Diffuse Texturing Process Completed

I have now completed the diffuse texturing process and have still to do a set of specular maps for the models. As of now here is a quick screenshot of a UVW unwrap and it textured fully with a diffuse.

Here you can see I've put emphasis on the grain of the wood, the majority of the objects are placed along similar grains to save time during this process of texturing.

Here you can also see the texture of the tiles that I've begun to complete. The detailed dragon was taken off of a picture of an already existing Chinese tile, which can be seen here...

http://www.123rf.com/photo_5525979_chinese-temple-in-the-summer-palace.html

I changed the colour values to match the tone of roof I desired for my models, which was a swampy green. This was done with the colourise function within Adobe Photoshop.

Unfortunately I don't enough time to complete a set of normal maps for the models as I've run out of time for this process which I really wanted to complete. It was a goal I set myself If I had more time but unfortunately I can't.

Some of the grass pieces I used seem less textures which I also found helpful online, they were also free to use and can be found here...

http://seamless-pixels.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/free-seamless-ground-textures.html

UVW unwrapped and texturing process begun

I'm pleased to announce that I UVW unwrapped all of my models earlier utilising instances where possible. Some examples of the unwraps can be seen below. I often struggle with unwrapping but I seem to have coped okay with the overall amount of objects I had to unwrap. I have given certain UV islands more space if they were used frequently within the model or were at the players head height. This was to reduce stretching of the pixels that is obvious to the player and could be seen from the players point of view.

This UV map is the whole unwrap of the main building excluding the roof. This is also both double building and triple buildings. It's tried my best to pack the UV islands so that there is the as least possible texture space wasted. The unwrap is a 1024 x 1024 render as this was what was stated on my proposal for my maximum unwrap dimension size. 

Here you can see the full scale of the set of models I have made. The blue indicates the model pieces being fully unwrapped. The black area is the part that was being currently unwrapped when this image was taken.

From this point I thin started to create the diffuse texture for the models. I began on the part of the structure that was most important to the dissertation, so I began with texturing the building, a piece in particular was a Dou piece that had been instanced nearly over 100 times throughout the model kit.

To get this wood texture I used a hardwood texture online and then multiplied it on a separate layer to give the textured layer on top of a base red colour. The texture I used can be found here and was posted and has a public domain license.

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=25761&picture=wood-texture&large=1


From this point I will just keep working on my texturing process, until completion.


Kratochvil, Petr . (N/A). Wood Texture. Available: http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/view-image.php?image=25761&picture=wood-texture. Last accessed 20th May 2014.

UVW unwrapping started + Preparation techniques

Just a quick update, I have prepared the models for unwrapping, as a solution to the many pieces I have to unwrap that are similar I have developed a simple solution. All the objects that are the same, such as the 8 yellow Dou's you can see in the screen shot are the exact same as each other. My plan is to now delete all of those that are copied and create a 'Master' clone. From this I will then copy the master clone creating instances and replacing the deleted clones with the replacement instances. This will then mean that I would only have to unwrap the single 'Master' Dou and it shall unwrap all of the copied instances. Although the textures will come out the same, the materials of what they are made of (red stained wood) will be the same and that's what I'm going for.



From the image above, you can clearly see the 'master' Dou for this model, unwrapping this piece would unwrap all of the yellow ones. So this method should hopefully save me some extra time whilst unwrapping. I've never done this method or thought of doing this method previously to this but I'm hoping it can shave some production time off of my creation process.

To show clearly what I'm talking about I have a quick demonstration below, I'm going to refer to this as the 'master and slave' technique. Here you can see the whole main model with the master and slave technique. The master pieces are in black and the slave pieces are in bright green.



From this you can see how much less unwrapping I have to do, this will also be the same fore texturing also. Let's have a closer look at a whole set of brackets.

Black pieces = Master | Green Pieces = Slave

This side shows a lot of master pieces in use, however I tried to keep the master pieces to all one side of the model so I can keep them all grouped to ease the unwrap process. Here below you can now also see the other side of the model, this can really show the amount of reduction to the unwrapping stage this could potentially do, green being the parts I wont have to unwrap again, only once with the master piece.



For a quick demonstration on a single master piece of how it will work. Here is a small 'Dou' with it's master being affected in some way, as you can see it affects all instances within the scene.



Honestly I wish I though of this much, much sooner into the production process as it would of saved a lot of time, but oh well. We learn and must soldier on...

Resetting my Xforms and finishing the modelling process.

Over the last few weeks I have noticed these white bounding boxes around my models becoming slanted and I was concerned if they would affect the final outcome of my project. I did some searching online to find out what the issue was and according to a forum post on the CGArchitect.com website, the issue is with the bounding box. The bounding box coordinates have shifted and have turned on their side, and seem to have warped completely out of shape, this can be seen below.

