Finished door

I finished off my door today. This is the finished diffuse, normal and specular maps. The diffuse had just a bit more editing done to it since last time. The normal map was done quite easily too, using my previous map in combination with diffuse maps which I changed to normal maps which were then normalized and overlayed. The spec was just edited from the diffuse map and was done pretty easily.

Here are two maya renders of my door. 

And the two renders I did in Marmoset. 

Cottage door

I started an assignment this week which involves texturing an entire supplied cottage (very similar style to fable cottages). The first thing I did was normal map the cottage. This was problematic for quite a while as I didn't know about the unlock normals tool. However once shown this I finished the task quickly.

After the normal map I made an AO map which whilst not baking all that much information certainly gave enough for me to work with, any areas I wasn't happy with I went and quickly painted in.

When working on the diffuse, my first attempt ended up being a very washed out door made from driftwood. Whilst I liked the look of it, it was a bit dull and the cottage looks like it's from Fable, not exactly the right scenario to use this kind of texture in.

Following this I made a brighter more fitting diffuse. I added old metal hinges and door handle along with celtic patterns along the arch and the pillars for decoration and a slight fantasy feel.

And here's the door whilst still missing more normal mapped details which I can't do yet (need to use another computer for converting normal maps) and the specular map. I'm really happy with it so far and hope I can get the normal map working really well.

Textures applied

I finally got to apply my tiling textures. For the most part I got really good results which I'm happy with but there are a few issues with some of the maps which I'll talk about now. 

This is my bricks on a plane. This worked really well in my opinion, tiling well and looking very 3D. There are a few bricks which noticeably repeat which I will be wary of on future projects. 

Here's the brick texture on a cube, much the same though you can see more of the specular map working here. It looks nice, tiles well and I'm really happy with it.

This is my standard metal texture tiled. I'm quite happy with it but there is a slight colour change where it tiles. However having looked at it from a FPS camera, you wouldn't really notice it without actively looking for mistakes. In future I would take more time on the textures too.

My 3 variants of the metal texture together. From this angle it looks pretty good but there a few issues I'll explain with the next image. 

As you can see here, these don't tile perfectly. Some colour issues are prevalent around the edges of the tiles along with the grips themselves not fitting onto the textures perfectly.  

Overall, I've learnt a lot from this task and it will really help in the future. Next time I make a tile-able texture, I will do a few things. The first will be to have a more thorough check of how well it tiles. It shows that I spent more time on the brick texture than the metal one. The second would be that I would be to check if there are any more noticeable areas of the texture that could be noticed when tiled, such as on my brick texture. And my third thing is to think of how big the textures should be. Spending so much time on small details that won't necessarily be seen much isn't smart when time could be put into more attention grabbing parts of a scene.

Finished Cube

So this is my final render of the finished cube. Since last time I have updated the diffuse a lot along with adding some details to the normal map and creating a unique specular map. I enjoyed the little project a lot and learnt quite a bit about both baking normal maps and specular maps along with becoming more and more confident in my texturing abilities. 

Futuristic cube - Xnormal version

This is my Xnormal cube with all the maps on it. Once again it is rendered in Maya Hardware as any of the others mess with the map. Weirdly, the Xnormal map doesn't show any artifacts whilst the Maya created maps did. I think I may have made some mistake with those normals but I'll talk to my teacher on Monday. Anyway, Xnormal cube. 

Futuristic cube diffuse in Maya

So this is the diffuse, normal and AO maps all rendered together in Maya using the Maya Hardware renderer. Ordinarily I would use mental ray for beauty renders yet for some reason that was making the normals appear similar to the normals from Xnormals, I'm going to do some research soon and see if it is just a problem with my normal maps. As you can see on the right face there is a small artifact in the normal so it could be wrong but I don't have enough experience with them to be sure. Anyway the diffuse itself is pretty simple, being futuristic I imagine them having quite simple, efficient designs for things so I kept to squared shapes for the most part and had a small colour pallet. I also kept to quite bright colours, I don't know why but that is what I associate with future colours. 

Futuristic Cube - Ambient occlusion maps

So I just finished making, applying and rendering the AO maps onto my two cubes, the top Maya textures, the bottom Xnormals. Again it is rendered in Maya giving the textures made with it more suitability for the software. The Maya AO worked really well and looks great with no errors that I can see. The Xnormals one has a few issues such as the corner bolts and darkening around the edges. The edges are to do with the normal map as the AO is clean but the bolts have rendered out black, I don't know why that is yet but I plan to do a little research into Xnormals later to see if I am doing anything wrong. Next will be the diffuse map which I will then put on both cubes and see how they look. 

UPDATE

Following this I looked at Xnormals again and read the small warning message that popped up when I started rendering out maps. It said the high definition mesh had a small scale or something similar. After searching the internet I found a fix for the issue which was simply increasing the size of both meshes before you export them as FBX's. Here is the updated cube. As you can see the edges still have weird streaks because of the normal map but the whole AO is a lot cleaner and matches up better with the normal. Also the bolts on the corners are no longer black which is a big plus. However one of them did remain black, possibly I didn't scale the model enough? I will ask my lecturer on Monday but I shall leave the error for now as 3 of them are fine and you can see the final results of what Xnormals can do.