The moon buggy in the game lacks a certain degree of detail and realism. So the task at hand this week was to see if I can’t refine the design a bit. Unfortunately the computers at AGI do not have 3D editing capabilities, so the actual buggy could not be worked on. However they did finally get photoshop in. So this week I designed a proof of concept sketch in illustrator and went to work on making textures for it. I spent a lot of time on these. The solar panel was a free transform distortion of an actual solar panel, so that one was not difficult. It just took some tweaking to really shine. The metal was a bit more difficult. See what makes a metal look like metal instead of stone is the way the light shines off it. However a seamless texture does not have any obvious hot spots that give away the texture is being repeated. So this texture required quite a bit of flipping back and forth and very tiny changes to make it look just right. All the experimentation led to 2 additional bonus textures as well, stone, and minerals. In the end though I made 2 variations, one that is made of plates with obvious welds, and another that can be used as a solid metal if absolutely necessary.
The leather texture was kind of fun. IT took some ingenuity but I took a smaler image, cut in half to create a triangle and created a tiling pattern to make a base image. It looks roughly like this
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Then using some photoshop magic I blended it smoothly together and created areas of higher and lower contrast to pull attention throughout the texture without focusing on it. This in combination with the repeated elements in different rotations creates a seamless texture that can fool a viewer staring right at
The tire texture is the only texture that took double digit hours to complete but it doesn’t take a paternity test to know that this one is my baby. This is the strongest portfolio piece I’ve made to date. It includes a front and a side texture both of which are the absolute best I can do. I worked on both of these textures switching between 2 computers to make sure the details look perfect regardless of monitor settings. Describing all of the steps to the tire would take more time then all of the posts up to this post combined but needless to say, it looks beautiful. The lighting is realistic but also allows for rotation without looking like the shadows are out of place. The the center piece looks like worn bronze, but still gleams like beautiful metal. The hubcap design is a creation of my own design modified from an antique Volkswagen hubcap. The tire looks worn and generic but the wearing itself gives it a unique character. The treads are visible regardless of angle because of the great amount of effort put into lighting. I even created the side view texture of the tire which has the most beautiful tread work I have ever seen. All of it made from actual images radically modified to fit into one seamless piece of art. I will defiantly be formatting it to be put into my gallery and portfolio/resume`.
