Painting textures for sketchup models

[Fuse]

I have a starship I've modeled and I'd like to get some decent texturing done on it..
I am pretty new to this, so I am open to suggestions. All I am attempting to do is have a simple metallic plating texture that doesn't look completely uniform/repeating and has some dirt and grime on it as well to make it look more realistic.

Help? lol

fr render 6.jpg

[Jaxilon]

CGTextures.com has a ton of metal plates and so on. The only thing with them is they have some rules if you want to use them. Like you have to put a reference on your image.
alternatively you can just create your own metallic plating in Gimp or PS which it looks like you use. Requires a bit of artistic skill but you might do just great.

Btw, this looks pretty cool but it's really dark.

[Fuse]

Thanks I'll see what I can do.
Btw here is a brighter image.

[mearrin69]

Check out www.imageafter.com. I've gotten a lot of base textures from there and I do not believe they have any usage restrictions. Is it possible to layer textures in sketchup? The best way to break up repeats is to layer some stuff (base texture, grunge, etc.) so the repeat is less apparent.

And thanks for posting an image with "less dramatic" lighting. I was struggling to make out the details of the ship. Looks awesome, very submariney. I like that you made it fairly small. So many ship modellers go in for unbelievably immense capital ships so it's nice to see a corvette or frigate-sized ship. Also love the exterior hatches and ladders, implying that people "go up on deck" a lot. I can imagine damage control guys in suits out trying to figure out what's wrong with the aft gun. There's not a lot of room for crawlspaces in a small ship so I feel like that's a nice touch of realism. Good stuff.
M

[Fuse]

Thank you very much for the compliments.
I designed it to be a small freighter with light armaments. I live near the docks in Seattle, so I see ships everyday and thats where I got the inspiration.
As for the ladders and hatches.. well the way I see it it's imperative to have those to access all areas of the ship in case of emergency,evacuation, or maintenance.

I am not finished adding detail yet, but i really wanted to get a handle on texturing. Everytime I use textures from sketchup and render in kerkythea.. it looks very bad. Even the kerkythea materials seem to look bad. *shrug*
I don't think you can layer textures in sketchup but i will see.

Again thanks for the tips and compliments

[ravells]

There's a great tutorial here for doing a ship's hull texture. The final result in the example is 'free to use', so far as I can see, so you may want to just use the end result in the example as your texture. If you want to avoid repeats, then using a procedural texture, rather than an image texture would be the way to go. Alternatively you can texture different faces or areas in different ways. What version of photoshop are using? If you're using CS4 extended or CS5 extended you can import the ship as an .obj and texture directly in photoshop (it's very good).

Edit :: Had a bit of fun doing some texturing based on the tutorial ::

[Fuse]

Apparently google cant layer textures
Also, I don't have cs4. I have tried playing around more in kerkythea though and I'm getting mixed results..
Here is an image I rendered yesterday with some of the materials in kerky. I'm still not satisfied with the look of it. The edges of the ship are too sharp looking with no apparent seams and the texture is a bit off. I swear you have to be a wizard to try to render stuff in kerkythea.

Anyway.. any more tips would be appreciated Also, I googled procedural texturing and it looks cool, but I have no idea how to do it.
temp_mlt.jpg

[Jaxilon]

You could always get the Gimp for free and try that. It's a lot like Photoshop evidently only it's free. Using layers you should be able to do it. Of course, if you have no concept of PS or Gimp it might only add another learning curve to your project.

[Fuse]

I have gimp, but i'm guessing that gimp and ps will only paint the object in 2d and not all the way around?

[Jaxilon]

yeah, if you want to 3d it, you have to paint it yourself. They are a 2d type thing.