Lately
Ive stumbled across self-made textures of a dedicated hobbyist
photographer. Most of his textures lacked the features a good diffuse
texture has. So I decided to make a tutorial for everybody out there
whos interested in how to photograph usable diffuse textures.
If you are quite inexperienced in photography or dont understand some of the technical terms I am talking about visit this site for a very good introduction to the topic with pictures.
1 Outdoors
First
of all you have to decide on where you want to shoot your texture. When
youre planning to do it outside then you have to wait for the best
weather to do so. Although it might be suggestive to think that direct
sunlight serves best for this purpose but this usually isnt the case.
Direct sunlight casts hard shadows, especially when its in a very low
angle relative to the surface you want to photograph. And having
shadows baked on your texture already is a bad idea, because you want
and expect as much freedom as possible when working in 3d. So the best
weather is a cloudy day, almost raining or even light fog. The light
gets scattered by the clouds and lights surfaces softer.
1.1 Positioning & Lens
Now you have to find the optimal position which usually is in 90 to
the surface without being to close to cast shadows on it. I suggest
working with a zoom lens because it compresses space and makes not so
flat surfaces flat. But you have to have much space to position
yourself. The longer the focus is the better. Wide angle shots usually
result in distorted textures, which is extremely disturbing when there
are lines or bars that should be parallel instead of curved. Further,
cheap wide angle lenses often get blurry towards the edges, usually
accompanied by chromatic aberration. This can be removed in Photoshop
tutorial will follow soon.
When working with a very long focal length there is also the
possibility of a distortion, either barrel-type or pincushion-type,
depending on where there aperture is located inside the lens. This can
be removed in Photoshop tutorial will follow soon.
1.1.1 Analogue Cameras
As film I suggest the Fuji Velvia 100 which I dont recommend for skin tones, better use a Fuji Astia 100F
then. The goal is to have the finest grain possible. If you can get
your hands on a medium format camera with a good lens its always a good
thing the bigger the negative, the better.
1.1.2 Digital Cameras
- When working with a digital camera set it to the lowest ASA level
possible, usually 100 ASA or 21 DIN to avoid unnecessary noise in the
photo.
- For the white balance its better to stick to a preset when you
dont have a grey reference (see 1.4 Denoise, below) with you. When
you have the reference, use it for a manual white balance.
- The right color profile is also very important for the correct
colors. When possible avoid sRGB because it has the worst color space.
I use embedded AdobeRGB with my Minolta A1 DiMAGE and convert it to CIE RGB for further editing in Photoshop. You can download it here for free.
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