Final Entry: In game screenshots

After the textures were applied to the in game models, my work was finally finished. The programmers put the game into a playable executable, and the assignment was handed in on the 28th.

Below shows in game examples of my models in action.

Overall, i'm relatively happy with the outcome of my contribution for this project. The textures match the style, the models work well with the animations, and they fit in well with the game world our team created.

That being said, their are areas where I could improve upon. This includes relearning how to create good workable normal maps, ao bake methods, and better use of topology in certain areas.

However for the overall game with everything combined with the entire teams work, I'm very happy with the final result. I'd liked to thank everyone I worked with on this project, as its been a funa and enjoyable experience and has enabled me to learn and develop skills for my future work.  I will aim to use what I have learnt from the project and continue to carry it on to any future project work to come.

Entry 20: Puppet Master and NPC Texturing

After creating the high poly normal map models in Mudbox, I moved back to character texturing with the Puppet Master. 

For practice, I decided to start off by texturing the Hat, since it was the simplest part of the model. The style for this was heavily hand painting focused, with a selection of colours usually between 5-7 of its colour value. I eventually settled on a spiral focused flesh like texture, as I wanted to give the hat its own character, as if it could be alive, especially with the inclusion of the teeth and spiral eyes. Not the small colour dots were the colour picking to keep up consistency in the texturing. 

Once this was done, I moved on the the Puppet Masters face. To give him a spooky ethereal feel, I added in glowing patches to the eyes and mouth, and also added a little basic texturing to the shirt neck line. For the body and the rest of the texturing, I generally made use of the AO Bakes to add shading to the Puppet Master, along similar lines to the Robot Puppet. Again, the same pipeline of testing between Max, Marmoset and Photoshop was used. 

For the Parent NPC's, due to the deadline being so close, were given basic diffuses and specular 

maps, as well as the items they wielded. Below shows the texture map for each model

Dad Textures

Dad Torch and Mug

Mum Textures

Mum Rolling Pin and Mug

With the texturing done, the maps were added to the charter and object models in the Unity Engine. The programmers worked on and applied the shader effect to the characters, which can be seen below from a screenshot provided by the programmers.

At this point my work for the project was pretty much finished. The final blog post will focus on showing in game screenshots from the project of my models. 

Entry 19: Mudbox Work

At one stage during development I started work towards creating normal maps for the mum, dad and Puppet Master. At the time this started however it was getting close to the deadline, and due to time and other module deadlines these were cut. Below shows you the work that was produced to add additional detail to the models.

Mum Mudbox

 Dad Mudbox

 Puppet Master

Whilst it was a shame that these maps didn't make it in, at the same time when the models were being put in engine with the in game shader I realised that the characters didn't need the normal maps as much as I had previously thought.

The next blog entry will show the texturing process for the Puppet Master.

Entry 18: Robot Puppet Texturing

This blog entry focuses on the work I did texturing wise for the robot puppet.

After having got the basic colours nailed down, I went on to add small details such as bolts and glowing panels. Small amounts shading detail was placed on the metal to give it a little more detail, but the general aim for the puppets body was to make use of the ao bake to help bolster it. Heres how the texture map looked with the details added on.

Once I was happy with the basic details, I then went on to create the AO bake to add shading/tonal values to the diffuse. Since this was a very stylised game there was no need to go into major amounts of tonal detail, but to make use of the AO bake to provide this instead. This is the final texture that I ended up using. I did originally test texturing the model through hand painting, however I felt it gave the wrong material impression for the robots metal body.

Whilst producing the AO bake, I tried to find solutions to help deal with the seam issues that are always produced when baking out an AO bake. This involved rendering the map out using mental ray, adjusting the padding settings, saving out the final render in different file formats, and not saving out the preview render shot but instead using the original where the file was saved to.

I looked at different problem solving sites claiming the solution to being some of the previous methods, but these were to no avail. It may have been my own version of max or a setting that wasn't correctly ticked in order to fix the issue, but unfortunately nowhere provided the answer I needed. In the end, I instead resorted to fixing the AO bake seam issues manually in Photoshop through using the clone stamp tool and drawing around the outlines instead.

Note whilst creating the textures, I would go between Photoshop, 3DS Max and Marmoset Toolbag 2.0 in order to see how it would look in each program, and to ascertain and fix any potential issues.

I created a Diffuse, Specular, AO Bake and Emissive map for the Robot Puppet. Below shows the final texture maps, as well as them being rendered out on the model as well.

The next blog entry will focus on work that was done towards the characters normal maps for the mum, dad and puppet Master.

Entry 17: Topology Changes, Diffuse Maps, Mudbox Setup

After my FYP was handed in, I realised that the robot puppets topology could be improved. I made adjustments to the head and torso, and also changed the arms and legs slightly. Before and after shots are shown below. 

With this done, I moved onto to creating a 3ds max scene with all the basic texture maps in order to ascertain colour palettes, and get a basic look at how the textures could play out. This was done by creating new colour ID's, applying them to the appropriate areas, and then baking them out from M3ax. I did this for each character as shown below.

Robot Puppet

Puppet Master

Dad

Mum

For the basic look, I'm quite happy with how they've turned out so far. But after this, the next step was to create the Mudbox exports. I split up the mum, dad and puppet master models into their respective parts, and exported them out for use in Mudbox. 

With this done, the next stage is to continue to create further textures for the characters. Updates to come soon.