Thursday 28 February 2013

Texture Tilling

Week Five
First, task we had, was to tile an image of a marble flour. This is my image:
After repeating the image 4 times I got a pretty nasty borders, because the darker parts weren't tilling correctly with the light. Next I duplicated the image and used the High Pass filter to filter the out the broader tones. It also removes some colour and contrast. After that I set the layer mode on Luminosity. That way the light and the dark of the diffuse are evenly spread and controlled but the High Pass filter.
However, I want to bring back some of the colour in the image and I do that by using the Levels, by pushing out the black to the right. This is the final result I got:
Second part of our task was to create a tilling treadplane floor from scratch. I started with a based metal texture and applying the same principles as the marble texture.  I created the pattern making two selections with the Marquee tool and inverting the selection,
removed the parts I didn't needed and the final result was I got an oval. To round out the shape
I used the Median, which soften's the edges without blurring them. Next, to create a good trade pattern I used the grid, which I set to 16 pixels, 1 subdivision. I then duplicated and rotated the tread until the texture was covert and the rotated the layer to 45 degrees to create a nice diamond pattern. 

 After that I decided to add a panted side panel that will run along the wall and doing a centre
section. For the panels on the side I used the grid, when duplicating the image it would tile correctly. Then I use the black stripes and just duplicated them filling them with yellow. I made a layer mask and added scratch's and dirt to, so it looked more realistic. In the end I did a specular map for it, to bring out some of the details.


 For the centre section I started by doing an outline using the line tool to create an angular pattern. After that I added some details to it to make it more interesting, also use the same principle with the side panel. I also did and Alpha for it give it the see through effect.
 
Finally, I did a normal map for the three element's, again using the overlaying method from the last task. Made a normal map, after that I duplicated the layer and set it on Overlay and using the Gaussian blur and copping until I got the result I wanted.



On the image below you can see the final result in Maya.

Tuesday 26 February 2013

Texture to Normal

Week Four
Hey, everyone this time I will show you how convert textures and make an usable normal map and a specular map to give the texture a little boost. So we had to make an cobble texture, but I decided to make a brick texture, because it was a little bit different. Before starting to do anything I had to convert the image to 16 bit, because we had to do a lot of blurring and on an 8 bit image you would probably get a banding in the texture. 
After that I use the offset to my texture reduced my texture by half, if the size of my texture was 1024 my offset is going to be 512. After the I got sharp edges in the texture and using the crop tool to sample bricks with similar colour to fix it and get the result you see on the top.
Next, I copied the texture to a new layer, so I could soften the high level detail and leave on the big shapes. I used the surface blur on the layer, however, the settings for every texture could be different, but the result you want is to soften the noise details and leave the large shapes intact.
After, I had to run the X normal, but get much better results and the bricks to pop out, I ha to duplicate the layer and apply 1- 3 pixels Gaussian blur and after that set the mode to Overlay. I repeated that until I was satisfied with how strong was the normal map. Then I selected all the layers and copied it to a separate layer and used the X- Normal Normalize, because of all the overlaying I have pushed the colours of the normal map beyond the limit and this way I corrected them. On the image below you can see the result of the final normal map.

After that I made a specular map of the diffuse. I made an greyscale of my original image and worked on it with the levels tool to darken them a little, because brick are not supposed to be shiny, even if they are new, they have a more matte colour to them and that is what I did. You can see on the image below.

We had to use the same principle's with the rock texture, which we did after that. You can see the diffuse, the blur, the overlay- blur normal map, the normalized normal map and the specular map.




And this is the final result of the textures rendered in Maya.

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Sci- Fi Crate

Week Three

This week we had the task to concentrate on texturing than modelling. We were presented with a high poly and an low poly models done in Maya and the task at hand was to unwrap the UV's on the low poly object, also make a normal map, specular map and an Ambient occlusion from the High Poly mesh and apply them over the Low Poly mesh. It is shown on the two images below. On the first image you can see a snapshot of the UV's that I imported in Photoshop to help me with my diffuse map. The second image is taken from Maya in which you can see the High Poly mesh on the left and the Low Poly mesh on the right. 
 After the UV unwrapping it came time for the baking. The baking could be done in Maya, but also it could also be done in Xnormal. The reason we used Xnormal was, because the baking it self take's less time, whereas in Maya it takes a lot of time. I did my baking in Maya, because I was having problems with Xnormal and I got some pretty good results from Maya after a little bit of waiting. First, I baked my Normal map. I did it by make my objects the same size and putting the low poly mesh on top of the high poly mesh, so the program could get the information from the High Poly and apply it correctly on the Low Poly. After going through the settings and choosing the size of my Normal map, which in most cases in 1024x1024 and saving in as an Targa file, I pressed the baking button. However, before I did it I made sure that both my objects are visible and selected, so the program could find them, other wise some nasty results would have come out. You can see the final result on the image below.
After that I baked my Ambient Occlusion the same way I did with the Normal map. Ambient Occlusion is used to give you this shadow effect over the object and where two objects are going through each other. You can see it on the image below. 
After all the baking it came time to start working on my diffuse. I wanted to give the crate a nicely worn look, as if it's been knocked around in the cargo bay and while moving it around. I found a pretty nice based metal texture with scratch's.

