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looking a little better. here comes part two.

It looks like you don't you use many textures, or not at all, maybe, do you?

Nope .

I never really figured out anything besides basic modeling, rigging, and animation work.

anything like textures, lighting, effects, i never really had much success at figuring out. the most i got working was a tank tread tutorial someone posted here way back in 2011 ;o)..

every brick you see on those buildings is hand made. all 200 per building. and hand colored.

Uh... that's pretty a huge work, since with a texture you can save a big amount of time, but also you can make the meshes lighter.

I can see the backpack of the turtles have their own design. So it means you created many edges to draw those lines on the backpack. It means more polygons with a heavier mesh to handle.
What don't you figure exactly, about texturing?..

Edit:
I say that because you really are committed to this, using a lot of time and effort. I believe that the same efforts with a better use of the tools will take you farther and faster.

it just seems more complicated, having to worry about texture blocks and projections.

But, without using them, I've streamlined things so fast, I can make one third of a building into a complete building with 20 floors in under 30 minutes.

All I do is make one side with one window, maybe two, another side with another two windows, line cut the bricks into place via polygon cutter.....in fact, it might make a fun video showing the process.


maybe it'll help others who arn't to familair with textures either ;o)

i've really got it down to a science.

although i do admit textures would help with things like wood surfaces. having to edge in all the lines is a tad tiring after a while

Superpositivo wrote: Edit:
I say that because you really are committed to this, using a lot of time and effort. I believe that the same efforts with a better use of the tools will take you farther and faster.

and i don't disagree with this at all....it would be nice to know more. especially lighting

for example, trying to make a new digital waterfall.

most people would probably use ice for this. i never got into that, so i'm still trying to make it work with shape animation, the way classic animators would.

If I can get this looking right, trying to improve my digital bushes and trees next.

how to turn april into a mermaid statue

one new digital fern

I did this hoping to help you understanding how it works or can be.

The image is very simple. It's not intended to be realistic, of course. It's only to explain some basic things about texturing that can help you in your project.

And these...

for the clouds,

I would use a grid and ray trace it all so it has that toon look.

You saw what i did for the bushes, but i could also do the same thing for them if i wanted an easier to load tree effect.
doing all the leaves on that bush makes it load much slower .

but having some of those textures for bushes or grass would make it look nicer .

- The images in this case are PNG with their own alpha. So you need to plug the image in the Transparency slot.
In its tab remember to select Use Alpha, and inverting transparency.
Note: Sometimes maybe you happen to have 2 images. 1 with the color, and 1 Black and White for Alpha. So, it means the only this second image has to be plugged in the transparency slot. Softimage uses the WHITE color for transparency, so most of the time you need to invert it in its tab option.

- Projections work just like a real projector in a movie theater. Imagining that in this way it's easy to understand how it works. Practically you need to say to the 3D software where to project your texture. So, the axis indicate you where. If it's a wall it is mostly XY or YZ. If it's a a floor it is probably XZ, because you want to cover everything on the X and everything on the Z.
So you have these kind of projections in the drop down menu of the IMAGE parameters, or directly in the render Tree also. Or in PROPERTY > Texture projections in the left menu and the same in the upper menu. So, many places, in Softimage. Surely it's not hidden...
Note: using Projections under PROPERTY can look as it is the same, and actually it is, but from this you can spread a single projection on many objects in the same time.
Or spread a texture on many tiles (i.e.) where every tile has a piece of the texture. Just put the tiles in a group and give the projection to the GROUP using Property > Texture Projections> ...

This is already something that should help you a lot.

Of course all the most complex things are done in Texture Editor and something else, but it's necessary to know this, first.

Yes, of course, for the TOON style you need also the textures with a TOON look.
So, you can adjust them in Photoshop or something like that or if you find them already "tooned" in internet.

The bushes and flowers textures it's not a problem, if you want them.
But you can easily find them on Google Images or going in some websites specialized on textures to have a better choice.

I just done that 30 minutes ago to do some of the grass in this images that I made only to show you. So it's really fast actually.

Some textures websites:

https://www.textures.com/
http://archivetextures.net/
http://www.lughertexture.com/vegetation ... ansparency
http://www.swtexture.com/

Remember that, if you are using the TOON INK, in the camera, it will put an outline on the meshes, also.

So, it will happen that your "squared" bushes will have an outline around the squares.

To avoid this you can go in the TOON INK shader, in the camera, go in the ADVANCED tab, check the REQUIRE HOST check box.

Doing this, the outline Ink will appear only on shaders that have the HOST node (like the Paint and Host shader, or Host shader, but I believe you use always the Paint and Host shader).

So, in this case, for your "squared" bushes you need to give a constant shader, or something that remembers the toon shader.
Of course you won't have the outline on the image. That is something that you are forced to do in Photoshop or similar. You can do that very easily, anyway.

You can do it a also with the Toon Ink, but because it tries to follow the pixels of the image is not good at all. So just avoid it.