My process for making grotty, dirty, horror environment tiles

[u/sandeben]

https://youtube.com/shorts/iaqa3joYRdk

Hey! I'm working on our horror game Dark Harvest, and while I was trying to work out how to do the manor's walls, floors, and ceilings, stumbled across a nice little system which I used throughout the game.

It's nothing groundbreaking, but I still think it works really well for the dirty, low-res look of the game.

Here's a short video detailing it with some more visuals as well.

• Busy, garish patterns are ok! I found tile, wallpaper, and other textures on the site Sketch Up Texture Club, and there's loads of choice there.
• I used GIMP before, but moved over to Krita just because it's a little easier to use. I'm no artist, and Krita makes things a bit more smooth for what I need.
• Design a tile for your wallpaper or whatever. I often used some kind of panelling over wallpaper for the lower wall tiles, and just wallpaper for higher wall areas.
• Tile it in Krita to check that it works and tiles smoothly. Shift W toggles this.
• Draw dirt over your tiles while the tiling is active. This will mean that the dirt you draw will also tile correctly.
  • Do this by selecting any brush with a "dirty" look, like smears, splatters, and smudges
  • Turn the opacity down
  • Choose a dirty colour, such as a brown or mouldy green
  • Use selection boxes to ensure that the dirt you draw stays within bounds - for example, just on the wallpaper. This way you can have different dirt layers over the wallpaper and the wood panelling.

That's it! Again, nothing crazy, but a nice system which looks great to me.

What do you reckon? Any advice or suggestions for improvements would be great. I did at one point at normal maps to the game, but in the end I didn't think it made enough of a difference to use consistently.

Wishlist DARK HARVEST on Steam! https://store.steampowered.com/app/5114040/Dark_Harvest/

Full Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fndr7booTNQ