Diorama modelling and textures

Week 10&11

During week 10 and week 11 I was concentrated on modelling and texturing the diorama for my vehicle. First I started off with a military checkpoint design, but thing proofed difficult and with it I wasn't showing off my model, which is the main purpose of the diorama. 

So I started allover again and changed it to a more basic one. The result was much better that what I had before and you can see on the images below. 

Army vehicle Texture

Week 8&9

After unwrapping the UV's for the Hagglund and baking the high poly for it, all there was left to do was texture it.

For textures I used my own reference images and hand painted textures. First, what I did was to bake an AO for my mesh, however I had to bake the tracks and body separately, because if I had baked them as a whole I would get a nasty black seam on my wheels and tracks if I was to animate them. So I duplicated my mesh and separated the tracks from the main body. After that I left only one of each wheel and deleted all the others, because I didn't need them for the bake.

On the image above you can see what I used to bake my tracks. I used only this set of wheels, because all the others were duplicates and I didn't need to bake all of them. After that in Photoshop I combined the AO for the body and the tracks in to one AO sheet. I had to fix some issues I had, but what I did was to hand paint them by using the Clone tool in Photoshop.

After my Ambient occlusion was finished, I started making my diffuse for the mash. As I said before I used self- gathered reference and some hand painted textures.

First, I applied a base metal texture to almost every part of the mesh. Then over the body and the roof- top I set a hand painted texture resembling green paint. After that I wanted to add some detail to it, so I painted some dirt, thinking of on which part of it it would have dirt. Using the Lasso tool in Photoshop I hand painted some spots over the roof top.

Second, thing I did was to pain some spots over the body using the same technique just to give it a more military look. I added some layer effects inner shadow and drop shadow to make it look more interesting. I also applied a layer mask over them and copied on the mask textures with cracks and rust, just so it could fade them and give them a more worn look.

Third, I did the inside using pretty mush the same textures. I only added a lather texture for the seats and steering wheel. Another thing I did was to rework the hinges, because my normal map for them didn't work out very good, I decided to hand paint them. Using my UV's as a guide, I hand painted where I wanted the bolts and after that using the layer effect Bevel and emboss, stroke I got a pretty good result.

Finally, after I did all the textures for the tank, I wasn't happy with the final result, because it looked to new and considering it is a military vehicle I wanted it to have a more worn out and used look, so I applied a layer mask over the green paint using a scratched metal texture and the result was that it showed the base metal texture beneath it which was the result I was looking for. After that I applied a hue/saturation and Levels over the whole texture sheet and this is the result I got.

I then added my normal map for it using my high poly bakes for Maya and made a specular map, so it wasn't so shiny.

Army Vehicle- UV's & High Poly

Week 6&7

In this post I will show you how I did my UV unwrap and some High Poly backing.

After I finished modelling my model, it was time to start unwrapping my UV.

To do that, first I applied a checker box texture over my model, because that way I would be able to see where the texture is stretched. After that I selected all the faces on the part I want to UV and using Planer Mapping, I unwrap it and scale it down to the right size. The size of your UV depends on where it's facing. For example, on the image above, you can see how I have scaled the rooftop and the main body to have a higher resolution that the wheels, because it's a bigger surface and you would be able to see more details on it. I used the same technique for everything else. However, for the parts that were duplicated, I unwrapped the UV's for one, deleted the rest and duplicated the unwrapped part. I will as an example the wheels, because you can see it more clearly. By using this technique, I also save a lot of UV space, because all the UV's for the wheels are overlapped. The same is with the other duplicating parts.

   On the image above you can see, how my UV's are laid out. All the dark blue and purple UV's are duplicated. After I did that I took a UV snapshot, which I saved as a Targa file and uploaded in Photoshop, so I could start working on my texture.

If you want to make an Ambiet Occlusion bake of your model, you would need to clear out all the duplicating UV's and leave only one of them, because your AO bake will not work with duplicated UV's.

After I unwrapped the UV's for my model, what I did next was to make a high poly models of parts that I needed, so I could bake a Normal Map from them and get more details. 

  First, I did the high poly for the wheels. Modelling is pretty straight forward, only difference is that you don't need to worry yourself with poly limits. After I was finished with modelling of the wheel and baked the normal map for it using Transfer Maps, I wasn't very happy with it, because of the edges (you can see on the image above), so I when back into Maya and deleted some geometry and this was the result I got:

After that I baked the wheel again and this time it looked a lot better and smoother.

I did high poly models for the tracks, doors, panels, hinges, radiator, ect. 

 For all of them I used the same technique's and where I had problems with the cylinders after I baked them, I used the same solution as I did with the wheels.