Making a wooden crate panel

Wooden crate is commonly used as a packing material, where need to transport various items such as machinery items and military items where need to transport safely. It is also one of the commonest models used in 3d industry, especially in game industry. Today I am going to teach you how to model a panel (one side) of a wooden panel; which you can be used to apply to your model using Photoshop. You don’t need any reference materials for this tutorial, unless you prefer to go through some of them before started.
First decide the quality of the panel you need. Most probably, a map with 512 x 512 will be more than enough for your job. However if you are not sure, use a bigger one (may be 1024 x 1024), then you can convert it to a smaller map any time you need. Here, I am going to make a 512 x 512 map.
Get new Photoshop file with twice bigger dimensions than you need (1024 x 1024 for me). Fill the entire layer using pure white. Now we need to make a wood texture. Set two colours as foreground colour and background colour. However you will get more realistic look by using pail brown colours. I am using colours with RGB: 218, 197, 170 and RGB: 104, 80, 67 as my foreground colour and background colour respectively.
Go to Filter > Render and apply Fibers with Variance – 17.0 and Strength – 37.0.

Now you should get a nice wood-like texture on your layer. But it’s better to make this texture more realistic.

Apply Liquify under Filter menu (shortcut Shift + Ctrl + X). A new window will open with some more tools. Use any available tool and modify the texture in a way closer to real wood texture. This is how my texture looks like now.

Now the texture is ready to use. Make a new file with 512 x 512. Turn on grid with grid size 64 for both files, and turn on snap option. Go to the wood texture we made and mark exactly following shape (see figure below) using Polygonal Lasso Tool, with the help of Snap and Grid options. I have used units as my measuring unit, one unit will 64 pixels (size of the grid).

Move the selected area to a place you like, copy the area from the texture and paste it on the new file prepared. Repeat it for 3 more times. Make sure to copy the textures from different locations by maintaining the same orientation of wood pattern. Now you are having 4 pieces on your new file. Arrange the 4 pieces as in figure below. Select all the 4 layers and Merge them.

Hide the Merged layer and copy 7 more rectangular strips (with 8 units tall and 1 unit wide) from wood texture file and paste on the new file. Arrange them closely from left-hand side. If you done it correctly, only one column will be remain empty in the right-hand side. (See figure below)

Select all the 7 strips and merge them to one. Add another layer on top of the merged layer. Set a dark brown colour as Foreground Colour. Draw vertical lines on the new layer along the gridlines using a dark brown colour using brush tool (brush size 5 pixels). Now you got something like below.

Select the layer with lines and go to its Blending Options. Turn on Bevel and Emboss and set the settings as below.

Press OK to apply the settings. Hope how you are having a texture like below.

Move both layers to centre, and turn on the layer having the border; that we created and hide at the beginning. Now you should receive something like below.

Select the border layer and go to its Blending Options. Turn on both Outer Glow and Bevel and Emboss. Set setting as bellow.

Now you should receive a texture map like below.

If you haven’t seen creases between the four parts of the frame, go to that layer and small line between the wood parts using Eraser tool.
Add a new layer on top of all. Fill new layer with Clouds (Filter > Render > Clouds), by keeping black and white colours as Foreground and Background colours respectively. Change the Blending mode of the layer into Multiply. Then you will see some nice dark spots on the wood panel. If it is too dark to you, you may decrease the Fill of the layer until you receive what you need.

You can see the dark spots on the border are continued to the middle wood panel.  But it will be nice to have separate pattern for the middle area. Select and delete the middle area of the Clouds layer (use your Grid and Snap options to select the correct area).  Add another layer just below the wooden frame. Apply Clouds and change the Blending mode to Multiply. Decrease the Fill of the layer if you need.

Now the texture is ready to use. Hope you have received a good result as my one (see below).

Tags: 3d model, Photoshop, texture, tutorial, wooden crate, wooden panel