Texturing with Normals

Texturing With Normals

We were told to choose two or three images from the internet that we thought looked flat and that could be combined with a normal map to give the illusion that it ad depth to it. I chose two images that i though would work really well. The first one was a metal texture that looked like it had a couple of ledges on, I felt like these edges cold look more pronounced with the use of a normal map. 

The second image was a simple wooden paneling that I though with a normal map the groves in the wood and inbetween the panels could be shown a lot more. 

I used a program called Crazy Bump to generate the Normal Maps for both images, this is an easy and effective way to generate normal and Ambient Occlusion maps.

Once Crazy Bump had created all of these maps I then created planes for them, applied the textures and the bump maps and rendered them. The textures looked exactly how I wanted them to look with the metal texture being raised and the groves of the wood texture being enhanced. 

Sci-Fi Crate Texturing

Sci-Fi Crate Texturing

Normals & X-Normals

For this project we were given the Object Files of two crates, one being the low poly crate which was very simplistic and plain and then the second crate which was the high poly crate; this crate had much more detail including beveled edges and alot more polys.

Low Poly Crate & High Poly crate

The OBJ files were imported into Maya and we began the project. we put the objects into layers so that each component for each crate could be contained but also could be toggle to be either visible or not. 

Once we had studied the objects we began creating the UV's for them, this was a very slow and tiring process as we were planar mapping each face. Planar mapping is when UV's are projected onto an object through a plane, Planar mapping is primarily used on flat surfaces or on objects that can be viewed from one camera angle. 

When all the UV's for the Crate were gathered, I sorted them so i knew which UV shell was which and also where they were for example i grouped the UV's from the bottom and the top because i knew they would have the same texture applied to them. The Blue shells are the UV Shells, the reason as to why they are blue is to show that the light from the scene is hitting it correctly and that the faces of the mesh aren't flipped around. 

Once the UV's were layed out i created a normal map; a normal map also known as a bump map allows for all of the high detail and parts of the high poly model that are raised or cave in to be taken and flattened into one image, this image allows the low poly model to seem to have the same attributes as the high poly model. Below is the normal map that has been generated and has been applied to the low poly model. The way I created the normal map was by using a program called X-Normals. X-Normals allows you to import both high and low poly OBJ files and creates the normal map from the High Poly Model and applies it to the UV's of the Low poly model giving you the result below. 

When the Normal Map was created I then needed to create an Ambient Occlusion Map, this again using X-Normals i could create this map, Ambient Occlusion maps give the object the overall lighting and allows the object to receive and understand the light in the scene. The ambient occlusion map also highlights any shadows in the mesh. I then created the texture with a few White damaged plastic images that I thought went really well for this crate and I also went with an orange top and bottom to give the crate some colour, this was done with a very glossy plastic image which I then gave a colour overlay to give it an orange colour. 

The Finished product on its own in the View-port looked really good and I was pleased as to how the white and the orange complimented each other. Below is the Final Render. 

Spellbook Modelling and Texturing

Spell Book Modelling and Texturing 

For this assignment we had to design, model and texture a spell book. this post shows how I have modeled my spell book and also how I have textured it. 

Simple cuboid to start off with.

I began modelling the spell book with a simple cuboid shape. I then used the edge loop tool in Maya to create some divisions which I could then extrude later. 

Extruded Inwards.

Once I extruded the faces inwards I was left with a shape that looked like some kind of book. this would create the ridge of the book and also the pages that the cover would contain. 

I created a separate model for the latch that would hold the front and back covers together. this would be textured with a keyhole on the front that gave the illusion that the book was locked and belonged to the key holder. 

I then Layed out the UV's for the spell book by using an automatic mapping tool, this tool sets 6 planes around an object to capture the UV's of each side of the spell book. Below are the UV's that the automatic mapping tool layed out for me. As I thought these weren't too hard to understand and texture I decided to use these instead of rearranging the UV's and using a Planar map instead. 

Once I had created a snapshot of the UV's that had been layed out I took the Jpeg Image of the UV's into Photoshop; its here where i will texture the UV's accordingly. At first I wasn't entirely sure what UV's belonged to which part of the book. So I decided to create labels for each part of the UV on Photoshop as you can see below. 

I then applied the texture to the model in Maya 2016, this let me see if anything in the texture needed re-positioning, the keyhole on the latch was in the wrong place when I originally applied the texture. 

Once I had re-positioned the new texture I then applied it again and these are the results: