The structure itself happens to be a pair of weathered pillars clasping a gate that when opened would see you enter the grounds of a grave yard.
Instantly chilling yet something bursting with character. Rust, moss, cobwebs, eroded corners, everything I was hoping to find.
Pictures paint a thousand words so I have made a few compilations of the structure to highlight its aesthetics as well as act as reference images for my model.
Distanced images to get the overall mood and silhouette of the structure.
Close ups of the metal work in the gate, as well as the rust and mold present.
A look at the smaller details on the pillars such as the padlock and gateholder.
A few images looking at the surrounding old and new metal rusted gates.
References gathered it was time to start this thing... primitive style. I will list a series of progress with small captions under each image if necessary.
At this point the model is complete in terms of it mesh and has been cleaned up of all n-gons and unnecessary edges. The next stage is the much anticipated and dreaded UV mapping. This has to be done to ensure a texture is applied comfortably ans intended and is a critical part in the creation of every 3D asset in games.
Automatic mapping was done initially not to be used a means of creating the UV's but of forming a sort of "parts list". That way once everything has been UVd I am able to check if there are any remaining pieces I have missed and subsequently locate and UV them properly.
The "parts list" is moved to one side and the UVing begins through planar mapping choosing to do it from either the x,y, or z axis based on what's appropriate.
Some areas were trickier than others sometimes requiring cylindrical mapping. In the end there were a few hiccups, the discovery of reversed normals and hidden faces but after an arduous journey the UV's were finally mapped to an acceptable state.
The placement could have been more efficient and the faces them selves straighter but for a first attempt I am pretty pleased. The UV's for my expected final will be far cleaner I hope.
Before moving on I wanted to take some time to capture some "beauty shots" of the model in mental ray just to focus on the geometry and mesh of the asset before creating the textures.
The next stage was attempting a texture. At this point i am well aware of what a diffuse map is and how it works as well as creating an ambient occlusion layer to overlay it to add that sense of depth. I am less familiar with specular maps and normal maps but will attempt to give them a try and whether they are successful or not the attempt will at least give invaluable insight into how they work and what it takes to produce them.
The diffuse maps is as shown below.
I felt it was semi successful but not as well thought out as I'd like. I think it requires a lot more weathering and far more features to break up the repeating patterns. Despite this I believe it is passable and this exercise was more of a geometric study than a texture study. In the future I will attempt a more thought out layout and merge the textures better.
The specular came out as expected and did a good job of reflecting the mossy areas and exposed metal and clouding the rusted, stony, and non reflective surfaces on the pillars.
Finally the normals were a good attempt but very awkward to create. I must say I still feel limited in my knowledge of how they function and how to produce a truly effective normal map. Hopefully through some further research and study I should be able to produce a decent map for the final project.
Thoughts:
At this point I was very pleased with the outcome of the study, particularly in the mesh. My criticisms however is that the gate was far too detailed and high poly for what it was and as a result a nightmare to UV. In the future I should stick to finding the minimal way to creating information with geometry and focus solely on the sihouette and not intricate details that are very likely to be missed by the player.
Other faults i have are in the texture. Unfortunately I did leave it late and as a result it felt rushed with plenty more that could be done to it. All in all though this piece acted as an enormous learning achievement propelling me far further into the 3D world through the required task of trying to recreated a real life object in digital form.
It was enjoyable to create and will more than certainly help me towards the final goal of this project.
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