The Architecture 3: Painting Texture & Physics

I found I was being so stupid to paint the textures using just Photoshop based on the exported uv “blindly” before, it was so slow and painstaking and there were quite a lot flaws because of the non-contiguous seams. And I learned from the Night Cafe Project that he used Mudbox to paint the bitmap directly and turns out nice so I am considering to get one too.

But I used Blender’s texture painting this time for the new building. It’s much easier than use only Photoshop although the hardness of the brush is unchangeable and it turns out the vague edges which is quite unpleasant.

I also tried the unlit shader as used in the Night Cafe which creates an amazing painting-styled environment. It’s kind of a 2D-like 3D, but I have to say at this stage the flat colour is not really compatible with others and everything needs to be changed if I wanted them to fit. I’m going to change the skybox, but I have no idea if I can manage the terrain and plant. Also the style of Bosch is more realistic and not like Van Gogh’s, and there’ll still be reflective materials like glass and metal so, I’m not sure now but maybe it’s not suitable for mine. But it’s good to know this technique.

Anyway I’ve just finished the second big building and I tried more with the joint physics which was used on the hanged red ball on the above pink building.

This time I tried to make the branches waves so I gave it a try to separate them into pieces and add joint physics. So as how people make rope physics, the tip one is the child of the former one which is again the child of the one before it… But if I still use hinge joint then they’ll collapse like a hinge will do and a branch is not gonna be soft as that. So I tried fixed joint. It turned out nice to wave like a branch but the problem was it would soon stop even though I turned of the drag coefficient. And then my solution is to tie something transparent as hinge or add some constant force to the top ones, as well as add their mass.

For those grow upwards I unchecked the “use gravity”, just use hinge joints and add an upwards constant force to the top one, so it moves like a balloon – maybe they seem a bit too much “enchanting” for a branch though.. Just because fixed joints don’t wave so much and would stop soon even if I added force. There might be some solution to the fixed one though….

Hopefully it wouldn’t seem “so much” after the other moving elements (creatures) are added later.

The Architectures 2: Start with the Giant Building

Finally finished something again to post a blog! I was making one of the most complex buildings (I hope it will be the most, but…huh), and the texturing, occlusion / all kinds of maps of the complexity drove me even crazier than modelling, placing and the combination, which seems just alright from this not really perspective view of speciosity, while it did become like impossible when it came into 3D… and also don’t ever forget the terrain and humans to see if they will be able to fit in.

Anyway this completely pink squid building has now appeared in my scene. Seems I’m getting more familiar with drawing textures baking lightmaps setting materials things but, this is only one of the five equivalent complexities… so good luck and hurry up I can’t afford to spend as long as this for them…

There is one thing special I’ve done to this building. I just took the attempt to search for the rope physics and there are plenty of tutorials so this became something a bit more interesting in this scene so far… I hope the tree can wave too but I don’t want to bother with the tree system now and there is nothing in my assets looks similar to this.

Some other small things before I started with this pink building:

 

For things with decorative elements of multiple materials, I duplicate the model, make it just a little bigger and give it another fade / transparent shader or rendering mode, with a height map. Like the bump circles in the left pic and some metallic rust in the right. There is a subtle difference in reflections when you move around which looks quite nice.

And these are just simple rigid bodies so that the berries are rolling around, and when you walk there to kick them away.