Brass texture

[BobRob]

I am a beginner and would like to try making a brass texture for a simple 3D build of a brass era antique car -brass lamp (in Second-Life)

I've done a Google search and have found several tutorials on making a " brushed metal surface" but nothing about brass itself. What color tools and values does one use to create a texture that looks like a nice warm, polished brass with typical brass highlights and shadows?

Is there a tutorial someone can point me to?

-thanks

[ofnuts]

This tutorial is pretty good. My signature tag is mostly an adaption of it. If you start with gray you get a steel look, but for brass you would just start with a yellow/orange.

[BobRob]

For some reason that link didn't work for me. Could you give me the name so that I could google it? -thanks

[Einherjar]

Try googling "penguinpetes.com/b2evo/index.php?p=351" or directly pasting the URL in your browser.

[BobRob]

Thanks

At the moment I'm too sick to comprehend what I'm reading ;-)

...but I have a feeling that I may have asked the wrong question ;-)

[BobRob]

I'm slightly more lucid today, I hope ;-)

I want to create a smooth polished brass texture in 1024 with 512 and 256 copies to texture objects in another program

I'm mostly interested in how to get the (orange yellow) color and highlights and shadows just right for a rich polished brass, so I am currently reading about color tools and gradients in "Beginning Gimp" When I'm finished reading I'll probably have more questions ;-)

For now I have a question about the bumpmap tool. It's used for raising letters in the tutorials about metallic text but it's unclear to me whether it would be needed for a flat smooth polished brass surface?

-thanks in advance

[ofnuts]

(Jan 26, 2012 20:53)BobRob Wrote:  I'm slightly more lucid today, I hope ;-)

I want to create a smooth polished brass texture in 1024 with 512 and 256 copies to texture objects in another program

I'm mostly interested in how to get the (orange yellow) color and highlights and shadows just right for a rich polished brass, so I am currently reading about color tools and gradients in "Beginning Gimp" When I'm finished reading I'll probably have more questions ;-)

For now I have a question about the bumpmap tool. It's used for raising letters in the tutorials about metallic text but it's unclear to me whether it would be needed for a flat smooth polished brass surface?

-thanks in advance

A flat smooth polished brass surface is a perfect mirror and has no highlight/shadows... To make it looks like a mirror you just have to add fake reflections. The gist of all these tutorials is that they produce the metallic effect on the spot by making highlight & shadows according to the assumed elevation.

[BobRob]

Sorry - I'm not describing this well. The (flat) texture will be applied to a rather curvy 3d object composed of cylindrical and toroid shapes. I can't find a close up of the lamp I want to reproduce but it's somewhat like this: http://www.antiquehotspots.com/image.asp...Height=148

Natural lighting produces highlights on that lamp. How is that reproduced/faked with GIMP?

-thanks for your patience

edit to add: My guess is that highlights and shadows are created in GIMP by blending foreground and background and then when the texture is applied to the object, it is rotated until the shadows are in the right spaces? The other program does in fact have a texture rotation tool, but I suppose this requires advanced skill to get it right ;-)

[ofnuts]

For this kind of things, the shadows and highlights do not appear at random and are extremely dependent on the shape of the object. So either it's all done manually, because you know where the reflection should be and paint it, or there is a way to tell Gimp the shape of the object (because otherwise everything is flat for Gimp), and this way is called a bumpmap...

[BobRob]

Update

I did a lot of reading, got confused, and eventually realized that a modification of the default "Golden Gradient" would probably work so I made a cooler (blue-er) version.

I'm now working on figuring out how to apply it to the object in Second Life (repeats rotations etc) to get it to look right. If I ever finish this I'll post a picture ;-)