I've now completed the final assignment of the Game Art Module. On my last post I was describing how I had got to the stage where I was ready to UVW unwrap the completed model. This can be quite a lengthy process and it's only then you realise you should have modelled it in a different way. Oh well, I suppose that comes with practice.
It was only after I had unwrapped my model into about 26 different maps that Emel (our tutor) told us that it was better to try and get them unwrapped into 1-3 maps, as this would save on memory space when you came to put it into a game. Ooops, I'll have to remember that for next time. Never mind. I farted around with them for a bit and managed to get them into 4 in the end (head, body, arms and legs). Here is an example of the body map.
Once this was completed, I then had to set about texturing the map using Photoshop. Here is where all those art skills come into play. I quite enjoyed this, but remembering which sections apply to which part of the model was confusing, so had to keep referring back. Anyway, here is the same map once I had textured it.
It's quite easy once you know how. I applied the same principle for the other UVW maps and then imported them back into 3DS Max and as if by magic, they appeared in the right place on the robot.
No for the clever bit. As you can see all the textures look ok, they are all a bit flat so you can now a technique called bump mapping where you can use the same unwrapped UVW map and paint on it in monochrome to show the height of texture, a bit like on a terrain map. For this I thought I would show the back of the robots head as if he'd had a bit of an accident.
So here is the original texture.
Here is the bump map .
And here is the final result when it's all wrapped back on the model and rendered.
Of course no robot is complete without some where to live, so I threw together a couple of quick sketches of a location. I took inspiration from Hadleys Hope (you can never go wrong with an old classic)
And I came up with these.
It was then just a case of, as before, modeling, unwrapping and texturing. This time I was a little more adept as it :P..... so then I just added a couple of light sources, a camera, and plonked my robot in the scene and this is the final result after rendering....
I've now started playing around with animating the scene, but that's going to have to wait for another post.
Lights, camera, action......
