Tutorial - How to make your retextures more appealing

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A common question that is given to me is, "How can I make my retextures more "Appealing"?". The answer is, Many. Many people have misconceptions on what makes a retexture good,

Firstly, If you already have an idea for a retexture, think up designs in your head, but think about what would other people like. For example... Most people like Dragons, Fire, and others. It's always good to do a bit of research into previous hats (Checking the favourites and buys of each of the hats you find) But please realise that fedoras and dominus' aren't the only popular hats.
Just look in hats and search something like "Dragons" "Unicorns" or what ever people may be in to.

After looking at a few hats myself, I stumbled upon this beauty...

The Feared Skull Of All Eternity's Doom

Now, It doesn't take that much to think, "lets change it to a water/ice/grass (etc.) skull" and then just change the hue to a blue or green.

But changing the color doesn't really work when doing a retexture, It takes much more than just changing the color to make it appealing. It takes a brave man to use a google image, but it takes a braver man to add it to the workings of a retexture. Now, the hat you have is ready for retexturing, look at how you may be able to make it appealing.

It's useful to use gradients. It can easily give an example of lighting, and shading. Also, It's is commonly suggested that people who use google images are "Fail Retexturers". Just ignore that. As long as you Incorporate it into the texture.

Now, keeping that in mind, add it to the texture and you should get something that looks a bit like this.















And it should fit on the mesh like so.

And it should look quite appealing to the viewer of it.

Don't leave it to chance, it's "ok" to use google images, just don't go overboard with it. Otherwise, it can sometimes look over worked, and particularly ugly.

I hope you found this tutorial useful.

Got a question? Ask me on twitter: @IBarrageI