Dive into the nitty-gritty of capturing stunning textures for your projects in our latest episode of CG Cast Today! We cover everything from essential gear like cameras and tripods to setting up perfect shots under various lighting conditions. Learn tips
on using manual settings for crisp images, overcoming challenges like shaky hands and shadows, and even how to leverage natural elements like leaves and skies for diverse textures. Plus, get a crash course in basic Photoshop editing to refine your
textures. Whether you're a beginner or looking to refine your skills, this episode is packed with actionable advice and practical demonstrations to elevate your texture work.
*CG Cast Intro*
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Welcome everybody to the third
video cast for CG Cast
Today we'll be
talking about
taking photos for textures
First, you'll need
a camera
Doesn't have to be
fancy camera but the better the camera the better your
photos will be for your textures
me i have this it's an hp photosmart 5 megapixels it should
be good enough also you need a tripod
to fold the camera since i have my tripod here the camera
angles for that camera the video camera
will feel a little bit weird so also my tripod's broken but
that's all right it should be
the tripod should be go about high enough.
Yeah, it's as high as it goes.
Now we put the camera on the tripod.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah, so then we turn on the camera.
We don't just automatically start shooting.
We have to set some settings first.
We have to make sure the flash is off.
Wait, off, not on.
Also we have to make sure you put it on the lowest ISO
possible so we have less grain
but it takes a bit longer to shoot.
And also if you want you can play around with the white
balance to make sure that white
is white.
You should really have something to check it.
It was a blue.
But if you want you can leave it at the auto white balance.
And another thing you can do is you have the image you zoom
in all the way that is to that's
to prevent lens distortion also gonna have some focusing
problems
So you might want to put infinity focus for help.
Manual focus.
Wow, this is as good as I could get it.
So, I have to go back a little bit.
There we go.
And also another thing to prevent camera shake, because
when you press the button,
the camera has a tendency to shake when you're taking the
photo.
so you can put a timer and you take the photo and it's 10
second timer so you wait wait wait wait
until it takes it and then once it's taken you should have
a photo of the wall voila another
thing it would be best to take um the photos during an over
cast day so that there's no shadows
but today's not a lower cast day so we have to make do with
what we have
if you had a bigger tripod you could take a photo of the
floor
but what makes it harder is trying not to get a photo of
the tripod in your shots
So camera's pointing down, zoomed all the way in, we set
the timer again, and we take
the photo.
Since I have the zoom and my tripod is not very high, these
photos will be very detailed
zoomed in.
Even if you don't have a tripod, you can still take photos
using your hand, but you may have
to correct it later in Photoshop but it's alright it
depends how stable you
are zoom in focus the timer is useless here because your
hand will always be
shaking so and I forgot to turn off the flash so again
flash off focus.blurry
and it's blurry so there you may need a higher ISO try 200
and see how that
works out
I guess it's good, but I recommend using a tripod.
We can take shots of the wood, the ground, of the wall.
And you can take photos of whatever you want.
Another cool thing you can do is you can take photos of the
surrounding.
They can make really nice backgrounds for your projects or
whatever you're doing.
Wee, I turned off the camera back set.
If your camera has a panorama function, it's excellent.
imagine. Let's see, panorama. Take a panorama. This is
definitely better to have a tripod.
But since I need it for the video camera, I'll do it by
hand. This stitching is going
to be terrible stitch now wow did I do that really bad and
if you save it on
the camera it takes a bit longer let's see if you can see
it on the camera I
really doubt it just see the reflection of the camera it's
pretty bad and I'll
also post them in the web because that's what you can do
with your textures you
can share them with people you can just keep them to
yourselves also you can
solve it if you want and put them on a CD and install them
but then you'd have
to take really good photos use a tripod make sure it's a
good day where there's
no shadows because it really sucks when you take a texture
if you shot early
also when you're doing this try not to eat your book
also another thing I'll show you is how to take photos as
leads but we need
so number one I have right now so we'll improvise
another thing the flash may be useful if you want to clear
away some shadows we
can do a little test here I'm gonna take a photo of that
wall but it has a lot of
of shadows on it so you turn on the flash and we take the
photo and it
should clear away the shadows but it tends to give it an
artificial look
there's bit better you can also use the shadows I mean the
flash when you're
taking a photo of yourself against the sun so that way you
don't have just a
silhouette of your face it tends to come out better but so
few it's just a photo
tip now if you're wondering what happened to me I kind of
crashed while
skating on that vert going really fast what headfirst into
the ramp yeah
I want some textures of leaves.
The best you can ever send leaves.
And this.
Oh god. We'll take that home.
Another thing, it's good to have some photos of the sky
because you see the sky is just not one colour.
You think it's blue, but it's not.
You see that's what I was telling you about.
Since I'm against the sun, I look like a silhouette, and
with the flash, it should make me clearer.
If I take the photo, it would be good if there were some
clouds in the sky.
But since they're not, it improvised.
It's not a good idea to look at the sun, you'll go blind.
That's pretty.
Yeah, so, let's continue.
Now that we're back inside, we can take the photos of the
leaves.
And maybe I can try and take photos of my face for
reference.
Since I have nobody to help me, that may be a bit difficult
.
But we can work some magic with a timer, a tripod, and
stuff.
Now let's move on to the leaf.
Okay, so I went and I got a white piece of paper to use as
the background stick photo of the leaf.
It's good to do this inside since there's no shadows,
barely any shadows at all.
So that'll make it easier to crop out the contours of the
leaf to make an alpha map.
So we get the camera.
