STC #22 - August 17 - August 24 - Well

[Tiros]

Hey there Rahul, hope you don't mind I took myself the liberty to change your post a tad and add the image in the window rather than a link, or I might miss it when I knock up the poll

Also, you're supposed to show your beauty render and maps, not the lighting-setup/UV's

Get it up before something like 15:00 GMT today and I'll be able to see it as a valid entry. I know I've put entries on the votes before without maps.. but we can't have it like that, and so, not showing maps will therefore lead to a disqualification.


Cheers!

[sampson]

Hah, I wouldn't bet on it! So, you'll give me that dollar if I lose?

Will you give me a dollar if you don't lose!

[Tiros]

No wai

[UnRated]

My first post and my first competition for texturing.



MAPS

I first rendered AO maps, so I wn"t have to add shadows manually. I photo sourced the roof, and stone textures from CG textures. The wood and metal I created from scratch using photoshop. Used the NVIDA tool to make normals, and desaturated the base texture for specular.

[Machaca8]

Well, I wanted to take the creative route again, but I just couldn't think of anything "out of the normal" for this one. (Then I saw everyone else's and was like "doh!" because I saw how creative you could actually get with a well). Here's my submission:



Maps:
diffuse


specular


normal


Process:
Ok, so I never knew CG Textures existed until today. Pretty amazing site. I, of course, ended up using a variation of some images from there, and some of my own. Created the diffuse, then the specular, then the normal. I'm not AS oblivious as when I first started these challenges, but I'm still having a hard time with my normal map. I just don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it ends up coming out way too "pixely", like there's a lot of noise. I created a bump map, as suggested, but when I pass it through the nvidia plug-in, it's full of noise. My compromise was to create two layers of my bump map. The bottom one had gaussian blur as a poor attempt to "smooth" things out (think: beer goggles... not sure why I thought that would work, but it was the only thing I could think of in "frantic mode"). Then, I took the top layer and lowered its opacity so that the blurred layer can possibly have some details. It still came out pixely, but not as much as before. I just, it seems like everyone else has an easy, relatively quick time with the normal map, and that's the one that I'm just not getting. Can anyone catch what I might be doing wrong?

Lastly, I'm unfamiliar with this "AO" map everyone keeps talking about. Any handy links on how to create one, how it works, what it is?

Well, thanks again for the opportunity to participate and for everyone's help!

[Tiros]

Hmm, don't be afraid of a pixelated normalmap.. it might look good being rather sharp actually.. depends on what kind of surface it's on. Usually, I only create my normal maps running part of the diffuse through and putting it at different opacity values, with a neutral background

Oh, and.. Seashells instead of wood?

As for the Ambient Occlousion (AO), sampson has got a link to a tutorial he made on it, further up this page in his sig


Soon throwing up the vote, if anyone has an entry to submit, do it now!

I'll have to run off buying snuff (snus) before I go mad though, so I'll be back in about an hour.

Cheers!

[JimmY-DigitaL]

Hey all!

First of, exclude me from the contest, I exceeded the time limit by an hour. That's probably a no go, but this was my first time texturing something. Somehow I always tend to model something and leave it at that with the excuse 'only texturing is left'. So the reason that I'm posting is just so that someone might give me some crits.

Very nice to see how a well can take so many forms with just textures, I've seen some really nice entries! I definitly learned a lot by doing this, it gives so much more to a model and it's really fun to do too! I'm definitly in for the next one with a valid entry. Hope noone minds that I post this nonetheless.

The render:



Workflow +maps:

Started browsing for some textures (CGtextures), and decided a look. I wanted something a bit old, but decorated. Started with the wooden beams. Added a carving in it, which came from the CGtextures too (great site!). Then made the metal rod and the roof and finally the rock wall. All done in photoshop btw.

Diffuse only

Followed Sampson's tutorial for creating an ambient occlusion map (great tut!). I added that to as multiply to my texture. Had some trouble with it. As the bottom side of the roof is on the same place as the top in the UV unwrap, parts of the AO were too dark there. So I manually changed that in photoshop.

Ambient occlusion
Diffuse + Ambient occlusion

Downloaded the Crazybump trial and generated a bump map. The specular map I didnt quite get yet, so I'll have a look at that again, it didnt seem to make any difference when I put it in the specular slot (3ds Max). Also the bump map didnt do a whole lot, but thats included in the render.

Normal

[Machaca8]

Originally Posted by Tiros

Hmm, don't be afraid of a pixelated normalmap.. it might look good being rather sharp actually.. depends on what kind of surface it's on. Usually, I only create my normal maps running part of the diffuse through and putting it at different opacity values, with a neutral background

Oh, and.. Seashells instead of wood?

As for the Ambient Occlousion (AO), sampson has got a link to a tutorial he made on it, further up this page in his sig


Soon throwing up the vote, if anyone has an entry to submit, do it now!

I'll have to run off buying snuff (snus) before I go mad though, so I'll be back in about an hour.

Cheers!

Thanks for the comments and direction! (Samson, your AO tutorial is perfect!!) Yea, pixels are nice when appropriate, but mine keep coming out with unnecessary noise. I definitely want to try different opacity levels... I don't know why I didn't think about that before.

As for the "shells", they're actually pebbles/rocks embedded in grout. (#1 tip-off that you didn't do a good job: your texture is confused for something else... )

Thank you thank you for your help! This is my third attempt (only the second to make it before deadline), and I've learned a great deal from each submission! It's awesome. Thanks.