Hand-painted and stylised texturing

Hand-painted texturing paints a surface's form, light and material directly into its colour texture, instead of relying on the renderer to work them out from physically based rendering maps. It is the classic look of stylised games such as World of Warcraft. Blizzard's Fanny Vergne describes the goal as creating "the illusion of materials by painting in the way light interacts with the surface" (80 Level: The Strings of Environment Design).

"Stylised" is broader than "hand-painted": a stylised asset can also use PBR materials with exaggerated shapes and colours. This page covers the painting skills that both share.

#What makes a texture "hand-painted"

In a realistic PBR texture, the base colour holds only the surface colour, and light comes from the engine. In a hand-painted texture, the colour map also holds:

• Form shading: edges lit, cavities darkened.
• Light direction: usually from above. On Polycount, LokiDokie notes that "usually hand painted models are painted with top down lighting", while adding that it is a matter of choice (Polycount: I need c&c for my works).
• Material cues: highlights on metal, grain on wood, painted with brush strokes rather than measured.

Some hand-painted games render these textures unlit. Jamie Read describes his diorama below as "1050 tris, 1024 diffuse, unlit" (Sketchfab: Seagull Shack): every bit of light you see is painted.

#Value

Before colour, a hand-painted texture has to read in greyscale. See value and visual hierarchy and readability.

• Keep textures neutral for reuse. Vergne: "it is very important to keep the values of your textures neutral", so that one texture works in many places, and "use your lighting and scene ambience to do the heavy lifting of the environment mood" (80 Level: The Strings of Environment Design).
• Use gradients to guide the eye. In a Polycount critique, Brian "Panda" Choi recommends subtle value gradients to draw attention to focal points (Polycount: I need c&c for my works).
• Do not shade with black and white. Choi pointed out that the artist was lighting by "just adding more black or white to a lot of the texture" (Polycount: I need c&c for my works). That flattens colour; shift hue instead.

#Hue shifts

When value changes, hue should change too. Choi: "Objects shift hues when values change", and "dark areas get colder in color temperature (bluer)" under warm light (Polycount: I need c&c for my works). Vergne's colour advice works at scene level: make "your ambient color and the dominant color of your lights complementary or close to each other", and keep saturation and brightness under control even in a colourful palette (80 Level: The Strings of Environment Design).

#Workflows and tools

There is no single hand-painted workflow. Common ones:

1. Paint flat in 2D. Lay out UVs, paint the texture in Photoshop, Krita or similar, check on the model, repeat.
2. Paint on the model. Tools such as 3DCoat and 3DCoatTextura advertise "hand-painted and PBR textures" with brushes, smart materials and layers (3dcoat.com: 3DCoat); Substance 3D Painter is also widely used, as in the diorama above. Mari supports "procedural to hand-painted textures" too, though it is mainly a film tool (foundry.com: Mari).
3. Sculpt, bake, then paint over. Sculpt shapes, bake them to get AO, curvature and a lit base, then paint on top. Vergne uses ZBrush "on the most detailed textures or to create quick basic shapes for my tiling textures" (80 Level: The Strings of Environment Design). Yulong Huang's stylised tool kit was sculpted in ZBrush and textured in Painter, with hand-painted masks to break up brush strokes (80 Level: How to Make Tool Kit With History Using…).

Hand-painted textures are still used as tileables, trims and atlases; the mapping rules are the same. See ways to texture an environment.

#How to make one

The steps below paint a 1024 × 1024 px stylised stone wall tileable, either flat in Photoshop or Krita, or on a plane in Substance 3D Painter. They follow the value-first, hue-shift approach described above.

1. Block in shapes. On a 1024 px canvas with wrap-around (offset) enabled, draw the stone shapes as flat silhouettes in one mid-grey, with clear gaps between them. Check the tile at 3 × 3 early, so seams and hot spots show up before you add detail.
2. Paint values in greyscale. Add a light top edge to each stone and darker cracks, with light coming from above, the usual choice for hand-painted assets (Polycount: I need c&c for my works). If the environment will have strong dynamic lighting, keep these values gentle and closer to neutral (80 Level: The Strings of Environment Design).
3. Optional: sculpt and bake a base. For complex shapes, sculpt the stones in ZBrush and bake AO and curvature to paint over, as Vergne does for her most detailed textures (80 Level: The Strings of Environment Design).
4. Add colour with hue shifts. Colour the mid-tones, then shift highlights warmer and shadows cooler instead of adding white and black (Polycount: I need c&c for my works). Keep saturation under control and leave no pure black or white pixels.
5. Add material cues and accents. Paint chips, grain and a few saturated accents such as moss, with clear brush strokes rather than photo noise.
6. Check in greyscale and in the engine. Convert to greyscale to check the stones still read, then put the tileable on a wall under at least two lights.

#Video tutorials

#Use in games

• World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004 onwards). Fanny Vergne, a senior environment artist on the game, describes neutral texture values for reuse, lighting for mood, and a balance between realism and cartoon (see the example above) (80 Level: The Strings of Environment Design). Tyson Murphy, a World of Warcraft character artist, teaches the hand-painted style in his 3dmotive course (3dmotive: Learn the "Hand-Painted" texturing style for…).
• Okami (Clover Studio, 2006). Alexey Shiyan's 2025 overview of stylisation describes the game's look as built on "brushstrokes, paint textures, and traditional patterns" (80 Level: The Transformation Of Stylization In Video…).
• WarCraft: Orcs and Humans and StarCraft (Blizzard, 1994 and 1998). The same overview credits them with "laying the groundwork for the hand-painted style we recognize and appreciate today" (80 Level: The Transformation Of Stylization In Video…).

#Further reading and watching