Before
we go on, we have to understand the
effects of the weather and time on our
spaceship.
There are basicly 5 different types
of dirt and waethering effects that
we have to consider:
1) Dust. Any colour, usually dull, it
settles everywhere there's a reeceeding.
2) Rust. Orange to brown to red, dull
and settles between hull plates, tubes
and everything that carries-gets in
contact to corroding agents.
3) Smoke. Any dark colour. Positioned
near the engines, and airvents.
4) Oil spots and various. Basicly everywhere.
5) weathered paint, scratches, damage.
Mainly over sharp edges, it can be determined
by the overall movement of the spaceship
and friction with atmosphere, micrometeorites,
so on.
To recreate dust (we'll just settle
with dust for this tutorial, ignoring
Rust and smoke) I duplicated the orange
material I already have and tweaked
it until it was dull and brownish. For
the sake of detail I've also changed
the main texture to the more rusted
dusty one. For the weathered paint material
I opted for something similar to white,
but with a higer level of shininess.
The
masks
It
is time to look at your model and choose
the mapping method for your mask. For
the crok I wanted to have the main two
colours as the base layer and then the
white stripes on top. In order to do
that I created a first mask which described
the boundaries of the gray and the orange
materials. Then I created another mask
to create the white stripes and a third
for the top decals. The weathering follows
the same rule as the other materials,
and is composed of two materials (one
for dust, the other for scratches) and
two masks. Since the colour banding
for the crock is basicly following an
horizontal scheme, and the shape of
the spaceship itself follows a vertical
scheme, I opted to use planar mapping
for both the base colouring and the
weathering effects. Here comes handy
the untextured scene we saved before:
Now that we know more or less the materials
we want to apply and the mapping methods
we want to use, it is useful to create
a few renderings of the untextured model
for reference and baselayer for the
masks. Since I needed to create a planar
map I set a camera on the right side
of the model and took a snapshot of
that. I also do the same with every
single group I created in the previous
stage. The next step is to create with
the same method a viable dirt map to
use as a base for our dirt masks. In
order to do that I placed several lights
with soft blurred shadowsthat helped
identify the receeded parts.
To
create the weathered mask I created
a strong light point over the front
to give the edges the torn out appearance.
We can now import all the renders into
a paint program that supports layers
(Photoshop or the Gimp to name two)
and create a layered file with all our
different masks.
After drawing a 2 colors mask for the
color banding I decided to create the
white map using the textures from the
cd and importing some of them into the
paint program. Be careful not to insert
writings and logos that are not simmetrical:
these objects should be superimposed
over another mask, to be sure that you
don't have a mirrored image if you use
the same mask for the other side.
Then
the dirt mask needed some tweaking in
order to be used, therefore I applied
some noise and a Gaussian Blur over
the whole image. Same thing applies
to the weathered mask; remember that
we're dealing with BASE textures, do
not expect this method to produce final
results for both dirt and weathered
masks which, as we'll see later on,
should be customized more by hand.
It's
now time to create the materials and
apply them to the object. We start with
the base material which I decided to
be the gray one. Then I added the orange
one over it, using the mask I prepared
to filter out transparent areas. On
top of that goes the white material
with it's striped mask. Note that the
white mask is itself a composition of
two masks: one later and one top map
each one mapped with a different channel.
This sandwich of materials is the base
colour of the spaceship. There's one
nice side effect into all of this, since
I've used the same planar mapping for
color, dirt and weathered materials,
I can add later on more layers into
the mixture, adding new custom details
to each of the masks using the same
channel.
It's now time to add dirt and weathering
to the composition, using the respective
masks. The result is ONE multilayered
material that serves all. The bad news
is that some 3dapps tend to be a little
sluggish when dealing with such a complex
material. The good news is that by tweaking
the output of the single masks into
the 3d application itself you can give
your spaceship more dirt, or change
the colors indipendenlty or eliminate
the weather effect without the need
of entering the paint program again.
Result
Now
that we have applied all the materials
to the object is time to watch some
results.you can see, you can have a
pretty decent texturing without too
much effort. All we did was use the
provided materials, tweak some colours
a bit, make a few renders and compose
everything. If the model you' re looking
forward to create is some background
- distant spaceship, that should be
it. Otherwise we can start customizing.
Customizing
It
is time to add some detail to the spaceship
by hand. You can actually continue adding
and mixing different existing textures
to create new masks and materials, but
I definitely opted against it: Adding
more and more masks with different mapping
methods can bring even the most powerful
system to its knees. Therefore I decided
to take the old renders we did creating
the first masks, and use them as a sketch
to draw by hand any further customization.
We have to create a completely new mask
(bump mask) and modify the dirt and
weathered masks. The new bump mask is
used to overlay a solid black color
over the standard bump map supplied
by the hull-plates material and it's
drawn using existing bump mappings on
the texture cd and using them as brushes
to add detail over the surface. Additional
paneling was added using 1 pixel black
lines.
For the dirty map I took the existing
one and added oil leaks and more dirt
using an airbrush. For the weathered
mask I took the bump map I recently
created, blurred it and reversed in
colour. This add some washed out effect
to all the edges of the bumpmapped panels.
I then added by hand some more streaks
and efects here and there.
While
the new bump map has to be inserted
in the existing materials (basicly
over all the components with different
values) the dirt and the weatherd
masks are already in place and only
need to be updated. More customiziations
could be created adding lights using
a self-illumination map and by adding
more detail over the silouette.
Remember to exploit the possibilities
of the layered materials: just by
changing the colour of some textures
and tweaking the masks a little you
can have an entire fleet of similar
but different ships in no time.
Finishing
To
test the final settings I created a
simple plane and applied some displacement
using a cellular map. To simulate terrain
I then applied a new material made using
hull011.jpg and corrisponding specular
and bump files. Lighting was done using
a dome light plus some omnis and a direct.
The crok has landed.
This image was created using
a few of the hundreds of textures from the
Total Texture CDs - very comprehensive texture
collections priced with the hobbyist in mind.
To see more examples, download free
samples and read full details follow
this link
