STC#17 - June 8 - June 15 - Thorns

[Sentientv2]

Finally,

After doing this two times unsuccessfully in under two hours, I was able to get the things like Render Settings and workflow considerations behind me and produce something that I can really be proud of. My textures are large, 2048x2048, but I did not see any stipulations about that. I suppose if needed I could scale them down if it meant not getting DQ'd from the competition.



You can download (hopefully it isn't too big) my texture sheet here

I wanted to create a look that was representative of an oak like texture that has some bright, but subtlety presented colors that would suggest a poisonous plant. I developed this pattern with use of some filters (palette knife, poster edges, maybe sponge). I tried to create some depth between the resulting patterns by using selecting a color, taking it onto another layer, and using inner or outer shadow.

Once I was happy with this pattern, I scaled it down to 1/4 of the canvas size and copied it into every quadrant. I was lucky in that I didn't have to worry about seamless textures because the algorithm photoshop uses for these filters is seamless. I think I repeated the scale down process once more. The result is I ended up with a pattern that's small and repeatable so that I can give a lot of fidelity at a close up level to the final texture.

I then took the pattern and scaled it into a different 512x512 document. I created another layer on top of that and masked it out with black. I used a circular gradient to unmask the middle (dragging outward) and ended up with.... a zbrush alpha that resembles my base diffuse texture!

Zbrush was pretty much using that alpha (far away camera and low intensity produced the best results). I then went back in and lightly snaked some vine like topology around the plant. I finished it up with a closer and smaller drag dot along the snake like vine to make sure it didn't look too fake. I also went around the plant and bubbled out the edges that surround the thorns themselves, almost like a knot on a tree. I baked out the normal map from Zbrush using the Maya best quality settings, and exported out the highest levels in obj.

I then used xNormal, my new best friend, and baked an AO using the high obj. This took a little over 30 minutes alone with higher sample settings and 2048 resolution.

The next portion I worked on was back in Photoshop. I took the AO and the Normal map and used them to get a very feature rich diffuse map. I think it produces something that you can see from a distance, but when you get close you get some great details. I also made, as you can see on the texture sheet, very simple thorns.

The rest of my time was spent tweaking lights and a few settings for a good render, taking the resulting shots into photoshop and compositing them at the speed of light.

I'd love to hear comments and critques.

[Jedah]

Horror Themed thorns.

Its handpainted...so not much to say. Mostly the Paint and smudge tool was used, and a bit of the ol clone stamp.

I baked the lowpoly to itself to get a quick normal map for the sole purpose of being able to see were the spikes were, and followed the techniques in this thread for the normal map: http://www.game-artist.net/forums/tutorials/5813-creating-deep-normalmaps-nvidia-plugin-photoshop-new-post.html

Diffuse: http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/2...diffus2ms1.png
Specular: http://img213.imageshack.us/img213/9...pecularkx0.png
Normal: http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/3...normalscc5.png

[Tiros]

People, note that the deadline is today, I think I'll close this down somewhere around 15:00 GTM. So there's still time

Cheers!

[Craig Lewis]

Originally Posted by Tiros

People, note that the deadline is today, I think I'll close this down somewhere around 15:00 GTM. So there's still time

Cheers!

Yeah, that'd work out quite nicely, I was thinking of ending the speed modeling at the same time aswell.

[Coridium]

This is my first entry to the speed texturing comps, So hello everyone!

I have always wanted to enter but had never got round to it. Not very good at hand painting so thought this would be a good start, to see if I can get better. Impressed with the work so far, good work everyone.

Fully textured model



Textures



Hi Poly Zbrush Model



My time was as follows

25 mins on the Hi poly zbrush model.

80 mins on texture painting, I done all the painting in zbrush that way I never really had to worry about seams. (Generated Normal map in zbrush too.)

I then spent the last 15 mins messing with the levels in photoshop and added some extra shading detail. I also created a very quick specular map, which I'm not happy with at all, but I ran out of time.

Overall, I've never really tired to make something like this before, it all felt a bit rushed. So there is a lot I would do differently if I could do it again, but I hope that you's like it anyway.

p.s. I have the zbrush script files of most of the work I did so if anyone wants I can create a video of the whole thing and post a link to it?

[Tiros]

Dude, sorry.. I just threw up the voting thread a min ago.. I'll se if I can edit and do something about it

Cheers!

[Coridium]

Thanks Tiros,

If you cant do anything about it not to worry, its my fault only managed to get the chance to start this afternoon so I left it a bit late! But I appreciate you giving it ago anyway.

Cheers
Chris