Texturing - Alley Exercise

This week we learnt how to make and apply textures using Photoshop and Maya. We were presented with a blank alleyway model in Maya and the templates for the textures, and let loose.

I started with the wall and pavement, and did as is natural for an alleyway - made it look nasty, grimy, and run down. For the concrete frame, I used textures over each other; the green mildew ridden concrete over a cracked and lichen covered concrete for example. Using the eraser I created areas of low detail to contrast this so there would not be a detail overload for the player.

I did much the same for the brick wall - adding in peeling, painted areas from another texture and areas of plaster work. I'm very happy with how it came out.

The concrete pavement was easy and used many of the techniques I used on the concrete areas of the wall. But I used an image of chiseled stone, put it into grey scale, and added it as an overlay to create depth. I added shadows around the drain covers, and it was done.

Next was the barrel, which was simple a wooden plank texture with the chiseled stone overlay. The metal strips were harder, as their placements were not made obvious on the template, but came out looking wonderfully rusty. After that all I had to add was shadow and some flaking paint.

There were other simple things to do as well, such as the drain pipe and slats over the window.

Next up were the bump maps, which involved desaturating the colour of the textures until they were in grey scale. 

Once all of this was done and applied to the model, it looked like this!

I am very happy with the finished result - the textures work well in the flesh, aside from the manhole cover, I fear I added too much shadow to it, but overall I feel this was a success.

Maya T-Rex Part 2

The T-Rex project continues! I'm going to combine the process of creating the limbs and the painted final model.

So, the limbs. Making these involved the same process of extruding edge loops as the body did, just on a more intricate level. Getting the front view proportions right was especially difficult, but I muddled through.

And with that, we have the final model!

Next came the texturing, and for that we used Mudbox. Whilst I can appreciate how useful Mudbox is, I could do with a bit practice using it, especially the painting aspects of it. Nevertheless I still gave it my best shot.

Lava Monster

This week we were learning how to do glow effects in Photoshop, and what could be a more appropriate topic for this than lava?

First off we started with a bit of experimentation - using painted layers and photos of lava and applying the glow to them.

I quickly found I preferred the look of the glow on the photos, as it would apply the glow within as well, giving a hyper-realistic look to it.

Then we practiced with a paintover of a model; specifically, this one.

I decided to make it so the lava was holding the rocks together as an adhesive, so I started with painting thin strips of orange in between the visible lumps. Adding a glow effect, I then used a yellow to add luminescence, and more orange on a low opacity brush to add bounce light from the background.

I used this as an excuse to mess around with photobashing a background for the piece as well. The foreground (the "stream" of lava) I am happy with, but there is something about the background that does not work so well.

We then were tasked with coming up with our own designs for a lava monster at home. I started with a page of doodles, and took the design I was most happy with.

I chose the floating rocky eye one in the top left, and decided to do three variations of it after finding some really cool boulder references.

Maya T-Rex Part 1

Following on from the T-Rex we made in Mudbox, this weeks task was to create one from scratch in Maya.

Back to extruding and edge loops it is.

The head was our starting point, extruding a cube up from the base of the jaw and round to the snout.

Next was the body, which is an edge loop that has been extruded to the full length of the references body, and then its edge loops were manipulated to match the outline.

The flanks of the beast were a little trickier, as we had not front or top view reference. Thankfully, Google images exists.

And this is the end of part 1! I'm becoming a lot faster at working in Maya, and completed this in the three hour lesson.