These brushes were simply great when creating variations of dirt and rust, and having the UV template in a underlying layer helped me to place the dirt, scratches, decals, and everything else, exactly where I wanted it. Material-wise (take for example the light-blue, heavy armour), the other few materials were very similar, with few exceptions, like the leather under-suit and some chrome parts (Fig12).
(Fig12)
(Fig13)
(Fig13) is basically a Max blend material. The idea behind it was to blend two different materials with the same Diffuse map but different Specular properties. This gave the idea that the scratched areas of the armour have a different, shinier metal underneath. I could have also chosen to have a totally different material sharing a different metal Diffuse map as an underlying metal, but in this case I simply decided that I was comfortable enough with the same Diffuse texture. To blend the two different Specular material properties I used a grey scale mask (Fig14) where the darkest parts were able to show the shinier material underneath.
(Fig14)
Here, again, when painting the mask I used custom, jagged brushes to achieve a natural feeling of random scratches. Specular maps were derived from the Diffuse map; I usually put a Hue / Saturation regulation level on top of the Diffuse map, bringing the Saturation slide to zero, to achieve a grey scale result. At this point I applied another Brightness / Contrast regulation level on top to regulate the intensity of the Specular parts. With both regulation levels in a folder, and having saved the PSD document, allowed me to quickly change parameters for the fine-tuning of the Specular. It was also an interesting possibility to drag/copy the Specular folder on top of a different Diffuse map, therefore maintaining the same Specular values (Fig15).
(Fig15)
The leather material was just a simple Max material with a fairly high Specularity. Cables were a chrome material reflecting an HDRI map, and glows were just self-illuminated, standard materials. Sample materials can be seen in (Fig16).
(Fig16)
The render was done using Brazil with a simple Spot light and a very low intensity Global Illumination (Fig17 - 18).
(Fig17a)
(Fig17b)
(Fig18)
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The Illustration:
Already having a monster model which I created some time back for the game itself (Fig20), my intention was to put both the Hunter and the monster, Karnagor, into a nice composition, showing both of them in a sort of relationship. Moreover, everything needed to have hints that the scene was situated in London itself. The monster model was made in Subdivision and most of its detail was created by Normal mapping (sculpting was done in ZBrush).
(Fig20)
I asked an artist friend of mine, Antonio Mossucca (www.3d50antonio.com), if he was interested in helping me with the composition. I briefly explained to him what I wanted to achieve and he came out with some nice sketches, which were pretty close in terms of their composition to the final picture (Fig21 - 22).
(Fig21)
(Fig22)
The only element I was missing at this point was a model of the Big Ben tower, so I decided to make a fairly low poly version of - not too detailed though because it was supposed to be a background element (Fig23), and most of the detail would have been provided by the texture.I also missed a sort of weapon, and a terrain. For the weapon I wanted something which was used by snipers, with scope - not necessarily something futuristic, but I preferred something which had been more roughly adapted to being used as a flame-thrower. So I collected some rifle references from here and there and I came up with a model for my weapon (Fig24).
