The texturing is one of my lesser abilities as I have focused mostly on modeling. However, with graphic design and web design being my main employ so far, alongside what knowledge I have acquired in regards to texturing (at least MY way of texturing) it is, if anything, 'good for a laugh' as they say :)

Either way my texturing skills need to be improved somewhat and I am showing you how I do it regardless :) Before we start I would recommend sourcing some base textures to work with for your general well, texture...of your character. Things like pictures of metal, marble, stone, skin, fur and the like...both clean and dirty, will go a long way in bringing your texturing from amatuer to medium to professional if used well. Everything has texture, if you think about it, and generally everything has wear and tear, no matter how minute... so you have to reproduce those effects in order to bring your character to life.

A lot of my character is metal, and I want a fairly cool worn effect on that. Tidy, but well used so to speak. The rest of him needs to have a similar effect where he seems to be a well travelled person, yet also refined enough to look after himself and his hardware.

I will focus on one texture (being skin_01.jpg holding the head and torso elements) as it will cover both organic and industrial elements. I would like to cover cloth as well, but in essence it is the same process. As UT2004 doesn't have Bump mapping I won't be considering it as I go along (and will have to fake it in some places using the diffuse map) but it DOES have specularity. So I plan to use that to good effect on the metallic elements.

So, onto the show!

With MAX open, I then open Photoshop (I use version 7.0, any art program can be used however) and open my map that I plan to texture. Leaving it at 2048x2048. A lot of the skills here are similar to those in the Artwork tutorial, so I'm going to assume you have a base knowledge of photoshop in this instance.

Firstly, I duplicate the base layer and make the new top layer a Multiply Layer so that my white is see through and black is solid. These are now my guides for my characters texture. If you used overlap you can see where the areas are, hopefully you made the grey light enough to not be a hindrance. If so, either play with the grey, or reexport the texture.

I then fill the back layer with a general colour for the texture. In this case the base metal colour. I do this simply to note to myself that it ISN'T white, much like making sure it's colour is more full, rather than colouring in a sheet of paper. It's a COMPUTER people, USE it! :)

The system I use for texturing is similar to how I render 2D artworks. Make a layer of colour, and then shade on layers above that. This is good as you can change the basic information (diffuse) easily while keeping all the shadowing, highlights and FX you add.

On top of this colour however is the 'texturing' of the layer, where we add all the details that we use from images to add that extra realism. Blending and layer effects are the tool of the day in my texturing process. So if you haven't learned them well by now, you will by the end of this :)

Once you have a basic layout down you can test your texture by saving it as a .psd, and making a sub-object material in max. To do this, go to the material editor in MAX and select a new material box. Select the box that says 'Standard' and make it a Sub-Object material type. Discard the original map (or keep it if you wanted to use it) and set the number of maps to 3 (in my case).

Each material slot represents each map channel, so you can apply you materials as per usual, displaying them in the viewport etc. So set the 1st material with your new .psd as the diffuse, display the map in the viewport and apply it to your model. You should have the map displayed as you go along from here on in. Which is mighty handy for finding out how your model is progressing into the realm of 3D :)

I generally work with MAX and photoshop open. Saving the .pSD and refreshing the screen in MAX to see the results on a regular basis.

I have basically just started adding some basic texturing and effects in order to start building up the character. Easy stuff first. So the base colour/texture and some cool glow effects generally using Layers and blending effects to do so. The metal texture was one I got from a texture CD or the net.

In order to get the mana canisters to have transparency I made an opacity channel in MAX and used a grayscale image to define which were the seethrough and solid areas. In max white represents solid, black represents totally seethrough and everything in between is everything in between :) So I made a seperate folder in my photoshop layers dedicated to opacity, as that will be needed. I then saved out the image with the opacity information, and applied the opacity map into the required channel in the material editor.