Oysterworld - Disguising polygons with hand painted textures

Published at Oysterworld blog
When it comes to creating textures for relatively low poly models in game, you have the freedom to fake detail when necessary. The idea is to create an illusion with your paint work and make it seem like the object you are creating a texture for has far more geometry and detail than it actually does in polygons. This is not far from Street Art Illusions where it tricks viewers in seeing a massive hole in the ground where there is just flat road.

Some artists seem to like following the edge of the polygons of their UVs when they paint their textures, this may be because it seems right to follow when you've modeled them purposely to be the edge of a material/object, but a few tricks can improve the shape and look of the object- especially if the surface they are on is relatively flat.

I've created a padlock with an unfinished texture to show you the difference it makes to cut corners (literally and not figuratively).

The freedom of this style is you can paint all the detail you want in spite of the geometry. When painting your texture, try your best to treat it as a painting, and not worry so much about the what geometry you have modeled. It will most likely turn out better than you expect.

Victorian Bedroom- Further Progress

Took my bedroom scene from UDK and placed in Maya 2012, rendering with viewport 2.0. Lighting is SO. MUCH. BETTERRR.

A New Roof (WIP)

I've been trying something new with zbrush, making tilable textures and trying to reuse uv space. Overlapping UVs yes. Since I was actually taught not to do that >_>...

Victorian Bed Diffuse/Spec WIP

There really wasn't much to do in terms of the Diffuse Texture or Spec. A lot of the work was done from the normals and AO, even the SPEC brought it to life. All that's left is the aging process. Thought I'd post it looking brand new... also maybe a different bed cover, that looks quite boring!

Bed Normal/Ambient Occlusion maps baked

EDIT: I improved the shape, polycount and everything, also was too dull to realise marmoset wasn't using the AO. Hurp Derp. You can see the difference by comparing them:

---OLD--

Finally, I thought I'd never get this done. I spent a good few hours trying to bake the maps. Xnormal proved to be much faster, but for a few bits like the drapery, it didn't seem to recognize which side it was meant to bake. So then I had to open up Maya and painstakingly wait for the viewer to actually catch up. Anyhow, the diffuse is coming soon, I'm thrilled to have this complete.

Bed WIP

Been working on this for a little while, it doesn't help that I had trouble with baking parts of the map. I decided I'd do each part separately to prevent Maya from crashing! So on the left is what I'm doing in Zbrush at the moment, and on the right is a marmoset render showing off the finished bedposts.

It's a pain, because I made the mistake of using dynamesh and then turning it off which prevented me from going back in sub-divisions. It was also way too high poly even after I halved the polycount. So... lesson learned. ><

Room: lighting improvement

Had enough time to mess with the lighting a bit more, added a lighting importance mass, ambient occlusion to the level and some items like candles. I removed the chandelier because it really got in the way and didn't look pretty. Just not sure if the changes made much difference.

Dissonance: Room improvement

So I've been improving some items for the room, I'm still in the middle of it, here's a few screenshots. I've shrank it down because it was very big before.

(Boring) Cabinet model

I've improved this model more:

Then... altered the texture again.

Cabinet Model WIP

Today I was feeling a bit down, so my progress has been slow with this. I scrapped my old cabinet model because it was so bad and started again. Got some references too. It looks better (much better than my old one).

I'm pretty stuck on how I should alter the geometry on the feet of the legs... they take up 360 odd tris alone.

Bookcase, an improved model

I made this not so long ago, after a bit of feedback I went back and halved the poly count from 1321 Tris/716 Faces to 633 Tris/322 Faces. Thought I'd keep it posted here for comparison.

Old version: 1321 Tris/ 716 Faces

New version is also clearer because I was really silly with the UVs last time.

New Version: 633 Tris/ 322 Faces

Final Version:
Edited the Specular map and normals.

Sci-Fi Soldier Model WIP03

It's been a busy few days, as I had my graduation two days ago :)
Here's the base mesh ready for zbrush. I also took such a long time on the hands! Damn appendages and their awkward edge flow.

The hands took me a day! But I think I understand how to do it quicker next time.

Finished, and added some edge loops to create a more even square mesh in certain areas.

Sci-Fi Soldier Model WIP02

I got some feedback saying he needs a bit of bulking up. I tried to shift a few polys, but I think most of the bulking up will have to be in Zbrush. :)

Sci-Fi Soldier Model WIP01

I've done a bit of modelling, it's going rather slowly. I expect I have really poor technique when it comes to modelling. Hopefully I can learn from this.

Starting with pieces separately, and joining later.

Improved topology and progressing further

Newbish Mistakes & UV sets

I have been working on a level on UDK for a while now, and not so long ago I had reformatted my computer. I had nearly lost 6hrs of work simply because my 'Incremental Saves' on Maya 2011 wasn't ticked- please people, always check your UI thoroughly (especially if it's something as spastic as Maya/UDK).

Anyhow here is what I have so far:

 I made a chapel with the insides included (since that's the way in an outdoor environment level that has no 'zoning'/'load screens'), and wanted to try to use two different UVsets so that I could assess my textures easily and keep them neat and tidy. I'm still learning and have never attempted it before.
So the first thing I do before UV unwrapping is that I split up all the pieces that would be otherwise be more inconvenient to select when trying to 'Planar Map' them. And use the 'Layer Display Editor' (to the right) to try to toggle pieces on and off easily.