Photographing Textures

Nothing beats photographic textures for realism. They give an air of authenticity to 3D objects and can really make renders pop with life. You can download an almost unlimited number of textures from the Internet, but unfortunately many of them are less than useful for any serious use, due to the way they were photographed. The old axiom of "garbage in, garbage out" applies here as much as anywhere. This article deals with the most important part of photographic texture production, the photography.

Equipment.

You don't need the latest mutli-megapixel monster to obtain good photographs of anything, much less textures. I like to make my textures tileable, and my largest ones 2000 x 2000 pixels. That's usually more than enough for the images I create. These days even point and shoot cameras have enough resolution to get the job done. I would recommend shooting at a larger size than you want, as you then have cropping options. A solid tripod is an absolute must. Ideally, a remote release should be used to trigger the shutter, to avoid camera shake, but if that's not an option just use the camera's self-timer function.

Shoot in diffuse light.

Shooting in sunlight or other strong light is one of the worst things you can do. The sun casts shadows - obvious I know, but somehow rarely taken into consideration by people photographing textures. Having shadows already on a texture means that your CG lighting will have to match the direction of the sunlight, otherwise it will always look wrong. Textures should be photographed on dull days when there's plenty of cloud cover. This also has the advantage of lighting the subject matter in a nice, overall diffuse light, much as if the sky was a huge soft box.

Get square on to the subject.

Make sure your camera is square on to the subject, as any tilts in any direction will ruin the final texture. It always amazes me that people shoot objects at oblique angles and then try to use them as textures on models. I have a DSLR that comes with all sorts of shooting modes, incredible auto focus and a bonkers amount of megapixels. The one absolutely indispensible feature of this camera though, is the in-built tilt meter, or artificial horizon. Now I never have crooked shots. I wish I'd had this years ago. If your camera has one, you'll save yourself a lot of potential grief by using it.

Use a low ISO.

Digital cameras start introducing noise into the images above certain ISO settings. Where this noise starts varies from camera to camera. It's good practice, therefore, to use as low an ISO setting as is practical, which on most cameras these days is probably 100. This is also a good reason to have your camera mounted firmly on that tripod, as shutter speeds could potentially be quite slow.

Stop the lens down.

This won't apply to simple point and shoot cameras, as they handle everything automagically. If you're using an SLR or other camera with adjustable lenses, stop the lens down to about f8 or f11. This ensures that you have sufficient depth of field, but it also ensures maximum sharpness in the final image. As a general rule of thumb, most lenses are at their best somewhere around these apertures.

Use moderate focal lengths.

Using wide angle settings should be avoided if possible, as they can introduce distortions into the image. Sure, you might be able to fix it later in an image editor, but why create work for yourself? Telephoto settings are ideal.as they provide the flattest, least distorted images.

Following the advice above will ensure that you're starting off with the best quality source material for further manipulation in your image editor. If you want to create seamless, tileable textures from your photos, you can find out how here.