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.

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. 

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

  

Crate Texturing

Week One

During week one of our new module Game Texture Development we had to do a crate. For it we had to use the hand painted texture method. In this post I will go through the basics of doing on this crate, because I just started blogging I won't be able to add to much details, however in the future my post will contain more details about my work.

I started by creating a plane in Maya and after that extruded one face, scaling it down. After that I had do extrude the face again to the inside, so I could get that indent, as it's shown on the image below, but there was one problem. After the extruding there were two face overlapping each other and I had to delete one so it looked nice. Then the only thing left to do was to copied the plane and connected them with each other.

When it came to the UV layout it was pretty easy. I had each face overlap each other so they  all shared the same UV texture space. As show on the image:

I made UV Snapshot of the UV's as a Targa file and placed the image inside of Photoshop. The size for the texture was set for 256x256. I used a basic brown base on which I added the bevelled planks and the side where the wood meets. After hand painting the dents in the wood I used Photoshop Effects: Inner Shadow and Outer Glow, so they had better features. Then I added this image over the texture, putting the layer on multiply so it could show through the texture below it, as it's show on the images below.

In the end I rendered it out inside of Marmoset Toolbag and there is the final result:

Nikolay Kolev- 2013