I have let myself get distracted pretty much since my Birthday this past August 4th. I have done some work, but some here, some there. Yeah, I am a little off track, but after making this pic it shows me how in line I am.

Things labeled Modeled have been Modeled, but not necessarily Unwrapped. It they were Modeled, Textured, and Unwrapped, then they are DONE. Quick, well, I am thinking I could do all those things in a day or so.

Hopefully I can do most of this in the next week or so.

I needed a break from the City Life. So I decided I am taking my pals and heading into space. This isn’t a Gemini Spacecraft, but it’ll do.

I am building this to scale, and as such the textures will be quite large as well. I will add some landing gear soon, and I may add an astromech (R2 Unit) to give it a -real- sense of scale. This ship is 115m long.

I may build a scene around this beauty, and if so, it will mean the chance to make some sci-fi looking props. I’ll get some references from the movies and Clone Wars cartoon.

HERE is a large, technical, version of what I am going for. Mine won’t be “Diplomatic” Red, however.

I was especially inspired by this video:

Stay Tuned…

It -has- been some time. I have been using TexTools, and it has sped up my Unrwapping ten-fold.

As such, I wanted to share with you my facade for Uncle Chow’s. I am assured the characters say Uncle.

Next, a Billboard about Meat. I really need to swap out that sidewalk texture I hate so much.

So recently it has come to light that my old way of showing things off in Orthographic/Isometric (SimCity looking) mode is not good.

This led me to put down specific cameras that I will use in the future to do beauty renders as the scene starts to come together more. Cameras mean Perspective; yeah there are other ways to get it, but this means I can call on these shots later.

You may remember -this- image:

This paint-over, minus the parking-lot that is now a park, is my rubric for where I am going to take the scene, after that I will make minimal additions.

Here is where I am at so far.

I numbered them for reference. Let me say this. I -do- hate the texture I have for the sidewalk. I have changed it often, and have yet to settle on something.

2: I may desaturate the mailbox, slightly. Also the black box will be a window on the back of ‘Uncle Chow’s’. I need to add the/a mural back to the Hotel.

3: The soda machines turned out great, and match the paint-over well. Now I need to go in and texture the doors and windows, the proxy objects for them are missing from these renders. The Projects/Apartment needs a Front Door/Front Windows as well.

4: This building, the Office, has it’s proxy windows and doors hidden, it needs an awning over the main door. The patio/bar-and-grill on the roof, needs much more attention. It will have Tables-for-four, and dining chairs. The Green awnings for the Hotel are built, but need to be unwrapped and textured.

5: The park benches are done, need to be textured, I also need to learn how to do trees. Keeping the idea, and textures, I may change the fountain to have columns that are taller/thinner.

6: The alleys need to be junkafied. Trashcans, trashbags, cardboard boxes, grease barrels. Decals to crap it up.

8: The office will get a back door. As well as other props such as vents and pipes and whatnot.

This model texture took me longer than the last, but that is because I was having fun in Illustrator coming up with logos for the different flavors of Xtreme Sodas.

Here is this other vending machine:

A closer look at the logos:

And a side by side look of both machine where they will rest in the scene.

In a sort of compartmented way, I am going to be finishing the windows and doors on Uncle Chow’s; that way, aside for adding some decals to dirty the place up a bit, I will be done with that building and it’s immediate props.

I love True Blood, the show, and so I though, for one of my vending machine, I would do one that vends Tru Blood (the Drink).

I will be doing another variation of this, with a more “traditional” drink type, but still fictional.

In the meantime, enjoy!

Admittedly I don’t have a problem with my spec as much as I do getting Gloss settings correct. I feel, after several adjustments I got is as close as I can to the way I want it.

Here is the latest model and texture to come out of this project. This AC Unit is larger than the last, about four times larger (wish I had a character to help you see it in context).

In my references the one thing I have seen a ton of are various sized AC units. When I am done, I will have produced 2 more; a larger Vertical one, and a small window sized unit.

Also spent some time last night reorganizing all my materials. Like my file structure, I now have just 2 main materials. Environment and Props. Might do an extra for Decals later. These are Multi-Sub Materials.

