Alien Head

The main focus of this task was to learn about the main functions of ZBrush. I began by putting base colours on each of the subtools (body, teeth and eyes). I then started to add layers of shadow, seen here on the teeth

I then began to look at using the spotlight function to paint textures onto the alien's body. I chose a snake skin texture. I then used ZappLink to get the image into photoshop and used a low opacity level purple colour to blend the texture into the main body's colour.

The finished low poly head with textures on - Maya

Maps:

Week 8+ - Cottage

Over the course of the Easter break we were tasked with texturing an entire cottage.

I began with focusing on large areas, introducing base block colours to the walls. I then focused on the pillars, using a tileable wood texture and creating normal maps by baking in Maya and using XNormals.

Below are the finished maps for the entire cottage and a beauty shot.  

Diffuse Maps:

Normal Maps:

Illumination Maps For Windows:

Roof Maps:

For the roof I extracted different areas of faces, applying a new lambert to each and applying a different diffuse and normal map to each one. This made the roof easier to texture than in one large 2048x2048 map

Finished Shot:

Week 7 - Wooden Door

This week we began work texturing a cottage style building. We began by looking at the door and focusing on normal maps and making seam free textures.

Door Normals

 Detail Normals

I combined these two normal maps to get my final normals.

Diffuse

Un-lit door

Lit door (directional lights)

Week 6 - Photo Manipulation and Channels

In this task I looked at how channels can be used to select and alter images. By using the channel box I chose a channel with a lot of contrast. Then by using the adjustment curves to create a black and white image. By pasting this into a new layer mask on my original image I removed the sky from the original. By then pasting in a new sky and using the colour match option I created two scenes, a night time and day time desert scene.

The second task for this week was to manipulate an image of an alleyway to make it appear more run down.

Original image:

Halfway mark: (altered windows, chair and watermarks)

Finished image:

Week 5 - Tiling Textures

This week I focused on learning how to make tileable 512 x 512 textures. I created a basic metal flooring using a base texture and shape tools. I added a drop shadow to make the shapes stand out.

I added basic coloured lines on a new layer and used a layer mask to add scratches. I found making the lines match up at each end when tiling quite difficult.

A tiled section:

I then created a variation experimenting with alpha maps (Diffuse, Alpha pattern and final in maya)

Week 4 - Baking Normals from a texture

For this task we used Photoshop and XNormals to create normal maps from various texture photos. I created a tileable texture using the offest filter and the clone stamp and crop tools. Then by using blurring and greyscales I created the normal map.

Week 3 - High poly crate

In order to learn about normal, AO and specular maps, we were tasked with Uving, texturing and mapping a futuristic crate. Normals were baked from a high and low poly version and both Maya and XNormals used.

Week 2 - Spellbook

For this week we were tasked with creating a spell book. The model had to be less than 300 polygons and the texture was 512 x 512.

By using an old green leather texture and numerous layers of symbols with a bevel/emboss effect on them, I created the object.

I found the hardest part of this task was making sure all the different layers blended well together with a consistent colour. I learnt a lot about using different blending modes in the layers section. I also had to make sure that the lines on the pages matched up correctly on the model.

The finished UV sheet and model (rendered in Marmoset)

EDIT: During Week 3 I went back to improve my spellbook and added more detail with a burn tool. Here is the finished object

Week 1 - Wooden Crates

During the first lesson of game texturing we focused on creating a pile of wooden crates using Maya and Photoshop. The textures and modelling are all original work.

When starting my crates, I made sure to make the boxes square by snapping the planes to the grid. Then, creating UVs using the camera made a perfect square in which to build my texture.

To create a wood texture I used a combination of noise and blur filters along with hand painted highlights. I created the highlights in order to make sure the crates could be lit from any angle.

Below are images of my diffuse texture and the finished asset (rendered in Marmoset)

In order to improve these textures I need to work more on the inner shadows and add variation to the wood grain such as knots in the wood.