Time for an Update!

Okay so I have been messing around with the diffuse on a couple assets, here's me trying to do minor adjustments with the bucket.

This is currently what the bucket looks like with a flat light in UDK.  I've yet to texture the rope. I'm unsure whether I have made the water leaks too dark.  But it's something I can really easily change down the line.

One thing that is annoying me about the bucket it the wood normals, they still look flat.  I think I am going to have to do some more tweaking.

Hmm... rope texturing has hit a wall.  I slapped a quick texture on there to see how the rope twisted.  I've noticed that there is no way this would hold up as a rope, the stands hardly intertwine.  This means I'll have to go back and change the rope geometry, most likely start from scratch!  Just as well I have a lot of incremental saves.

Texturing

Okay so I kind of finished the diffuse on the book, the only issue I'm having it is the saturation of the pages.  I won't be able to see if the colour is too strong until I get it into my lit scene.

I moved onto the bucket and I'm finding it hard to get the rivets looking good.  I might go into max and do a highpoly for them, would make it a whole lot easier.

I really need to get into my UDK scene and put up some lighting so I can check the textures, I will save me a lot of work in the long run!

Texturing

Okay so I have unwrapped my three assets that I plan to carry the whole way though, now I'm doing some texturing.  It's been quite a while!

I'm just playing around with the book at the minute, the image is in UDK with a simple light.  I've been working on it around 2-3hours, it's taking shape really nicely.

I Did it!

I spent an awful long time messing about with the rope...  a seriously awful time.  Having no luck with loft and many tutorials I went and spoke with a friend who game me a few ways that he would go about it.

I gave those a try and none of them were really turning out how I wanted.  They would only look nice when the tri count was through the roof.  I then had a little bright idea of how to model the strands...

I got it to work! And the tri count was... reasonably high.  But looking at games like Shadowfall coming out, and the fact that in my flythtough by camera is going to sweep right past this rope, it didn't bother me too much.

Okay, so here is what I did.

1) 6 sided cylinder
    44 segments
    553mm tall

2) Connect the edges
    -56 offset

3) Connect again
    Drag verts in

4) Twist modifier of 900 odd

5) Turbosmooth

6) Remove every other edge
    BINGO!

Put on a path deform and there we go, a nice organic looking rope.  I'll have to mess around with it a little but the basics are there.  This rope in the bucket is 1,840 tris... yeah, it's high! But again, it's fine as long as I can justify it.  I am going to look at it to see if I can knock it down some more.  I did try this method with lower sided cylinders but it didn't work.

Quite pleased with this though!  I've just got to figure out the unwrap and how to make it tileable, unwrapping it before twisting it may be the answer.

Update

It's been a while since I've posted anything up, so I thought I'd just put up what I'm doing right now.

I've been modelling a few assets on the desk, and I have moved onto doing three assets to a completed level.  So I can get an idea of what exactly I am going for.  I'm going to do this for the stool, a book and the bucket.

I've finished the low poly of the bucket, and I have been playing around with the rope and how to model knots, this may take some time to get right.  After I have this down I'll move onto the high poly.

Laggy 3ds Max 2014

I bit the bullet and updated 3ds Max, and so far, I'm not too pleased with the changeover.  It's slowing me down as it is so laggy.  I've installed the most recent service pack but it's still not as smooth as it used to be.  Hopefully they will bring out another update soon.

I have not been working much on my FYP project for the past few days, two days of eyestrain coupled with other projects I haven't had the time for it.  I'm back on it now and I am in the process of modelling a small area of my scene, a table, pestle and mortar and a book.  I will fully complete these assets to get an idea of timescale and I will use them as a basis for all my other assets quality and texturing.

I will have to drop back into my schedule and change it, as I realised you want to be modelling and texturing together, to break up the monotony and so I don't get too sick of one or the other.