Features | |
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Last Airbender |
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Grey's Anatomy Promo VFX |
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Interview with Bobby Chiu |
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License to dream |
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Focus : Gears Of War 3 |
News Headlines | |
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Dragon Age 2 |
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Bioshock Infinite |
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Time travellers Comic |
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Envirometer |
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Thelma and Louise Remake |
Other Features | |
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Interview With Nick Harris |
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Making Art for Ipad |
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Making VFX for Ben Hur Remake |
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Interview : Mike winkelmann |
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Baby Data |
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This is one finger. It consists of different parts, made by different materials. I decided to make the mechanical underlying parts look like used, scratchy metal, and the upper, protecting parts in the typical Imperial Fists painted yellow metal, which also got a used look. To understand the following workflow you need to know, that I need Mudbox ONLY to create the alpha map for the material blending: The yellow paint and the underlying metal are always the same (instance) materials in a blend material. Only the Alpha map changes.
Since the Alpha map is the only thing that changes, each object has its own blend material always consisting of the same two metals (for example) and their own alpha map, which can only be used for that specific object. And that alpha map is what we are now going to create because that is the element, which brings the used look to the surface. As soon as it is modelled, we need the UVs otherwise we cannot create textures correctly, for example determining where the scratches and dirt should go. The finger is a really complex model, using the normal traditional unwrapping method would take hours and hours. I chose to let MAX do the unwrapping part and me the fun part. This is a necessary method to get the object ready in a tessellation of the mesh that suits you. So, it won't work if you place 3 turbo smooth iterations on top of it. It changes the shape and adds too many polygons thereby confusing the UVs.
At first, I attached all 13 subparts to one object, placed a turbo smooth modifier on it and converted it to editable poly.
Next, go to modifiers and choose Unwrap UVW. Click on EDIT and the UV window pops up. There should be a real chaos of UV data, but that is ok. Max has no idea what is up and down right now on the model. In the selection tab choose "faces" and "select element”:
Then
press "alt + A" to select all faces that are
available. In the main bar at the top go to "Mapping" and
choose "Normal Mapping". A new window will open and
I like to use these settings. Box mapping is very important,
so that MAX is going to project from all directions. I set
the spacing to 0,01, smaller or higher values work as well,
but the more complex your model is, the smaller values are
better.If you do this, your UVs should now look much more recognisable.
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At this point, there are many UVs overlapping, which results in a great chaos if you want to paint on the model now, so the next step is to pack the UVs. Select all UVs, go to the top bar and choose "Tools" and then "Pack UVs". Again, a window will pop up. You can leave it at recursive packing. I set the spacing to 0,005 and check the other two checker boxes. If you click OK, it can take a few seconds, depending on the complexity of your mesh. When Max is finished, the chaos is perfect. As you can see, all parts are unwrapped. Please note that this is the badest way ever, but at the end, the results count and not the technical perfection. The advantage is that this method only takes a few seconds and the UVs are still pretty good for such a bad way. Because of the fact that Lysander's armour is full of dirt and scratches, we can get away with those UVs; save time and have fun painting maps. Right now, the finger is still one object, but each subpart now has its UVs. I then simply go to editable poly, and move each element apart from the others, so that every subobject stands alone. That way you can see all parts better while painting.
Now we can paint the alpha map for the blending between the two main materials. Export your object as an .obj and import it in your favourite 3D painting software like Mudbox, Zbrush or Bodypaint. I like to use Mudbox for that, because it is very easy to use. The following steps are pretty simple and don't need much explanation. Fill the object with a white colour and paint all scratches and damages with a black colour. Grey colour values will result in a softer material blending. This is what the finger looks like in Mudbox (close up).
