Posts by deceiver

  • Sci-Fi Spaceship w/tileable texture elements workflow

    I just finished up a project for uni this week that used a texture and UV workflow I've never used before. My teacher said they used this kind of workflow for most of the vehicles in Avatar: The Game which he worked on.

    The exercise consisted on creating futuristic/industrial type models that would use one tileable 1024 texture. This means that the map has different elements that are tiled horizontally or vertically or even tiled in stacks, depending on what you want.

    It was a great learning experience and I wanted share the results with everyone and so that you could understand the workflow as well. It's rendered in 3DS Max with the Xoliul shader (btw, this was my first big model in 3DS Max, before 3DS, I was using Maya):

    Final Result:

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_ship_3-4.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_ship_side.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_ship_back.jpg]

    The same texture can be used for different models:

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_column.jpg]

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_reactor.jpg]

    The texture maps with tileable elements horizontally with specific details on bottom of map:

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_maps.png]

    As you can imagine, with this technique, UVs and their placement is definitely the longest part and aren't what you're used to, they're placed everywhere and can be stacked since the texture is tiled:

    [Blocked Image: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4121855/tile_UVs.jpg]

    As a whole, I proceeded the following way for this workflow:

    - Modeled the ship model

    - Created the tileable texture normal map (high-poly bakes on a plane can be used, I elected to do everything by hand with CrazyBump and PS given what my details were)

    - Unwrap the UVs of ship according to tileable normal map to see any issues with it and change as needed

    - Model other objects and unwrap according to texture again

    - Once the normal map seems sound, create the diffuse, spec and gloss maps.

    - Bring any adjustments to UVs after all the maps are applied, issues you didn't see with the normal map can show up

    - Since you now have everything, you can even cut in additional details in the geometry and create interesting combinations with the maps to make some places less uniform and such

    Wokflow pros/cons:

    + Texture resolution holds up really well given the tileable elements, something big like this unwrapped normally wouldn't have as much resolution, even in a 2048 map.

    + UVs can be done after the texture map has been created and can be moved around anytime and create interesting combinations. It is a very modular way of working

    + Texture maps can be re-used for other objects

    - AO or high-poly version of the whole model can't be baked given how UVs are placed

    - this type of workflow can only work on specific type of objects, something with too many specific details can't really be done

    - a good amount of planning has to be done for how the texture will be arranged and an appropriated model has to be chosen

    Long post! So yeah, I would love to get everyone's feedback and my model and textures before I post it up on my portfolio. Also, has anyone ever used this workflow before? What do you think of it? I haven't gotten around to checking the Fountain tutorial on Eat3D, but now that I think about it, is it a similar workflow?

    P.S.

    Shoutout to PhilipK! Your brick texture tutorial helped me lots to get a nice variation with the metal plating .

  • Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

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    Dunno if it's the same game designer Furyo mentioned who made this one like like the Conviction trailer and Visions of Venice one for AC2, but I love it!

    Anyone looking forward to the game? I'm looking forward to continuing the story in SP, dunno about MP. It pretty much looks like The Ship in gameplay, which I loved, so might be good?

  • Company of Heroes lead designer killed saving his wife&baby

    Quote

    Hello. My name is Erin Wood, and I wanted to send a request to please pass along my most sincere and heartfelt thanks to the gaming community for the overwhelming support provided to me in the past two weeks. I asked coworkers of Brian how I might best send my thanks, and they recommended sending them to Kotaku - hence this email. Any way you can help share this with the community would be much appreciated.

    Brian always told me about how close-knit and wonderful the video game community was, but I had no idea until this tragedy just how special a group it really is. From all the articles and comments, to the emails and donations, I am simply stunned and so touched by the love, kindness, and generosity shown to me and my family. As everyone knows, the last 10 days have been the most difficult, dark days of my life. But this journey has been eased tremendously by the thoughts, prayers, and well wishes received from friends, family, and strangers living all over the world. It is so meaningful for me to hear about how his work and enthusiasm for the industry has touched others. Brian was completely and utterly devoted to the game industry, and was pretty much living his dream every day. He woke up every morning excited to be working in such a creative, demanding field. It was such a joy to be married to someone who was absolutely passionate about his professional life.

    Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the compassion and support. It is so appreciated, and has been a light to me in this impossible situation.

    Warm wishes,

    Erin

    http://kotaku.com/5638353/an-open-lette ... pers-widow

  • Diablo 3

    Quote from Bunglo

    Completely forgot about Grim Dawn, definitely more along the lines of what I wanted D3 to look like. My biggest objection to the current D3 look is how smooth they have everything. I'm hoping they'll add some noise in there later on down the road.

    Bah, even starcraft 2, it's mechs and hard-surface stuff, yet they have a smooth and rounded finish.

  • We've finally gone public -- Project MyWorld

    It's a secret!

    Quote

    While there’s no news on APB, the BBC broke news yesterday that the administrators of Realtime Worlds have found a buyer for MyWorld. Staff had been kept on MyWorld in hope of them doing exactly that, so you have to chalk this up in the pro column for them. Who’s the buyer? It’s a secret. “One hundred per cent confidentiality has been imposed by the company.” said the administrators about this mysterious American company, “MyWorld has been sold and unfortunately we cannot disclose any further details of the sale.” Who is it? Well, the obvious guess would be someone working in the social-networking sphere though sources speaking exclusively inside our heads tell us it’s the Bavarian Illuminanti. We must ignore the voices, else we kill again.

  • Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days

    Haha, wtf =P. Us game developers, always so mature ;D.

    That's too bad about those sequences, would have been nice! It's cool that in the credits they listed your nicknames as well Warby, Zacker and Mazy...you were like the only ones with that priviledge it seems haha.