30+ Examples of Asphalt Textures
High-resolution textures are mainstays in the palette of resources for any good graphic designer or 3D animator. A texture template is an image depicting the unique surface quality of a particular substance or material, and as tools they are invaluable. Designers creating worlds in urban settings can’t do without these asphalt textures for making their graphics more convincing and realistic.
This overview of lifelike, representative asphalt textures should get you started right. Feel free to download and use these textures and even modify them to accommodate what your project needs.
Grunge Asphalt Texture
Black Asphalt Textures
6 Seamless Asphalt Textures
Rough Asphalt Texture
Black Clear Asphalt Texture
How to Use Asphalt Texture Effectively in Your Projects
As designers and artists, you know that it takes more than a simple hodgepodge overlay of rough graphics and black textures to create a convincing road surface.
When done right, a simple stretch of tarmac can present part of the story for you and make the whole thing seem more authentic. If done carelessly, your audience will be able to detect lazy design and might even judge your storytelling by it.
Create a sense of time and action.
- The cracked, weather-worn surface of the Old Black Asphalt and the Crack Asphalt Texture would present the picture more accurately if the setting is in a bad part of town, a city struck by chaos, or simply an old forgotten path.
- But if (for the above settings) you instead use the Smooth Asphalt Texture of a busy freeway or an airport runway, or use the Dark Asphalt Texture for anything but a newly laid road, it will scream unprofessionalism or just blandness in terms of visual excitement.
Create a sense of mood and place.
- The Grunge Asphalt Texture and the Rough Asphalt Texture vary in tone and therefore in mood. The grunge look might even play into the overall “feel” of the story you are trying to convey: it will be less mainstream as the other surface and so it will work for more urban-fantasy settings better.
- On that note, suffusing these textures with an overlay of color before texture-mapping them to polygon objects can lend interesting emotional effects to the setting.
Smooth Asphalt Texture
Free Asphalt Texture Background
Old Black Asphalt Texture
Dark Asphalt Texture
Crack Asphalt Texture
How to Use Asphalt Texture Effectively (contd.)
- When creating pavements, use concrete textures instead of one of the above asphalt ones as your overall best bet. Remember that the whole reason for using textures is to better imitate real life. So getting the facts right?the fact that pavements are made of concrete and not asphalt?is key. Do your research and expand your list of options with these textures and others you can find on Template.net.
- On that note, an unlikely tip:
During your world-building research, you might have missed the fact that asphalt is actually cheaper to install than concrete, not considering all the maintenance costs. Using concrete to texture-map over your roads might then suggest a wealthier neighborhood or country in general, but most people will not pick up on this anyway.
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