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Creating Urban Game Environments in 3ds Max

Creating Urban Game Environments in 3ds Max

with Adam Crespi

 


Follow a practical guide to building 3D cityscapes for games. IAuthor Adam Crespi constructs a city block in 3ds Max utilizing low-polygon modeling and advanced texturing techniques. The course shows how to model common city elements such as buildings, intersections, curbs, and roofs and explains how to expand a city quickly and easily by reusing existing geometry in a modular way. The course also sheds light on simulating real-world detail with baking, lighting, and ambient occlusion techniques and offers a series of best practices for exporting to the Unity gaming engine.
Topics include:
  • Understanding the design process and software requirements
  • Analyzing concept art for texture and key shadow detail
  • Planning differently styled buildings
  • Laying out city blocks
  • Organizing construction elements and models using layers
  • Cloning geometry and texture
  • Testing the module for correct floor-to-floor heights
  • Arranging, aligning and cloning modular elements
  • Building a texture library
  • Creating stone, wood, and brick textures
  • Constructing texture sheets
  • Drawing detail
  • Using occlusion as a foundation for dirt
  • Preparing for Unity as a world builder

show more

author
Adam Crespi
subject
3D + Animation, Modeling, Rendering, Game Design
software
3ds Max 2012
level
Intermediate
duration
5h 54m
released
Sep 07, 2011