More to come…

Today’s progress has been slow going. I learned the “Truss” over the cafe is called Pergola (moms are so wise), and I did a texture that acts as some trim for the Office building. As well as finished the block-out for the Billboard, Pergola and Awnings.

I still am not satisfied with the “park” but this might turn around once I get the trees and benches done. I also am going to do a wall of some kind blocking the park from the alley visually. I thought of, close to the end, making it a memorial to Polycount and putting peoples name’s carved into it.

In general, by playing some GTA4 I have noticed that my Alleys and Sidewalk need to be nearly twice, if not 1/3 more, as wide as they are now. It was good making them wider making the scene feel less cramped.

I now have a folder of inspiration from the web as well as some screen-shots from buildings and alleys in Prototype and GTA4. I am pumped.

Nighty Night for now:

I spent the beginning of the day screwing around with Mental Ray and various lighting methods. Then I made a couple new textures and… my brain dropped out the back of my head. I didn’t know -what- to do. I knew there was plenty to be done but what should I have tackled next?

Somewhere in all that I realized I had made an assumption all these years that was wrong. I have been modeling in inches; I got this convention from making props for Hammer. Props in Hammer -are- in inches, but architecture snaps to their own 32 unit grid. I always assumed this meant 32 points in Source was 32inches.

Nope! 3/4 of an inch is 1 Hammer. So My floors are about 10.5 feet tall rather than 8 feet, as I am used to setting each floor being 128 units. I can -almost- justify this, if buildings have 2 foot thick floors. Also the scale of my dummy object (I call it Gordon) was off, so the scale of my Dumpster, Trashcan, Mailbox ect… was a little screwy. All in all most props needed to be scaled down by 20%.

Once all THIS was done, then what to do? Well, I decided I wanted a full picture of how much I have left. So I began making scale proxies for everything else I intend to model and texture. I don’t know what I would do if I weren’t using Layers in Max, as this is the first project I have decided to do so on.

The list has 34 objects. It is also missing proxies for the three different awnings I intend to do. So that’s technically 37 total. Some of these things are small and simple -and- don’t require a large texture footprint. Worst case I move at the same speed it takes me to do the larger assets, and I get only 1 done a day. 37 more days, maybe. Lets hope not. I may also add a Stop-Sign and Stop-Light-Pole to the assets (39). At the end. I may go back and redo the windows on the Building with the Turret (Hotel).

The gutters are going to pose a problem. I don’t want them to be too amazing, and I am wondering how to get a small repeating texture to wrap to them well without having to unwrap them. They were Renderable Splines, so I could draw and control where I want them to go.

Also, by the end of this I know I am going to have to learn to do some foliage. I want to do a tree. I think that will be the icing on the cake showing I can do all manner of objects. Anyone know any good tree tutorials? I can “assume” but don’t want to take something for granted.

Lastly, I am not sure how I am going present this scene when I am done. There are so many nice angles and vignettes. I might just do a slow moving sideshow set to some music showing off some choice angles. Or should it just be huge dump of stills?

Without further ado here is today’s image:

The little building on the end is going to be, “Uncle Chow’s Coin Operated Laundry and Sushi Bar!”.

Here is the result of my Additive Graffiti Experiment.

It’s not bad, but far from perfect. The blacks wash out (dissapears), it looks good in shadows, but also in direct light the additive nature forces it to be nearly Self Illuminated. But it -does- give the illusion of inheriting the bump below it.

Playing with the settings got me only this far. I copied the Diffuse into the Alpha (not Instances) and used it’s alpha (but not the Image intensity. It seems like Additive is akin to a Screen Layer mode in Photoshop. :|

All this to avoid having to put the graffiti in Channel 2, and trying to obtain the mapping from the under-object and put it’s bump in Channel 1.

I’m going to go back into prototype and see if there is any Black in any of their Graffiti. Seeing the Graffiti hovering the other night (about 5 feet from the all it was supposed to be on) gave me this idea.

If you have any ideas gimme a holler.

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