An aspiring texture artist looking for help...

[Nostrau]

Hi!

I want to be good in making textures for both 2D and 3D games. However, I don´t know the best way to get there. I´ve searched in both this forum and different sites, but haven´t found any good information. I have some knowledge of using Photoshop, though it was quite a while I used it the last time.

Anyone have any tips for an aspiring texture artist? Books to read? Websites to visit?

Cheers,

Nostrau

[Mike-3DT]

What sort of textures are you looking to create? Characters, environment/level textures, all? I wrote a tutorial on painting a worn metal texture on this site - go to the main 3dtotal homepage & then free stuff, tutorials, photoshop.
Also have a look at polycount.com which will have a link to skindom, which is all about painting character textures. Polycount's forums also has a tutorials sticky thread which will contain texturing tuts.

[Nostrau]

I think it would be wise to not limit myself on what type of textures I should do. I can hardly know what I´m good at before I try it. ;)
Btw, thx for the reply, I will take a look at that site.

[Incitatus]

WHOOHOO another texture enthusiast :D

I don't know how good you are. Leigh's texture workshop over at cgtalk.com in the texturing section is a good read. Reading up on color theory is also a good idea.

Digital Texturing & Painting
by Owen Demers

and this book is also pretty good

[Nostrau]

Another question here that I´ve been pondering for some time now. What skills does companies usually look for in a texture artist? Is it required that you are proficient in at least one of the following, modelling, lightning, animation?

[Nostrau]

Alot of questions here now, but I got to ask this too. This will probably sound increadibly stupid, but there are no other place to start from then the beginning.

I´ve looked through many many sites and forums for some help, but there are still some issues I haven´t figured out yet. I´ve also played around in Photoshop. Ok, here it goes:

I have Photoshop 7 and it´s the only one I got. What I don´t understand is, how can I learn to make great textures with only Photoshop? I mean, it´s impossible for me to know if a texture will look good or not on a model/in game by just looking on the tile, I have to see it in the scene. But how can I see the texture on the model with only P7?

I´m probably missing some important points here, but please enlighten me. I´m not a good modeler myself nor a game programmer.