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Introduction
Welcome
00:04Hi! I am Adam Crespi and welcome to Creating Urban Game Environments in 3ds Max.
00:09In this course, we'll look at the design and construction of a piece of a
00:12city for use in a game.
00:14I'll start by showing you how to think about the elements you'll need, looking
00:18at the design and evolution of a city, and marking out the parts to model.
00:23We'll take a look at low polygon modeling techniques, with an emphasis on
00:27modular construction and reuse of pieces.
00:30We'll also take a look at texturing techniques, including painting textures by hand.
00:34Additionally, we'll look at techniques for baking, lighting and ambient
00:38occlusion, to get realism into the game.
00:41Lastly, we'll talk about best practices for exporting out to Unity.
00:45In this course you should have good working knowledge of 3ds Max, Photoshop, and Unity.
00:51Now let's get started creating an urban game environment.
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Understanding the design process
00:00This course is designed to start at a regional level, looking at the overall
00:04city and the things that influence it.
00:07Then with the evolution of this city in mind, we'll work our way down to street
00:11level and finally to the buildings, training our eye to look for the details
00:16that we need in our game environment.
00:18We'll look at low poly elegant modeling techniques and also techniques for
00:23unwrapping objects efficiently.
00:25As part of this, we'll look at ways to create textures from scratch.
00:29Finally, we'll get the most out of our lighting in 3ds Max, learning to bake
00:33textures using the Render To Texture dialog and take it into our game engine.
00:38We'll also look at best practices, how to move things from 3ds Max to the game
00:43engine as elegantly and quickly as possible.
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What you should know before watching this course
00:00This is an intermediate level course.
00:02A basic working knowledge of Autodesk 3ds Max and Adobe Photoshop is a prerequisite.
00:08Additionally, I'd recommend a basic working knowledge of Adobe Illustrator and
00:12an interest in architecture.
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Software requirements
00:00The software you'll need for this course includes Autodesk 3ds Max.
00:04I am using release 2012 with the latest service pack and hot fixes applied.
00:09You'll also need Adobe Photoshop or a similar paint program.
00:13I'm using version CS5. Any CS version will work.
00:18Depending on your texturing techniques, you may wish to use Adobe Illustrator as well.
00:23I've used if you're on the relief panels as an example.
00:26As part of working in Photoshop you'll need the nDo script available
00:31from www.cgted.com.
00:34This is a free download and does not require an install.
00:38You'll also need the latest version of Unity available as a free download
00:42from www.unity3d.com.
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Using the exercise files
00:00If you are a premium member of the lynda.com Online Training Library or if
00:04you're watching this tutorial on a DVD-ROM, you have access to the exercise
00:08files used throughout this title.
00:10There are two folders included in the exercise files.
00:14The Modeling folder is a 3ds Max project.
00:18In 3ds Max, set your project to the Modeling folder by choosing the Max's icon and Manage.
00:25In Manage, Set Project Folder.
00:27This Modeling folder is the root project folder.
00:36In the Modeling folder the 3ds Max folders have been trimmed down.
00:41The scenes folder has a separate folder for each chapter.
00:45Inside that folder the exercises are named and in their own subfolders.
00:51I've included the start and end of each exercise.
00:57The sceneassets folder contains an images folder.
01:01In the images folder, I've also included two checker texture files.
01:06These are useful tools for unwrapping, allowing you to see distortion in UV'=s,
01:11before creating and applying a proper texture.
01:14Subfolders go in each chapter.
01:17In each subfolder are the files necessary.
01:20These range from Photoshop PSDs to TIFs and other files used as textures.
01:28The Reference folder contains subfolders for each chapter requiring reference.
01:33In each subfolder the reference images are named for the section of that chapter.
01:38These are large images.
01:40Opening one up allows you to zoom in and see detail.
01:44If you're a monthly member or annual number of lynda.com, you don't have
01:48access to the exercise files, but you can follow along from scratch with their own assets.
01:53However, I have included free exercise files.
01:56These include the glossary of architectural and 3D terms, as well as the
02:00texture-based checker images for use in unwrapping.
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1. Planning a Low Poly Model
Identifying key contours and shadows in concept art
00:00Modeling for games is always a balance of the amount of geometry and the desired
00:04look versus what the game engine and platform can handle.
00:07Part of planning for a game is analyzing the reference photos or concept art.
00:12For major elements such as overhangs, doorways and key shadows, these need to be
00:17made in geometry, not in texture.
00:19I'm working in Adobe Photoshop to start here and these are pictures I took
00:23running around Seattle. This is in the Belltown neighborhood and can see a
00:27collection of buildings here between old and new.
00:29What I look at first is this modern building right in front and one of the
00:34things we look at for geometry in the low polygon environment are key
00:38shadow lines, such as the concrete frame against the window, which I've highlighted here.
00:43The yellow is where we would have a texture and the gray outside would be geometry.
00:49We also look for recessed entries in geometry, as we can see in this older
00:53building actually underneath the Seattle Monorail.
00:56This recessed entry here, again, marked out in yellow, is perfect for cover
01:01mechanic and a first person shooter.
01:03We need to duck behind a wall in order to not be seen.
01:07Additionally, in this building we see the same deep recessed window openings,
01:11where the brick to the side needs to be geometry, but the window can be handled with texture.
01:16Finally, we also want to look for awnings and in this case this is a more modern
01:21building here with an awning out over the street, as is prevalent in Seattle
01:28because of the rain.
01:29As we can see here, this awning really protrudes in front of the building next
01:33to it and so clearly needs to be geometry to show up in silhouette correctly.
01:37Now if we jump back to the first image, we can see awnings on this building
01:42as well in blue, but again need to be very low polygon geometry so the
01:46silhouette works correctly.
01:48When planning out your game it's very important to analyze the concept art and
01:53reference photos for key geometry and shadow lines before you begin building.
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Analyzing concept art for texture
00:00In a city most of the detail we see is flat or nearly flat and can be painted
00:05into the texture of a model, giving the city a sense of construction and place.
00:10This example is another picture in Seattle and it's really important to get out
00:14and take photo reference of the type of environment you want to model and if
00:18you can't get out and take photograph reference of the place, Google Street
