How do you think this was created?

systemic · May 2012

Does anyone know or have a guess as to how the BioWare made the clean beveled edges like in the attached photo? This is part of a texture from Mass Effect 2 and this smooth beveled edge has been a staple throughout the entire series, so they must have a process in Photoshop to create this, right?

I'm trying to do something similar and have explored all the beveling options I could find in PS with no luck of replicating what they've done here.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

mystichobo · May 2012

I'd hazard a guess that they just baked it down from high poly geometry.

systemic · May 2012

Ahhh, that makes a lot of sense - I would bet you're correct. Thanks!

passerby · May 2012

baked subd geometry to a plane, or they used a tool like ndo2 in ps.

[HP] · May 2012

Yeah, deffo modeled a quick high poly for it and baked useful maps like cavity, height, etc.

Mark Dygert · May 2012

Pixel by painful pixel they crafted it at zoomed in at 3200%?

What!? All the good answers where taken already

Shadownami92 · May 2012

That actually doesn't look like it's baked from geometry to me. To me it looks like they just used some simple rounded squares, some mask/selections and the gradient tool and some texture overlays.

The actually bevel just looks like another rounded square with a smaller setting for the roundness and a lighter color.

I was able to make this is photoshop pretty fast using only the tools in it.

I mean, it's rough around the edges, but overall it isn't too painful to do. And you can keep your shapes in PS rather than rasterize them, resize them and then use those shapes as selections to do strokes and selections for the gradients and cutting out grunge textures and all.

systemic · May 2012

This is interesting... just last week I watched a 3dMotive tutorial that included a section on 3dsMax Render to Texture and thanks to the responses, it's just now 'clicked' with me. I love this site!

I'm much more comfortable with PS than I am 3dsMax (2012) because I've only been using Max for 3 months (PS about a year) and after Mystichobo's reply, I watched a couple other tutorials on baking:

Mr Frag's Baking Tutorial

Racer455's Baking Tutorial/

However, I'm still unsure on the pros/cons of choosing when to bake a texture versus just creating it in PS, like Shadownami92 has (kindly) done. I do understand that as I get into high poly modeling, it will be easier to RTT an AO layer to use as my base texture, in PS, but does it still make sense to use the baking workflow if I'm creating simple shapes, such as the example here?

Again, I really appreciate the help!

Simmo · May 2012

That looks much simpler to make in 3D and bake than to do it all in Photoshop. You could use various baked maps for almost everything there, and you know it will look right because it's actual geometry. Not to mention the normal map will be perfect.

Then again it all comes down to what you're comfortable and confident in using. There's really no right or wrong

Swizzle · May 2012

I just tried doing this as 2D shapes in Photoshop and as 3D shapes in Modo and baking out normals and AO. The 100% Photoshop method was faster and easier. It'd be a cinch to get normals from the shapes in Photoshop, too.

bugo · May 2012

i can see AO there, it's baked from a mesh. Also theya re using crazybump specular settings to get the cavity around.

Swizzle · May 2012

AO is super easy to fake with paneling, especially when you're doing stuff like Layer Styles. All you need to use is stuff like Drop Shadow and Outer Glow and make sure it's set to multiply.

I'm unconvinced that anything outside of Photoshop is necessary.

EDIT: Also, it's easy to get those edge highlights without something like CrazyBump. Just duplicate all your shadowed layers or put your normal map on a new layer and then use whatever your AO layer is (be it baked AO or faked with stuff like Outer Glow) as the layer mask.

Then run Filter>Stylize>Glowing Edges... and desaturate the result.

Once that's done, set the highlighted edge layer to Screen and adjust the levels on the layer mask until only the stuff in the cracks disappears.

How do you think this was created?

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