling in Maya. Overall, I felt the book was way too basic for the page number and the pricetag. I would have preferred first 200 pages be condensed into 100 and filled the rest with some more advanced lectures or tips for specific textures (eg. a spread on objects made of glass, a spread on metal, a couple types of cloth, etc.), and a reduction in price.

I loves this book. It has truly taight me how to see texture and how to bring digital painting to life. This book will help you in all areas of art which can be used in real life painting, digital painting, 3D art and more. I f you need help Understanding how to get your art to that realism point then this book is defintly for you 100%.You can only gain and loose nothing by reading this book-

I really like the way this book challenges me to really look at textures from nature and then points out things I might not have noticed before. It is helpful to learn to develop your eye, whether painting on canvas or digitally.

I did not recieve the CD that comes with it. NOT HAPPY ..i may have bought the used one but that doesnt mean it should be Incomplete or CD free.

I think it is a good way to star with the art of texturing and painting so for me it have been a useful book

I bought digital lighting and rendering (from the same series) and got what I expected. A book that explains in detail on how to improve lighting in relation to 3D computer graphics and what different lighting schemes will achieve. I expected something similar from this book and I was really disappointed. The book focuses mainly on (paint)artists and explains that you can run around and take textures (and ideas for them) from almost everywhere. I knew that. What I really was looking for was a book that explained how different types of shaders and material properties will affect the final render output. i.E. what settings do I need to create a mirror surface and why, along these lines. Instead the book has a huge collection of pictures from museums and explaines them in detail. If you are an artist who wants to paint then this book is for you. If you are looking for something to explain 3D texturing and how to achieve certain effects then forget it. Only the painting part is really covered and there are also some projects that explain how to create certain effects and textures (mainly) with Photoshop, but this is only the final chapter while the title of the book indicates that this is the main topic.

Meiner Meinung nach ist das Buch nicht sehr informationsreich. Vorallem für Leute, die schon etwas Erfahrung haben gibt es hier nichts neues. Ich habe mir mehr Beispiele und verschiedene Texturen gewünscht. Im Grunde genommen zeigt der Autor nur Schritt für Schritt die Fertigung eines seiner Models und ein paar Props, und diese sind nicht einmal wirklich professionell. Empfehlen kann ich es definitiv nicht.