I'm new to texturing so I just wanted to know what the disadvantages are of just using JPEG image or taking a high resolution picture from your phone for texturing cloth , then adding bump or displacement nodes instead of buying textures from websites with colour maps and normal maps
1 Answer
It depends on what you want to achieve. Basically, JPEGs are not all bad, especially for photographed image textures they work just fine.
Typical disadvantages of the JPEG format are:
- Compression artifacts (should only be a problem if you have low quality or need very high detail)
- No transparency channel (can be a problem if you want multiple overlaid textures or stencils)
- Limited colordepth (for height- or bumpmaps or environment textures, the number of colors and/or brightness levels can be insufficient)
As advantages, I'd name the following:
- It's usually the most readily available format for images (if you take or download a photo in JPEG format, you won't gain anything by converting it into another format)
- For typical photographic images, it uses comparatively little space on your hard drive
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$\begingroup$ For clothing textures such as T-shirt, jeans and coats. What would you recommend for this? I can’t find any website that has clothing textures $\endgroup$ Nov 19, 2020 at 14:23
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$\begingroup$ For those I'd say your idea with the photographed (or better: Do you have a flatbed scanner?) textures should work quite well. If you are not necessarily interested in super-detail, super-realism, you can even use the same texture for image and bump with pretty good results... But I really doubt that there are no websites with clothing textures out there! (Hint: Try searching for "fabric" textures instead!) $\endgroup$ Nov 19, 2020 at 14:30
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$\begingroup$ Flatbed scanner? Would that give super realism and super detail? Flatbed scanners sold in everyday electronic stores? $\endgroup$ Nov 19, 2020 at 14:39
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1$\begingroup$ A flatbed scanner (yes, even consumer-grade machines from any electronic store) gives you distortion-free images with homogeneous lighting. Using one instead of a camera may save you some cleanup-work with the textures. But before you buy one, maybe search again for "fabric textures" - you will find that quite a lot of people have done that work for you already. Unless want to do it yourself, then I'd go with the scanner... $\endgroup$ Nov 19, 2020 at 15:07
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2$\begingroup$ Here are a couple of websites I use that offer CC0 (Free for all uses, no restrictions) licensed textures. cgbookcase.com/… 3dtextures.me/category/fabric $\endgroup$ Nov 19, 2020 at 15:28