Pumpkin PBR Refresher Project - Unwrapping + Texturing

 Pumpkin PBR Refresher Project - Unwrapping + Texturing

Introduction/disclaimer:

Before beginning my texturing process, I first read the brief again for how to break down the sheets. I initially read the brief with the understanding that the presentation material around the pumpkin had to be included in the brief, so I put the whole tortoise onto a single sheet to take up the 2048. I only spoke to Kat about this once I had finished texturing and we decided it was not worth changing the texture work I had done just for a bit of extra resolution, so I left it as it was and the extra presentation work just took up a single 1024. Going forward I now know that briefs will clarify how the presentation will factor into budgets with a separate presentation budget given, so hopefully I won't make that silly mistake again.

Unwrapping:

This was a fairly simple process as usual, however the main problem was hiding seams. I has given myself a lot of cylindrical shapes for the tortoise legs and head, which meant that the was of unwrapping the two ends and then having a connecting seam had to be carefully hidden. The face was also really awkward to unwrap and I think there may have been a better alternative, however I settled for adding seams at the back of legs and the neck, as well as at creases such as the mouth and top of the nose where the materials would change too. All the emissive flat areas were unwrapped as their own small islands too because it was then easier to isolate them when texturing in painter and using the poly select tool. 

The final unwrapping looked like this:

Unwrapped UV Islands

Seams on the model

Baking:

I actually ran into very few major issues with the bake. I kept the resolution high and let it AA all the maps to ensure when I did my myriad of generators they would be smooth to the model, and it resulted in a fairly clean looking bake. There were a few areas such as the nostrils that didn't bake too clearly, so I planned to define those later through texturing anyway. The wood grain I had put on all the wooden areas came out clear enough and could be emphasised with textures too, so I then quickly moved on.

Final Bake

Texturing:

Pumpkin:

To begin, I wanted to get the core aspect of the model recognisable; the Pumpkin. This was the main brief requirement of making a pumpkin, so I spent some time making a couple of iterations. I bought a small munchkin pumpkin at this time to keep at my desk for some very valuable reference at my fingertips. It helped me gleam how the pumpkin would interact in light, and how I could push this into a more fantastical realm fitting a possessed pumpkin tortoise.

The first version I made was extremely basic - It was just 4 simple layers that ended up being too shiny and not having the very intricate patterns acting almost as ribs along the larger pumpkin sections, so I gave it another attempt. I was told by some fellow students that I should really push the colours used for the shadows to not be desaturated, as this gives a very drab appearance and makes the object appear dead. By adding a deeper red, it implied that there was less scattered lighting than at the extrusions, giving the pumpkin greater depth. The patterns I made were hand drawn filters over the model to create smaller bumps over the model, and by using a slope blur filter I could then make these shapes more organic.

I used a baked stylised lighting to give an overall gradient to the pumpkin shape, which was a technique I had not used before and happened upon through looking at some stylised texture guides by "Stylized Station" on YouTube. In particular this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2HczUHdllU&ab_channel=StylizedStation) basic layer set up for this cockerel was very useful in learning how to add a lot of colour depth and variety into my texturing process.

As a final 'fantastical' step, I experimented with some extremely subtle gold sparkles at the top sections of the pumpkins flesh. I made these sparkles metallic, which meant that they will always be rendered as extremely shiny as opposed to just simply using very low roughness. This was a very subtle effect that I was really pleased with, and later used when I textured the eyes.

Pumpkin Texturing Process/Layer Breakdown

Wooden Elements:

I had some practice texturing wood before with my fireplace project since most of that was wood texturing for the entire tree and other assets. this was fairly straight forward, and with the addition of the stylised baked lighting it really added a lot of depth to the model.

Here was the process in a very simplified diagram:

Wood Texturing Process/Layer Breakdown

Final Touches:

Finally, I had to decide how I would characterise my tortoise through its eyes. These, along with the subtle smile for the mouth, were the limited characteristics of the model to give personality, so I had to decide from here which direction he went. I had been nicknaming him "Bartholomew" or just "Barty" for a while at this point, and I still had the Pokémon direction in the back of my mind. I looked at Torkoal again and it has no eyes, just closed lines, and most Pokémon had these simple black discs for pupils. I began from there, keeping a very emissive yellow for the sclera. However the detail I had for the rest of the elements that I was happy with at this point did not match that reductive simplistic design, so even when I added a baked white highlight and changed the shape or colour of the eye it still did not look right. after communicating with my peers, I made a different sclera that was a lot more detailed and had some subtle shading. This change meant that the eye was separate from the pumpkin itself, since a common query I got was whether the head was glowing like the pumpkin, which I decided against. I added a pattern found on tortoises and terrapins (seen on the board), which gave me the idea of adding a subtle sparkle to the eyes. I used the same method of small metallic specs in the eye to make it appear extra sparkly than just the lowered roughness, and this really helped make the eye pop. I kept the baked eye highlight just white dielectric, because when it was metallic it looked really bizarre when it was viewed from other angles.

Here is my final textured pumpkin tortoise:

Eyes Process and Final Pumpkin Tortoise Texture

Conclusion:

Now my model is complete, I can begin to present the model in unreal engine and collect my beauty shots. I am hoping to really push myself in this stage, so I am going to dedicate a separate post to this. This is technically at the end of the assigned brief for this project and since the next backyard slice project will be teaching designer and more unreal presentation methods, I am going to present my model when I have those skills under my belt.