Dias 5 y 6: Texturas

I'm halfway through my challenge and have stayed on my development schedule despite keeping up with my 'real' job[s].
It's this blogging thing that takes so much time...

Maintaining a Theme

Modern shader technology has made the textures ever more important in game design. In my quest to build a coherent scene, I needed to take the work of three different artists and make it feel and look coherent. First, I took the textures from the Pyramids and Rock formations I'm using and sampled the color palettes of each. I then took the resulting color codes into Genetica and began generating seamless, tiling textures for my level. I started with textures that matched the rock formations and then moved progessively toward the arroyo's floor, trying to emulate the millions of years of nature. The trick with terrain is that there are two textures to work with, the diffuse and detail. There's a fine balance between these two to make the terrain look good to first-person players, but not look too leopard-stripped when flying above in in a vehicle. Here's a set of diffuse terrain textures underway:




After generating about three dozen potential texures, both of color diffuse and greyscale[ish] detail layers, I then import them into Shader Map Pro and generate the normal, specular and ambient layers I'll need for the shadering. Again, one of those tools I can't imagine working without:




Once the textures are complete, I import them into T3D and assemble them in the material editor:




Procedural techniques are not only useful as time-saving measures but also artistic as well. Using Konrad Kiss' procedural mod, I place textures on the terrain by carefully calculating the angle and elevation they would logically have been in nature. After a few trial runs, I settle on a set of parameters that looks like what I'm trying to achieve. Now I have the skin on my level and it looks like home, even 'bald' without any plant life yet:




Here's the Green team base: Note how the colors blend such that the buildings look to have been built using local materials.




Now there's just a few little things to fix with the textures and we're on to ground cover...


Day4

Day7