I did some further investigation on the Autodesk 3dsMax help document on their website and it states that.

"The bounding box is the smallest box that encloses the maximum dimensions or extents of an object. A bounding box appears around selected objects in non-Wireframe viewports."

I also then found out on the CGArchitect forum that to reset the bounding box, all I had to do was reset the objects Xform.

And now you can see the bounding box fits parallel to the ground now.

In the picture above you can see a cross section of a small roof piece, here I am applying a symmetry modifier as I was advised by a friend of mine that I could cut down polygons by using this modifier and then merging it at the seem on the roof tiles. This would also remove any unseen anomalies within the structures dimensions.

A technique I've been using myself is that when a model is ready for UVW unwrapping, I will change their whole model to a certain colour, in this instance for the walls I'm using green.



Here you can see this and how close I am to unwrapping, the yellow model is the current model I'm preparing and So after this post I will begin the unwrapping procedure. Which is something I can't wait to begin.

AutoDesk. (N/A). Bounding Box. Available: http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-4F9C1D31-E5EB-4641-94C9-5C1988178AC4.htm,topicNumber=d30e600845. Last accessed 8th May 2014.

Wildman, Peter. (2010). How do u reset the bounding box to align with the object?. Available: http://forums.cgarchitect.com/39227-how-do-u-reset-bounding-box-align-object.html. Last accessed 7th May 2014.

Last minute issues

I'm so close to finishing the modelling process now and I have been checking over the models for their scales and I have found a small issue that will need addressing now before I go onto the unwrapping and testing stage. I have tried to keep all objects within a 256x256 pixel block so they are functional modular pieces. However I have just noticed that the wall pieces are not flat on the factor of 16 grid plane. A small print screen here shows this.

Here I have highlighted the issue with the walls each grid space is 16 units and is the scale I've used for the whole model space. The red line shows the centre point of the current wall piece, and the blue line is where the centre point should be for this to work.

The solution for this could be that the wall piece's pivot point be put on a factor of 16 which can be seen below. The green cross marks a suitable location for the pivot, this should hopefully also work when the wall is then rotated back around 180 degrees.

Nearing completion of modelling process

The modelling process is nearing completion and i'm nearing the unwrapping section. I am feeling that the process is going well, although I don't have much time left to complete the whole dissertation, the models and their structures are as modular as I can make them.

The rule that I have had to keep by is that each objects parameters must be a factor of 16 or at least the centre of the vertices must end on a multiple of 16. This has come in handy as I set the scale factor in UDK to 16 so that the pieces literally snap together. From this I have also found issues with certain elements.

Here you can see an error with the building connector element.

This is a small screenshot from UDK. Here you can see that there was an error in the model calculations. However when I checked the model dimensions the maths was correct and also the models vertices were each on the perfect spot. This took a few hours to figure out, but in fact it was just a 3dsMax glitch and after re importing the model from a separate file, the error disappeared.

Here is the corner piece in UDK still showing the error

Now, the piece is corrected and all the walls join seamlessly. The corner piece of the wall is also finished after an extensive amount of maths. I must admit that during this whole dissertation, I have found that the extensive and handy use of post-it notes during modelling something so complex in maths a big help. Here is a small note on the maths for the corner piece on it's own.

On the left is a few notes on the construction of the corner piece and to the right a list of factors of 16

As an outcome, here is a print-screen of the final corner piece in a position it could be in during the level editing phase.

In this picture you can also see the scale of the 3 piece building compared to the original mock up model (in red). If anyone could remember from the first mock up, the size of the building was so small that it felt too cramped to walk around as a game character.

Here a print screen of the whole models in the kit so far, there are some models which are there for reference and will be remove before the end. At the top it says there over 41k polygons in the scene, although this total is getting close to the  maximum of 45k polygons, the mock model itself is 12k polys and will be removed soon thus would bring my total down a lot more.

Modelling update

Hello there! Just a quick modelling update on what I've been doing. I know I should have completed the modelling stage by now, but I simply haven't yet due to the complexity of how each individual model must sit right and be accurate in terms of scale., but I'll update everyone on my current progress.

Right now I'm working on making modular pieces of wall. These pieces are to fit with every opportunity that the level designer needs and so needed a lot of work, but the whole modelling process is nearing completion.

Here is the workings out of the production of a corner wall piece as well as the variety of walls I've already created. They do look very similar, but each individual one has slight variations to counter for different scenarios.

I've also been working on a system of small blocks that will raise up the whole building in a very similar fashion to how the residential are constructed.

Here you can also see a set of steps that I've produced to help the player up the incline. This will have a sloped gradient custom collision box to give the player a smooth transition when moving between gradients and heights.