Could uses some advice on Texturing in AdobePhotoshop

[vako]

I'm starting to get the hang of modeling, but I'm still having a little trouble with creating textures and could use a few pointers if any of the texturing gurus around have a moment or two.

My main questions are: How do you redo vanilla textures - armour and stuff - and keep the curvature shadings?  Obviously, you can simply replace colour, but the result is far from realistic (I think due to some shading feature I don't understand as it nearly works when colouring over dark shades, but comes up with very odd colours indeed over light shades).  Is it possible to paste a pattern from a photo texture over a vanilla item and get the curvature shadings to come up?  Can it be done with layers, perhaps?  I'm afraid my understanding of layers isn't good.  Are the curvature shadings necessary?  And can you add a colour or photo texture that, say, has a pattern, to the swatches?  I imagine this would be unlikely, I've clicked and rightclicked every button I could find and nothing seems to say "add colour" or "add texture." 

Much thanks in advance to any great-hearted soul who deems it worthy of his time to reply in aid.
Ciao

 

[Yoshiboy]

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,14245.0.html

this might help you get started a little. It also slightly covers the use of shaders which might sort out your lighting problems.

 

[First Citizen]

Yoshiboy's tutorial might be a bit complex for what you're trying to do at this stage - aside from the section on alpha channels.

This isn't a proper tutorial or anything, but should give you some hints to get started:
To apply a texture / colour or whatever over a vanilla item you can create a new layer, then paste into it / colour it whatever you want, then change the opacity or transparency of that layer so that the "curvature shadings" appear underneath. If you're applying a colour it can help to desaturate (image > adjustments > desaturate) the vanilla texture to turn it black and white, and also set the colour layers blending options (box at the top of the layers window, to the left of the opacity box)  to "overlay". If you don't get desired result you can create another layer and repeat on top. Try experimenting with the opacity and blending options. Remember to "merge" the layers.

Also experiment with the different filters. A handy tool is the "filter gallery" which lets you preview what each filter does. Make sure you have the right layer selected though.