Next I applied it over my AO, for which I made a separate layer and set it on multiply so it showed through the texture below. I was also looking at areas on the crate which would be likely to get scuffed and chipped and I then copied them with the Clone Tool to the right places using my Snapshot for a guide.
After that I wanted to add some symbols, text and other colours just so I could brake it into different parts and give it's own style. For the text I used a mask, which give me the opportunity to add a texture over the text just to give it that worn look. For the symbols and the strips I used the Polygonal lasso tool to get some good designs and played with the levels to give them worn- old paint. However, for the cross I used and image from the internet and applied the same principle.
For now it looked good, but I didn't look to realistic, so I decided to add another texture over it to make it look even more lorn out. But from this texture I only used the chipped areas but I needed them to be white so under Select Colour ranged a sample of the light grey and used the layer levels to make them even more whiter. You can see it on the image below, how I have applied it to the texture. 
Next I copied the texture and from it made and Specular Map. I started desaturating the colour of the text and the strips almost everything. While I was doing that I was thinking about the effect I wanted to give my crate and about the material beneath the paint.
Finally, I used the scratches of my texture and put them on one layer, I then opened the X-normal Height to Normals filter from the Filter menu. After lowering the Smooth Value I got the result I needed and had made a Bump Map. I put the Bump Map over my Normal Map while putting the layer on Overlay, so it showed through, but the bumps could still be seen. The image below show's the final result for the Bump Map.
 And here you can see the final result of my Sci- fi Crate I did for this week.

Nikolay Kolev- 2013 

P.S: Please comment on what you thing. 

Saturday 2 February 2013

Spellbook

Week Two

Ok, this time I will show you another task we had for Game Texture Development. This week we had to do a spellbook.

First off I started modelling it in Maya, which is pretty straight forward. I started with a basic rectangle shape. After that using the edge loop tool I split the object and after that it was easier to extrude and warp the object giving it a curve, so it looked more like an old, worn book. After modelling the cover and the pages, I used the bevel tool to smooth the edges of the back of the book, so it looked more pleasing to the eye. When I finished modelling the book, I started modelling the clasp for which I used the same methods and tools. With the modelling finished, I had to delete my history and combined the two objects into one, so they shared the same UV space. You can see the final result of the modelling below:



Unlike the crate, the book has a lot more face's and when it comes to the UV's it is more difficult. But in the end in comes to the final result with trying and practise. This time I applied a checker box texture to help me with the UV layout, which I used to help me see what kind of quality I would get on the different surface's. Having done that I used planar mapping based on camera and after that started working on my UV's in the UV Texture Editor. The final result you can see below:


After laying out all my UV's, I made a UV snapshot, saved it as a targa file and after that I put it in Photoshop. Starting of with the cover, I used some basic textures from www.cgtextures.com of leather. I wanted to achieve the effect of an worn and used leather. Multiplying one of the textures and using fx effect- inner shadow, so could get a better definition. Also, I applied and Hue/Saturation on them as you can see below:
   
 After this I used two other textures on it, because I wasn't satisfied with the result. Putting the layer of one texture on multiply and on the other on overlay this is the result I got:

I decided on working on the textures for the pages for which I used the same method. I used images from the internet and applied them to my texture sheet. Putting them on top of each other and erased parts I didn't needed. Also I used the brightness/contrast effect on everything. You can see on the images below:


After finishing with the pages and returned back the the cover. Using my UV's as a guide I used the fx effects: inner shadow and outer glow, I got very good definition and give the impression that it's a depression in the surface.


I've now use the Marquee and Line tools to create some spine details. The lines where stroked and after that I added Bevel emboss Layer style fx to add some bump detail. In the areas where I am going to place text I have added some block colour underneath the embossed line. I've set the layre on multiply to allow the leather texture to show through. After I've done this I added the text to the cover using 2 different fronts, an vivaldi one for the front cover and Segoe UI for the spine. I used cold colour for it and again added the Bevel emboss and stroke layer fx settings.

The next step after this was to add some details to the cover. I found some cool celtic symbols and after some tweaking again using Bevel emboss and stroke layer fx style.


 For the clasp I used some rusty textures I found and put them on top of each other. I erased what I didn't needed of the texture. The hinges, rivets and engraving were all done with outer glow and bevel emboss layer fx style.



And finally I rendered the model in Marmoset Toolbag and here is the final result:
  



Nikolay Kolev- 2013