[WIP] Wooden Crates
Here is a small project that I started a couple days ago after I watched a couple of tutorials on UVW Unwrapping. I decided to use crates because I thought they would be a small step up from a normal cube.
Please let me know what you think!
Thanks.
Please let me know what you think!
Thanks.
Replies
In that last shot I notice a sliver of a board behind the front board. Being picky I'd probably adjust the uv's there to get rid of that. If it's for a game it probably wouldn't ever be noticed though.
Looks like you could add an ambient occlusion pass to it. Have you tried XNormal yet?
Yeah I don't really know how the silver got there. I'm going to look into it though.
No I have not even heard of XNormal. But I'm very interested in learning more about it. Perhaps you could give me an idea of what it is an how to use it.
Praetus:
Yeah I'm definitely not going to put just this on my website. I'm planning on putting it into a larger scene that I'm working on. But first I'm going to maybe put a label or dirt marks on it like you said.
Stubbs:
That is a good idea. I will include that in the next render I do.
Thanks for the advice guys!
It's really easy, good for normals from what I hear although I haven't made any normal maps sicne I got it.
Click on tools and pick the ambient occlusion generator.
it can use a 3ds although I export it's native .sbm(?) format from max to use. Then you tell it what to name/where to save AO map.
Then you get a box that has options, you just have to try different settings to get what you want. Lots of options and I couldn't tell you whats best.
That gives you a greyscale 'shadow map', paste that in photoshop on new layer above your wood tex. Make it a 'multiply layer'.
Basically it casts light from all angles (Like a shpere) around your object and casts shadows from the object itself onto itself in all the nooks and crannies. Helps to simulate ambient light.
It's an easy way to paint shadows onto your model and gives great results.
Even in engines that use normal maps it helps. In flat light areas the normals don't show well and things can tend to look really flat, so they still need some kind of shadow to give them depth. These tools would've been real handy 10 years ago.
I guess the first time it was really used was on 3d stuff in the movie Titanic. After that it bacame standard. (ambient occlusion, not XNormal)
I have XNormal too but not sure exactly what to do with it yet. Haven't been able to generate any Normal or AO maps. Anyone have links to tutorials for XNormal? Is that all it is used for is AO and Normal Maps? Are the baked AO maps better quality than just doing it in Maya/3Ds Max?
as fot the wood, I`d work on the diffuse a bit. right now is very monochromatic, and and needs not only some value variation, but some hue variation as well:
kinda like this: wood
The texture is 1024 repeated for each of the sides. I didn't really know how big was "too big" for games until I read konsruct's reply. I was just follow a tutorial and that is how big they made it so I just decided to do that.
As for XNormal... I haven't touched it yet. When I downloaded it I noticed that there were tutorial on their website but I didn't check them out to see if they were good or not. But let me know if you find anymore information/tutorials on it.
konstruct:
Yup... the texture is very high resolution. :P. I just got a wacom tablet today so I'm going to add some scratches, label and dirt to it to make it look a little bit less perfect. Oh and die down the resolution. I'm sort trying to make something for a larger scene I'm working on right now but I will work on this again within a couple days.
Thanks for the help everyone!
Also it doesn't always read Normal Maps well, if you have started to use those.
otherwise good stuff.
And i agree with others that you should do some character to the texture so it's not just genaro wood 001, wear and tare on edges, stickers, spray paint ect. Mostly everything that has been said already
keep it up!