Part 14 Environment and Plants

1. Tackling the environment.

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3. The ivy in final render has 80 tris and is without a normal map just the texture map.

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5. From now on I will be only testing at 20% resolution because this render test took 9.38 minutes. Calculating the light shadow of the alphas and the normal map shadowing is time consuming. In conclusion I am not  having any normal maps on my foliage. Without the normal map it did it in 5 minutes and was fully rendered, it's a shame that Maya takes a long time to calculate were the alpha shadows textures will be.

6. I need to be careful with my lighting. I will also have to set up a lot more then one set of lights because the directional lights do interfere with the other lighting.

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8. Terrible lighting because I softened the shadow too much.

9. Decided to go with adding two more lights into the scene. red and green and also increased the blue directional lights. This gives it a sharp shadow yet its opacity is a little more soft. The coloured lights influence the shadow which gives it more variety. (Of course I am never happy with lighting I will change it again later on…)

10. I need to be careful with camera positions because rendering an object in the soft shadow may well make it look too dull. So knowing where the light is coming from helps me to position the camera will get better results.

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Back to texturing more plants.

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13. Cutting and transform warping. (I didn’t do too much of it because the picture quality will decrease).

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15. Time to moss things up and I may add poly moss.

16. I put the moss texture on everything outside. I really need to start putting in more junk items and mostly importantly the floor foliage. I will also have to tweak some of the ivy so it doesn’t give off an out of place dark shadow. (Bottom render is at 50% of 1024, haven’t turned up the shadow options and it is not in HD)

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20. A render at 25% for my third long leaf wall plant.

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Part 13 Lighting and More Assets

1. Due to the discovery I made when developing my machines I went back to sort out the lighting in all my other normal maps as I did have a problem with the lighting but now I am making it right for my normals to show correctly. Lighting is very important in order to test my normals correctly as normal maps use the light to cast the 3d shadow. If the lighting is wrong the normal maps are compromised.

2. I am trying out many options in the normal map software such as increasing its depth and lowering its opacity so that it gives a strong outline. From these renders I now intend to increase the brightness a little as it looks slightly too dark.

3. Light artists and designers are very important as it’s hard to get the composition just right. I'm not sure is I am totally happy with mine, I may have to change it at a late date but I have definitely managed to get the main shadow angled correctly.  For the last render I decided to turn the light angle down so it slightly sharpens the shadow and complements the light (contrast).

4. Finishing up the empty level of textures and normal maps I have missed.

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Running out of time, so I am quickly forming the last of the metal props because I really have to do the foliage.

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Forgot to texture the stairs and to make some kind of electrical light source so am making a start on these.

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20. Last of the metalwork and unfortunately I’m running out of time rush rush rush…

Part 12 Easter Rush Part 2

Metalwork

1. Simply splashed on a rust texture to see what’s it's like and what goes well with the flow of the level. (so many combinations of rust to choose from)

2. Still need to sort out the normals but not bad for the first try…

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9. Kept the previous rusty metal texture open so I don’t go off track.

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12. Just the diffuse texture and the normal map.

13. Hmmm….My machinery normals look ok but I really need to sort out the pillars, tiles, arch roofs and walls. I have now found out more information regarding how normal maps are sorted into layers. My initial mistake was to merge the whole diffuse textures together and then converted it to a normal map. I started to experiment on my machinery (pipes) with techniques I found online. Normal map layers vary on the density of the diffuse texture and the wireframe structure of the object.

14. Fixed the floor tiles but now having second thoughts on the colour of the rust. The rust should be a little darker as that’s how outside rust tends to be.

15. I changed the colour of the rust back to a darker brown. The yellow rust colour is more for a dry wasteland, this brown is required for my damp climate.

16. A single colour theme can change the whole feel of a room so I need to be careful in not letting texture opposites clash.