Texturing

This week we have been working on creating UV and diffuse maps in the 3D course. The theme I chose for the crate that I have been texturing was medieval; I decided to keep the style realistic and took inspiration from games such as Skyrim. I wanted the crate to look as if it was something that had been used for a while, not being brand new. Even though I wanted it to look somewhat old I still wanted it to look whole and as if it is still functioning well and being used in everyday life.

Since it is not meant to be opened it was not my goal to make it stand out a lot against the backgrounds but rather blend into the environment. I do not want the player to feel cheated by making it look like something that you should interact with.

Final Model with UV Checker

Taking inspirations from games such as Skyrim, I chose to keep the colour scheme desaturated but slightly warmer than the one usually seen in Skyrim. I envisioned a small medieval city that was welcoming and calm, a peaceful place where there might come trouble ahead, therefore I decided to use the colours that I did. The fact that the colours are not very saturated provides the chest with the aged look that I was going for. This is because wooden planks mostly grows paler, losing its saturation, over time. I felt I could use this to make my crate look as if it is something that has been used and worn, but taken care of and kept whole.

The colour scheme is quite monochromatic and the dominant colour is brown, even the grey metal has some red/brown tones in it since I did not want too much contrast to prevent it from being seen as an important object to the player. The reason for choosing the colours to be brown was that I wanted the warm feel of wood as it is something that I feel is very characteristic to the medieval time period.

Another reason for using the monochrome colours that I did was because I feel that other colours should be added by lighting instead as it will give a more realistic effect. It will probably also be easier to put it into several different levels of the game, were different light and colours might be used, this will make the crate more versatile and easier to adapt to different environments.

Since the crate is meant to be in the background rather than grabbing the player’s attention I chose to not use any accenting colours, apart from the metalwork that for the style requires a different colour. There is no real special meaning behind the colours other than having them support the medieval and realistic style that I was going for.

Finished Diffuse Map

The colours are quite cold, although not as cold as for instance, Skyrim, the reason for this was my vision of the peaceful medieval city. I wanted the player to feel calm but not cold, I was careful not to use too warm colours that might signal to a player that the scene is a dangerous place where a lot of action is right around the corner.

This week I have felt very much hindered by my experience, it has been challenging from creating UV maps with a program that decided not to work properly to creating a texture which is something that I have never ever tried to do before. I would have liked to do more with the texture but I feel that I am not yet experienced enough to create what I want. There were not as much time this week as would have needed due to other assignments and our exhibit at Dreamhack. I am very happy with how it turned out though, which is way better than it did when I started testing my way with it.

The texture added in UDK. It looked very different once applied  in UDK from Photoshop and 3Ds Max so there is room for some improvements.