Shop Front Project - Creation of Tiling textures, Trim sheet and Narrative Texturing
·
After modelling
the core pieces of my house and its surroundings, I then turned to the
texturing of the project. The brief specified that we must use at least a trim
sheet and have a few tiling textures.
Tiling textures:
·
The
tiling textures I made were:
o Roof tiles
|
Roof Tile tiling texture |
o Plaster
|
Plaster tiling texture |
o And finally,
Stone brick wall texture
|
Stone Wall final tiling texture |
·
These textures were made to fit large blank areas of models seamlessly –
I ran into a problem however with the plaster and stone wall texture because
the way I modelled the timber beams meant that all the planes of the plaster
and stone brick were smaller, individual triangles and square faces so the
textures would struggle to tile as seamlessly. Nevertheless, I used this to my
advantage.
·
The stone
wall texture could use this to its advantage; by having the ivy in the top left
area and that ivy being the same texture as my alpha (see later in this post)
then I could save tris later when it came to the foliage alphas as some of the
texture density would be on the walls instead. This also worked with the
plaster; the plaster is a horizontally tiling texture so I could add in fake AO
and grime at the top of each of the panels in the wall, so the overall
structure looked a lot more detailed than it was. The roof tile texture was
made with the roof modelled texture in mind – It had to have some linear
repeating tiles that I could fit to the extra geometry I added in the roof
itself.
·
The roof
tiles unlike the original concept were changed to be purple and blue/grey. This
was because the amount of foliage and greenery would make the roof blend in a
lot with the rest of the project, so by using a complementary contrasting colour
I was able to define the roof. I kept the colours dark to make sure that it was
not too distracting however, and it remained quite desaturated overall to make
sure that the saturation of the foliage was another contrasting feature that
let the rest of the building speak.
Alphas/foliage:
·
To add
lots of foliage onto my model, I had to use a technique called alphas and create
textures with opacity maps that match to give the appearance of a thin branch
or leaf.
·
I made a
set of 2 types of foliage – 1 being a large Ivy branch that would be seen
throughout the model, and the other would work like a “alpha texture trim sheet”
where once I put a plane in the scene with that texture set up on it, I could
adjust the texture while preserving UV’s was on and only get a set of flowers
or some grass.
·
This was my
first-time doing alphas and I learnt a lot about them – hopefully when I can
look further into PBRs and research more about how to optimise alphas I can
improve on later projects, however for how low poly these alphas were, I am
happy with how they turned out.
·
To avoid
issues with mipmapping, I used the technique of repeated gaussian blur on a layer
behind my texture to give a more accurate buffer area.
|
Branch Alpha Texture |
|
Plant Box Alpha Trim Sheet |
·
I applied these alphas with varied success overall, and eventually due to tris
constraint I unfortunately removed some of these altogether. I also met a
common 3DS max issue around alphas not rendering properly called Z clipping,
which at the time really scared me. It seemed to mostly be fixed within engine later
thankfully.
Initial application of the alphas, from reference with my concept
Plant box with fine rendering
Plant Box with Z Clipping
Z clipping on asset much higher up.
|
|
Trim Sheet:
·
I created
a sheet with a priority on the basic materials that I knew would be used
multiple times throughout my project. This included wood, metal and the window
panes because these were seen in the beams and window elements. I also added
some stone brick trim, which was not on my original concept but when it came to
adding things like edge dressing on the ground and around the steps to doors
this really helped. It also worked for some of the windows that were arched and
added some variety to a mostly wooden structure.
·
The wooden
elements contained 3 different types from a log to a hewn/planed log and then a
smaller plank, as well as the rings to be used on the ends of planks and edges.
·
If I were
to do this again, I would try and optimise the layout of my trim sheet with a
better plan – there was a bit of empty space I could have utilised to make some
textures bigger which would have made applying the textures a lot easier.
|
Final Trimsheet |
Screenshot of on the model:
·
After creating
the textures, I then applied them onto the model. Some of my original textures
like the stone texture were heavily changed to fit the theme a lot more, as
before they were very dark and didn’t match the semi painterly style of
everything else in my model. This also went for the trim sheet – a lot of the
wood texture was smoothed out a bit more to fit in with the low poly painterly
style that I established.
·
This was
truly where the model began to come together. Seeing it with the correct colour
and values meant that I could finally see my original concept in this model,
which was a very exciting development.
·
I
eventually got to a point where I was very happy with the model and its textures,
and every element had a suitable texture that could then be imported into
unreal where I could stage the final model.
|
Initial texture application |
|
Initial roof texture - front |
|
Initial roof texture - back |
|
Roof lined up - front |
|
Roof lined up - back |
|
Attempt at new stone texture - front |
|
Attempt at new stone texture - back |
|
Too Much Ivy - Front |
|
Too much ivy - back |
|
Final textured Model |
Final Conclusions:
·
I was
very happy with my final model as it looked very developed and better than my original
concept significantly, so I was very excited to see how it looked with decent
lighting set up, staging and even some particle systems.
No comments:
Post a Comment