Hello everyone, I am real new to game VFX , but I would like to learn to create textures for VFX. Now i know some photoshop and after effects but it’s not enough. I searched for tutorials, books, courses, but I couldn’t find any. Do you guys know such sites from where I could learn? And I have another big problem, how do I make a texture like this or similar to it? 
8 Likes
I think that something like that could be achieved easily with Photoshop
1 Like
soft round brush for basic shapes, and a soft round smudge tool at 15% to blur your shapes could get you something very similar.
^that technique in combination with filters menu will usually get you what you want. Gaussian blur, motion blur, other>min, other>max are the ones I use the most and will get you pretty far!
7 Likes
Looks like radial blur is useful here - there’s Spin and Zoom options.
Also don’t forget that you can always make a texture as a straight flat thing and then apply it to a mesh in Maya and use deformers to get a nice curve. Great for things like rings where you want to convert a square into a circle.
Hope that helps!
3 Likes
I started using Substance Designer for these kind of things. What @Hovl showed can be done procedural for more and different results (but of course you’ll need to go through similar steps as he showed).
3 Likes
Get good with after effects as well as substance designer. There are a bunch of tutorials online which will show you the basics of both tools.
There’s a substance thread here in the forum where we started collecting some networks to create textures.
Also @NikolaD has some substances on his gumroad which you could use as inspiration: Nikola Damjanov
2 Likes
Hi gdxplode! 
, for me, I think you should start practicing some filters in photoshop like blurs,distorts, and offsets. In short, learn the basics first before jumping to more complex textures. It really helps in creating good abstract textures for your VFX. I’m not a pro but I hope it helps! 
It’s the first time I read about using Substance Designer for VFX textures. Didn’t know, that’s a very interesting workflow
Hehe, thanks for the link 
I have a similar question, so I thought maybe I just drop my question in here. How would I create this texture?
*Edit, added extra idea
Could paint the tile in Photoshop, duplicate the layer and motion blur it in Photoshop. Take the original and select above the line and delete.
You could also make a small set of brushes of that ‘hump’ shape in Photoshop and then use the brush settings to change the size, scatter etc. I would do each pass on a seperate layer and then erase overlaps and merge.
Looks like caustics to me, if you have access to a texture library you could do a combination of curves, levels, blurring and median filters in Photoshop.
1 Like
there’s this interesting technique that i dont think many people know about:
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/reaction_diffusion_in_pshop/reaction_diffusion_in_pshop.htm
could be useful for creating the outline shapes and then use a gradient fill and/or some blur to get the rest.
16 Likes
Okay that min and max trick is fantastic. Good share Nate
This seems like exactly the kind of thing that Substance Designer is intended for. That’s not to say you couldn’t make it in Photoshop though… it would probably just be more tedious.
This is a really interesting topic and an awesome trick to have in your back-hand!
Thanks for sharing!
There is a post above, but I don’t understand, so I ask again.
so I thought maybe I just drop my question in here.
How would I create this texture? The link no longer works.
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/reaction_diffusion_in_pshop/reaction_diffusion_in_pshop.htm
This link not connetcd.Is there another way? I would like to see.