Spooky Graveyards n' Stuff!

Working on the more prominent assets of the level. Hopefully I can get an alpha done in the next 2 weeks.

Update!

Been working my ass off. There's more than this, will post on Monday when I get to the studio for more images.

3D'd Texture Test!

Sometimes textures look great, looking flat and perpendicular to your face. However, in the 3D realm of games and animation, it could look way different when tiled, lit lowly, and viewed from a different angle other than head-on in Photoshop's window. So far, I'm very pleased with what I have done. I've grown much in putting more and more dimension into my handpainted textures, adding more darks and lights to make it feel like there really is depth to it, starting from the brick walls back in May, to the summertime stone floor tile, to the wood that I've started and finished yesterday. And I hope to grow so much more with this. My next challenge: metal! Hope it turns out well when I get to it!

OMG Morning Wood!

For the longest time I've had nothing but complete and total trouble (though not as much as typing on this stupid Apple keyboard with the flat keys in the animation studio here at Rio Hondo College) with creating a decent wood texture, be it a photo-collage, or hand made. But within the first two hours of class I managed to start and bring something that looks this good from where I was to near completion. I think I'm finally breaking through the blocks that have been holding me back. Things are going nowhere but upward from this point onward.

Texture Updates!

STONEWALLED

Semester's over, but I'm still working my ass off. My latest textural endeavour is this nice little quad-tiled stone wall/flooring.

All In All...

...you're just another brick in the wall. -Pink Floyd

Working on the brick texture for my new project, going for a more handpainted/Blizzard style of texturing. Personally, I think it's going along great.

BUY MY MODELS!!!!

In an effort to work myself harder on improving my work (and earn some much-needed money), I've decided to put my better models up for sale over at turbosquid.com!

BUY MY STUFF!!!
http://www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/AmarantusDesign

WIP Updates

Because some of the rendering I showed in a previous post weren't really up to date, I've decided to post the most up-to-date shots of my work.

The atomic generator's tesla coils have their texture complete and applied, now, as well as the support beams that will be used throughout the ship. I'm very satisfied with how the brushed metal came out on the orb at the end of the coil. Looks absolutely brilliant!

As stated before, the computer and mainframe has been completed for quite some time. The large levers and analog gauges are textured and applied, completing the control console. The mainframe is pure image mapping. Tape spools and all slapped onto a cube, but still cleanly done nonetheless.

Some Space-y Stuffs.

So I've been pretty busy with this semester long assignment for my gaming environment design class. I've finally got something into the game engine (we're using Unity) and the little bit that I have somewhat polished was shown to an advisory board meeting of some professionals from Blizzard (art lead for Diablo III), Farsight(environment artist), and Sony Santa Monica(Environment art lead for God of War III), which I was really excited about. I was paired with a character designer who had made an excellent robot character, (seeing as my spaceship was the closest match) so many changes were made to my environment. Originally, I wanted to make everything in Russian, to give a sense of unfamiliarity, and to stir up some old Cold War/Space Race vibes, as well as everything being designed with a retro-futuristic/atompunk flair. So we have this vintage/modern clash going on here, which I think is pretty cool, and will make it much more interesting.



This is the current state of the generator room, sans walls to get a proper rendering. One of the biggest motifs I wanted to flaunt was the use of the Tesla coil. These things scream "mad science" and is a staple in a retro sci-fi theme. Case-in-point: Fallout 3 and Wolfenstein!





Granted, the coil wasn't too big of an implement in my original ray gun model:



The model has been abandoned anyway, as it was originally going to be used as an FPS implement.

Another big thing were the computers.



The computers are made in the old-fashioned UNIVAC style room fillers. Granted, this is a rather old rendering. The rest of the components are fully textured, as well as a mainframe model, which compliments this very nicely.

Stoned: The End?

Oh man I hope this is good enough. This little square has been splitting my mind in two for the past two weeks!

Update tomorrow afternoon after critique.

Stone Wall: Update

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Just got into the animation lab, nabbed the last available computer station with a graphics tablet and added this little afterthought: if this temple has been sitting in a dense, humid jungle, wouldn't there be growth on the stone? So I dropped the file into Photoshop and added an extra layer under all the shading & highlights and put in some moss. The professor has yet to see this, so I might update this with the result of his critique and a possible updated version.

UPDATE: Prof's review.
Dimension: check.
Texture: check.
Natural looking: not so much. Some of the brushwork is too patterned and lost some of it's painterly look. Gonna have to look up some links, and go for another back-breaking evening at home adding more detail to this until it's perfected.

STONED.

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Original design in Corel Painter


Redone with Corel & Photoshop

So I took my texture in to work with my professor, and he gave me lots of help with improving my texture and giving it MUCH more depth! I've been working on it all evening to get it done. Was it ever tedious! But I guess this is what you have to go through to make it in the industry. My back is bloody stiff, but the outcome of this justifies it quite well and I'm very satisfied with this.

Classwork: Textures

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLAGE

Wood plank made in Photoshop

Stone wall made in Corel Painter

I've been working ahead and started to put together some textures for my class assignment and mapping to my Blender composite. I'm looking for a painted look in the way Blizzard does theirs. I've been working with my professor to try and flesh them out as they are far too flat.

Monday Vignette: The Nerve Centre

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE
If there's one thing I love, it's Sci-Fi stuff. Especially things like space battles. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. Watching C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. Okay, enough Blade Runner references, you get my point, almost every epic sci-fi movie/game has an awesome space battle scene. Or even cooler, a shipwreck drifting about. While this little scene isn't exactly wrecked, something definitely has happened to jostle monitors, knock off communication lines, bring up alerts, and pull down the lighting fixtures. The scene was heavily inspired by the GFS Valhalla level from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, though not as heavily wrecked as the Galactic Federation's battleship. And definitely not swarming with those nasty Metroids.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption © Retrostudios & Nintendo
Bad cellphone shot © me

I especially like the outcome of the scrambled screens. Photoshop's wave filter, set to square, and repeat. Adjust settings or hit randomize until satisfied. Add some noise and horizontal grain filters, play with layer modes and opacity... voila!

Ahhhhh... reminds me when the logic board took a crap on my Mac... bad times, bad times...

Containment Unit: Haulers and Yards

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

After working on the containers, I began to build other things that may relate to it: container loaders, storage yards, & such. The textures used are either preloaded with Strata 3D CX, open license images, or made from scratch in Photoshop.

 

Containment Unit-rendering photographs

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

On top of rendering homemade textures, I also experimented with using actual photographs of metal containers and using photoshop to create a greyscale texture maps to give the ribbed texture more pronounced depth and to be able to work with a changing light source

I also put my photoshop generated colour map to see how well it stacked up (lame pun) against the photograph maps.

The photographs used in this image are open license.

Containment Unit-flat texture>bump maps>model

This post will show my process in creating a texture and applying it to a 3D model. The object which I will render is a simple one, that I have been focusing and experimenting on for awhile-metal containers. After looking up some for a good idea of how they look, (you wouldn't believe the small but important details you would miss just working from your head) I went into Photoshop and created an image map:

CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE

Afterward, I created a texture map, which uses greyscale values to determine how deep areas rise and fall, and apply the appropriate shadows when rendered:

Finally, I create a primitive rectangular prism, and apply both the colour map and texture map in Strata 3D CX, and rendered it:

Although the top and ends feature the broad side's mapping, the focus of this was simply in one area.