We set the settings like always.
Low ISO, no flash.
Since the camera is using a tripod, we do this by hand.
Try and get it as straight as possible.
If you get the wood floor, you can always crock it out.
Make sure the focus is right.
Take your photo.
It's a bit blurry so I'll lower the ISO since I don't have
the tripod.
The other we have a leaf.
Let's do the other leaves.
This one's not very flat so if I flatten it without
damaging it, it'll be a good leaf.
and do the best you can.
It says it's slightly angled,
I'll slightly angle my photo also.
Another good thing is
be wise if your camera had a macro function.
If not, you're going to have some focusing issues.
Let's try one with the flash, see how that works out.
And the flash completely overexposed it.
It's not good.
Flash off.
And then, we will try and do the editing in Photoshop.
Okay, well let's pretend that the video camera is the photo
camera right now.
It's zoomed at the max possible. And to do the facial
references, that's what I always need,
but the video camera zoom is a bit more powerful than my
photo camera. So this is just to show. So
we need to get a reference of where my head is supposed to
be at. So we use a post-it note
because I had nothing else and then on there when I switch
the photo camera
with the rear camera the photo camera will take the photos
so it'll be fun
so this is the current setup I have since my tripod is
broken and the two
bottom legs cannot extend I have put it on the bed and an
extra bit of height
and now it's on the maximum zoom pointing towards the post-
it note where I shall be
and see if I can get to the screen without the big
reflection
it's like a mirror anyways we will put it on the timer
times two take the photo
switch sides let's see how I manage this okay so I set my
camera on timer
times two so once I press the button I will run over there
and hope I get it
right but I don't know if I'll focus properly since I'm not
there but let's try
take her in a post-it stay for a few days hey I think the
camera's straight so I might cause a
problem when there was a flash whichever at the low it's
not supposed to be straight this is
better if you have two people helping you but since I don't
have two people
helping me another person helping me to improvise let's see
what the result was
well since that sucked a lot we're gonna try to do it again
this time without the
flash and I'll try be more head-on let's have some fun
It's true, I've tried to be more sharp.
Second time I was much faster though.
Holy yurt.
Well I totally missed the second time.
I'll do one more time for fun but I won't record it.
So after that we'll go to the laptop and do the fun
Photoshop.
Okay, now it's time to go and do the part.
Photoshop to clean up the images, check out what mess we
did.
so we get the SD card and we stuck it into the computer and
we'll see what the result is
we minimize this and then we just have to look
the white now is off so this is a bit too
um sorry it's okay dory okay okay okay sorry all right it's
okay it's okay it's okay
yeah well my photos were a bit rushed so it's just to prove
a point this is something you
spend your time with you do it slowly oh it's been cool
Lurie Lurie Lurie and that's one fashion from my back that
's all the fire should
came on okayish sky or so the Sun is easy first one came
out a bit blurry but
balance came out pretty good very very very overexposed
very this was me trying
to do the reference photos I couldn't get my face forward I
completely missed
I missed second time it's way that way too brainy alright
so for the reference
you need two people to do it it's really really hard to do
it by yourself but the
other photos with text which is okay it's scenery photos
but enough of that
let's check out a photo shot and that's enough Photoshop
all this cause we're
core all right so what we do is we do is do select an image
that you can go
there like this one we bring it color to Photoshop and then
so on the second layer make new layer new with the their
new layer and then
in a layer black and then hey you it's luminosity what
color then there you
have a black and white image isn't that cool and then we're
here and then image enhance
uh these levels
and then depending on how you want to make your bump map or
displacement map
uh what else what else what else you can also do with the
contrast i don't really know the
oh let's go i don't really oh that's that was in the lens
oh there's nowhere
oh hello oh oh oh yeah
and what else i think that's about it um what else um all
right some tips if you better take
photos outside in public it's better to ask the people
permission if if if you're on their
property you ask them permissions take photos so you don't
get in trouble with security guards
and stuff like that and if they ask you why you're doing it
just solve this educational purposes
and they should let you um with no problems just say
technically you have a right to take photos
outside of other people and other property as long as the
people don't have an expectation of privacy
but the law could be different in each country here you can
go outside take photos
without hassle nobody can take away your camera or anything
like that
roughly unless you're on private property where people
expect privacy then
could be in trouble by fear outside public no problem uh
sometimes people will bother you if
you're taking photos outside especially if you're taking
photos of the floor just ignore them
and what else you just have fun you can take raw photos
have fun and it's very inspirational so
I hope you enjoyed this video cast.
I expect to do more if this one is popular.
And it was pretty fun for me too.
Even though it's rushed and everything is pretty sloppy.
But I don't have time all the time in the world.
I'm not really home.
So I don't really know the area very well.
But yeah, it was fun.
I hope you guys enjoyed.
Send me your emails to Olivier.
Or what's the email?
At CGCast.
you can find the email address at CGCast.
It's either archer at CGCast.com
or info at CGCast.com.
What else?
My name is Olivier Archer.
I hosted this.
Probably added that in at the beginning.
My name is Olivier Archer.
And, well, have fun,
and I'll post up all the photos
that I took, the good, the bad, and the ugly,
so you guys can see.
Well, peace out, and enjoy your weekend.
*sad music*
We gotta keep the talk about it.
That's all I got.
What's fun about going outside is that you can steal some
grapes.
It's more fun than being in the toilet paper pit all day
long.
*mumble*
Now, well...
I am still a male.
The world would be right if it would buy truth from him.
Mary says he changes his mind more than...
Thank you.
