Week 5- Terrors of Texturing.

So this week mostly covered my ability to make textures, and its been quite the task. Sine last year texturing has been something I've stuggled with and in a way still do, my ability to make a surface seem realistic isnt as good as my ability to make form seem realistic, essentially the only way to improve this is just through practice and observation which I think I've been doing nicely, both in texturing and general painting. I've been mostly able to get textures just from taking pictures but with the one select texture from CG textures just to provide a base for the center light. Otherwise a good majority, like I said were from my pots and pans from around the house.

Using the base layer I dragged in some other textures for shinier bits or some scratches, but most of it is painted using an bevel and emboss layer in photoshop, that way I can get exactly the marks I want based on what I think would be there, for instance the scratches around the center are more than likely from some kind of rotating space computer panels seen in the film, these would leave light scratches. Light bits of discolouration and rust from cleaning maybe? Hell I was even inspired by a line in the film where Chris Pratt says "If you put a black light in here it would look like a jackson pollock painting". (He was talking about a different ship but I looked at putting in Jackson Pollocks "Convergence" regardless, ended up going against it since in certain lighting conditions it looked too messy)

So yeah these are my bitmaps so far, definately need to make a mental note on trying to make the normal map better since the indents (where the light are supposed to be) are raised instead of sunken. Aside from a few tweaks I think I'm almost done, its just a question of making sure it looks right under the lighting circumstances which are dubious atm since our scene is so dark. Under brighter circumstances my texture holds up okay on the center light.

I had a ton of fun working on the emissive, and as of writing this I've added a grate over the lights by using a bit of shadow stealing and some bevel and emboss layers, so we get some really nice high contrast and it really makes them pop, and they're also easier on the eyes.

(disclaimer, it looks better in engine...) But yeah I'm not 100% happy with it, but I think I'm at the point where if I carry on for too long I'll spend too much time on it and have even less time to do other things. So I'm going to leave it here for now and if I have time tweak it a bit, depending on how it fits in with the final bits of lighting I'll make it darker or more metallic so it can pop nicely. Big reason why I'm not 100% with it is because the claws are woefully low poly and this takes away from the texture, personally I think they would look so much nicer If I got a few more tris on them, but working in a group is a democracy so I cant have everything unfortunately. Wires and pipes will take up a big chunk of our tris from us, even if they are procedurally generated instances. As for working in a group in general we're pretty good together, sure we have our problems but we havent had glaring differences of opinion, the main problems we've had are just one of our members not coming in or communicating effectively (Jack) and another having chronic migraines due to a car accident and thus falling ill (Luke). But even then, we've managed to pick up pieces or make due with what we have. I do worry about Sean Gorman however, who essentially filled our group leader position, albeit not officially. He likes to take on alot of engine work for himself and gets stressed or stays up late despite our warnings or saying we dont mind taking the engine off him for a bit. I've learnt a hell of a lot though, I dont feel as stressed as I would working by myself since I know I can just ask another group member for some help, Beth has been really helpful here, especcially with unwrapping (one of my weaker points last year). Its strange though, its gotten to the point where I get a little angry at my friends who arent even in my group who dont come in to labs often, because I feel like it would be so much more beneficial if they came in and worked with their group, but I cant force anyone to do anything, I can only sit here and silently have opinions, Myers Briggs was right I guess, I'm very Coach like. (Or maybe just a control freak but whatever.) These past few weeks I feel like my way of seeing has changed, I'm more critical of thigns around me, hell I was looking at Fallout 4 (more like obsessing) over the trailers this week and just analysing the textures and normals etc. (I flipping love the renders they've been releasing, textures are a little odd, but better than anything I could do so I'll need to develop a bit more before I can truly analyse that kind of game I think) Anyway, thats it for week 5 at the moment, final hand in next week, along with the Fallout 4 release date...great...