As a solo developer who doesn’t specialise in building, I’m still compelled to build in order to complete projects. In practically all of these cases, the builds are based off realistic objects or places (found from google images). Due to this, textures/materials/whatever-the-specialised-building-terms-are become a necessity for each object. However, whilst making this post has made me grateful towards 22 different materials ROBLOX has to offer, I find that they rarely are up to the standard for realism. Such as in the case of replicating the image provided below, where all the possible materials are used, where none fit the “leather” theme of the image.
seat image
22 different materials
Plastic
Wood
Wood Planks
Slate
Concrete
Metal
Corroded Metal
Diamond Plate
Foil
Grass
Ice
Brick
Sand
Fabric
Granite
Marble
Pebble
Cobblestone
Smooth Plastic
Neon
Glass
Force Field
You can probably tell that none of these are very appropriate for this particular instance. I believe that some people use textures in order to re-create things such as this picture of a material pack below:
However, in the past when I worked with textures like these (late 2018), they would often “glitch out” at different camera angles, where a darker line would appear through the object (size, position and direction varied). Due to this, I’ve been reluctant to turn to textures. Whilst making this topic, I attempted to replicate this issue to no avail, so if anyone knows whether this was a definite issue that was fixed (I only used textures in studio when this happened), please enlighten me!
This was a bit long winded before I even got to the main question - what do you do when you want to make something that wouldn’t appear “correct” with the default roblox materials, more… correct? Like more realistic, sorry if the question is worded vaguely.
If anyone thinks they have something that would work well with the image of the seat earlier, I won’t stop you from linking that
I see where you’re coming from and I used to (and still) deal with this problem. Usually, when I’m building something (even if there is a standard material for what it is) I’ll combine two different materials. You do this by taking the part, making it the “main” material, and then duplicating that and making a “secondary” material. You then take this secondary material and adjust the transparency to your liking. I will admit it the two textures can sometimes flash/glitch but it usually works for me. For example, if I’m trying to make an old, rotted piece of wood, I’ll take a block, make it the wood texture, then duplicated that and make it the corroded metal or maybe slate one and make that very transparent. Hope this works
the lowest transparency was 0.9, which barely had any visual texture to it and still Z-Framed. Could you provide a possible image example of somewhere you incorporated this method to give me a better idea of the final result?
I know it’s not the corroded-wood example I gave but if you can see on the larger planks, I took wood and wooden planks, made the wooden planks transparent, and it gives it this sort of faded plank look. No z-framing happened for me? I think in order for it to work, you can’t resize or have the two blocks different sizes or they will glitch.
I look at Roblox building as a type of drawing art form. There are many different styles in building like there is in art. So I find building as an incredibly creative practice. I use google images as well, but more so for inspiration.
I think your approach is more mechanical. So I think, you could either find shortcuts to using roblox materials such as using the brick material on a thin brick for a rope or bamboo texture. Or you can develop your skill on learning how textures are successful. More natural materials are more random so the texture should be bigger, and more refined materials should take in account properties such as shininess and reflectivity.
That’s actually incredible. I had never thought to try that before because I had always assumed the textures would clip. I just tried it on my current build because I couldn’t quite match the material I wanted and it worked perfectly. This was an amazing idea my friend, thank you for sharing it!
I’m going for a more ‘mechanical’ approach in this case because of the desired goal, which is to make specific plane models that incorporate the same passenger size and overall model. Hence copying directly from an image because I know nothing about planes.
My more creative (i.e. from me not an image) ones are always part heavy and end up unable to be used, or turn out completely out of proportion (or deviate from the original design in mind)
Thanks for the reply!
@NicholasMcK I see! Quiet an innovative approach, thanks!
As greatgavin stated, there are many different styles in building. As such, I’ll be keeping this open.
