Once I had the armour at this point, I was ready to begin to texturing! Due to the rather unusual shapes and positions of the individual pieces of armour, I decided that UV mapping would probably be the best way to go about texturing the model. The idea I had in mind was that I wanted to do intricate patterns on the plates, and I knew that in order to make that process a little simpler, I would need to do some very extensive editing of my UV map to get it into some kind of template that would make the placement and alignment of such patterns relatively simple. I unwrapped the model cylindrically on the Y-axis to begin with.
I then spent about roughly 6 hours editing it so that it became this (bearing in mind that I was chatting on IRC the entire time, I probably could have done it a lot faster if I hadn't been online at the time hehe).
Aaaaaah there is nothing quite like the satisfaction of making a fabulous UV map! Making my UV maps as perfect as I can get them s something I really pride myself on.
Having the UV map all nice and straight like that would make the placement of intricate patterns really simple, because I would not have to painstakingly bend the patterns to conform to any weird shapes.
While editing these maps, I used the Set UV command extensively for the first time - really useful! Using this command allows you to position the points in your map with absolute precision, which is really great when bringing pieces together that have been fragmented in the unwrapping process.
Now onto Photoshop to create the textures!
Right, so now the painting process begins.
Oh, and yes, I do use a Wacom. An A5 Wacom Graphire, to be exact.
Okay, let's make some textures!
Colour map first. I started out by making a basic oldish looking steel base for all the plates. I used some photos as a base for this, and then used some filters to clean the images up, as well as some rather extensive use of the cloning tool.
On top of this basic steel base, I began to add fairly extensive rusting. I also used a lot of photos as a base here, using pictures of many different kinds of rusts, in a number of different colours. Blending these all together, and spreading them around, I got a nice colourful rusting happening all over. At this point, I began to incorporate the intricate Celtic patterns that I had wanted to have beaten into the armour plating. You will have to look pretty closely to see them in the colour map though, since they are heavily rusted. To create the patterns, I used some Celtic fonts, which I then edited and added to, to form patterns.
I then added some Adjustment Layers (two Hue/Saturation, 1 Brightness/Contrast), some more colour detailing for more wear and tear, as well as dirt. I then added a layer of flecks of gold, into the patterned areas. The idea for this is that I thought it would be really cool to texture it to look like the armour had once had gold inlays in the patterned areas. Like when the armour had been made, and those patterns had been beaten into it, it would be very typical of Elves to inlay the patterns with gold, since they are a very artistic race, and would, I think, go to lengths to make their armour look beautiful.
You will notice that the result of this is extremely saturated. However, since in my actual Surface Editor settings, I have lowered the Diffusion to about 75%, this will not be as saturated when rendered.
