BA1b Second Project: Texturing

To texture something within maya first the UV's need to be separated into individual islands. To do this faces of an area (for example the top of the barrel which would be simple circle) are selected and then put through a planar map and then placed into the UV editor. To create a texture for a mesh all the UV Islands need to be flatten out and have a snapshot taken, and then loaded into Photoshop at the exact same size or it wont work. At this point anything can be painted on top of the UV Islands and when loaded back into Maya and placed on top of the mesh the mesh will display it. The simplest form of adding colour would be a Base Colour/Albedo map, this is because these maps are just basic colour, and no shading can be added as this is added through other maps later on.

When it came to texturing I found it very difficult; not only was I not used to using a non-destructive form of working but also not knowing all the Photoshop shortcuts to have certain aspects of layers visible through others, and for this I feel my texturing has suffered. I feel the designs I for the barrel were almost lazy and if I knew how I would have tried better. I am happy with how they came out however I feel I was expecting my work to look a lot better, and looking back on it now I feel I should have tried a few more different ideas.

Since the first barrel I was walked through how to do it, for the second I decided to try and make a cliché explosive barrel similar to old school games. I used the red to spell the writing and tried to create an oil covered metal surface for the barrel itself. I would have liked to add more detail however I didn’t know if I should being that Albedo maps are only flat colours. 

While doing a barrel in my own time I feel I could have done more honestly. I used the same techniques I had done for the other two, this time using darker browns to show age on the barrel as well as this time colouring the cork. Although I am happy with the final result, I would like to learn more tricks within Photoshop to create the texture maps more fluidly. 

[Light brown barrel Albedo Map]

[Metal barrel Albedo Map]

[Dark brown barrel Albedo Map]