KR8

The KR8 task was possibly the most useful task for me personally as it introduced me fully to certain aspects of the 3D Modelling process that I feel are key, namely the use of base textures and additional maps such as Normals or specular maps. It also introduced me to the relationship between high and low poly versions of the same asset. The first step in the process was to UV the low poly model, I took special care when doing this as to consider where this would place my texture seams, I did my best to keep the seams to cavities where my hope was that ambient occlusion may hide any unsightly seams.

During the texturing process I kept in mind many of the lessons I had learnt from the spellbook task and made use of photo reference to create base textures. I then overlayed block colours to acted as painted surfaces. I then applied layer masks making use of a greyscale metal texture I had found online to create a scratched and worn appearance to the paint. Finally I applied a military style decal I created from a series of images to the side of the texture to give it an authentic look. I made use of a high poly asset provided to create a normal map using a method of High poly to Low poly baking in a third party application called Xnormals. It involved plugging both of the models in .OBJ file format into the application and making use of what is known as an external cage file to control the extent to which the rays reach in order to map the surface detail. This then generated a normal map which made most of the edges of the KR8 appear smooth and beveled as well as sharpening up the low poly geometry and making it appear as a higher quality poly mesh than is actually present. Finally I used the diffuse texture to create a basic specular map by reducing the saturation of all the colours so that it effectively became a greyscale image, I then played around the levels of the flattened image until I achieved an effect that I liked.