00:22View is a fantastic tool to take you to really nearly any city in the world and
00:27see what it's like.
00:28In this building these windows are a great example of a texture opportunity,
00:33because they are shallow window openings without a very deep ledge or without a very deep side.
00:39The yellow area here marked out is where I'd use a texture.
00:43Another example, this is trim on a building, this white archway, and also this
00:48sill over the window. Again, we can't really get to a place to see that in
00:52silhouette, but we need to have it. It's a very important design element here in
00:56this building and that's a great place for texture.
00:59And also when we join materials together, here is white quoins.
01:04That's spelled q-u-o-i-n-s, and it's a harder material at a corner, which also
01:09a decorative element.
01:10That's a great place for a texture opportunity, because again, we can't get to
01:14the side enough of it to see it in silhouette.
01:16What I've done here in 3ds Max is constructed a simple building with the idea of
01:23displaying detail through texture, as we can see in this realistic shaded view.
01:29We have wrought iron balusters on the ground floor and dentals on the cornice
01:34below the brickwork that are all done with texture, and I'll switch over here
01:38by choosing Realistic and Lighting and Shadows and turning off the Shadows,
01:45and also switching over to Shaded Materials without Maps, so we can see the actual geometry.
01:53I'll press F4 to show the wireframe as well and we can see this is very low
01:57polygon work that has an amazing amount of detail with the text applied.
02:02The amazing part is really how much of an environment's detail can be shown in texture.
02:06By carefully examining concept art and getting out and taking reference
02:10photos or using Google Street View to get to know a place,
02:14we can train our eye to the difference between texture and geometry, and by
02:19doing this you can lay the foundation for building a really elegant low polygon
02:24model that appears to be in a certain place.
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Choosing between modeling and texturing
00:00We've decided what's geometry and what's texture and the important thing really
00:04to learn here is not to over-model.
00:07What we see a lot with beginners in starting out, they discover modeling tools
00:11and they want to model the world.
00:12And what we want to do is really for a game put a lot of stuff and texture.
00:18And as an example, we can include things like local dirt and wear, self shadowing
00:23pieces on a building such as this brick trim up here, material intersections.
00:28That kind of thing is all done in texture.
00:31If we look at this trim, it's very flat.
00:34Sticks out by an inch, the shadow is cast on itself, it doesn't shadow anything
00:38adjacent. That's done in texture.
00:40The dirt up here is done in texture.
00:42These reinforcing plates are done in texture.
00:46We jump to another building.
00:47This material change between the red brick and the tan brick done in texture, as
00:51is the change in brick direction.
00:53The difference between the concrete and the brick here, that's done in texture,
00:57because it doesn't stick out and its detail we need that really we need to
01:01suggest it is good enough and not slow down game play.
01:05And here's another example. This is an Art Deco building in Seattle where we
01:10have layers of trim here and it's very, very flat. We can see just shadows on
01:14itself as well as the detail to this side.
01:18That again is done in texture, as are the block joints and block color
01:22variation on the facade.
01:24Can't stress this one enough. We really need to look at our models and say how
01:28much can we get away within texture, and it may seem excessive at first, but the
01:32goal here is to have a fast game play.
01:35And so rather than trying to model the world, we really need to say "Of course
01:39I can do this in texture. How little can I get away with modeling?"
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Understanding the limitations of normal maps
00:00Normal maps are powerful tools for the game artists, as they change the perceived
00:04lighting of a model to appear as if there's more detail and correct shading.
00:08However, there are some limitations to normal maps, which are very important to note.
00:13This building is a prime candidate for a normal map, in this slightly recessed
00:18detail here on the corner.
00:20As we've seen previously, the large opening around the windows is a great
00:25place for geometry.
00:27In this case I have a simple example showing limitation of a normal map.
00:31On the left side is a window opening or a recess in the wall executed in
00:36geometry and we can see how it shades.
00:38On the right side trying to do that same thing with a normal map, although it
00:41lights somewhat correctly, produces an odd result.
00:46And what we need to make sure of is really understand the difference once we've
00:49decided model or texture within a normal map what we can and can't do.
00:53We can't take a sphere for a head and normal map it.
00:56It knows out that this silhouette is not going to look right.
00:59We can rely on normal maps really to add a tremendous amount of correctly
01:04lighting detail in our models.
01:07Now I am going to pull up a model of a building with a normal map
01:10providing extra detail.
01:12As we can see in the lower floor here, a normal map is providing recessed and
01:18protruding detail on the iron pilasters, on the windows, and on the doors.
01:24We can see a normal map failing here on the dentals on this freeze, these
01:29squares that pop out, because the shadow-line is not zigzagging correctly.
01:33But there will be a lot of extra geometry so I chose to do it as a normal map
01:37hoping I could get away with it.
01:39Here's the normal map for the building where we can see the detail on the
01:44fleur-de-lis and the panels, and this provides what looks like cast-iron detail,
01:49and here are those dentals.
01:51Even down to the grooves on the brick in the normal map, so the brick looks
01:56recessed and this is the kind of thing a normal map excels at.
02:00The limitations of a normal map become very clear when they are breached.
02:04However, they are an invaluable tool for the game designer to utilize for adding
02:08correctly shading detail to a model.
02:10When you're planning a building, once you've decided geometry and texture, make
02:15a note of what is a good candidate for a normal map.
02:18So when you do paint the texture that detail can be painted correctly in a
02:22normal, so it looks like it lights properly.
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Analyzing concept art for key shadow details
00:00In every design, whether taken from existing places or concept art drawn from
00:04the imagination, there are key details in the way of building lights speak
00:09volumes about its character, age, materials and construction.
00:12Identifying key shadow-lines allows the designer to imprint the model with a
00:16sense of place and time and further refines the plan of construction of
00:20assets for the game.
00:22In this example, these large stone blocks with their very nicely radius trim are
00:29a key detail on this building, as is the engraved table below.
00:34On this building the brick corbelling up above these arches is a key detail.
00:39We really need to see it in both geometry and texture so that the character of
00:43this building comes across.
00:46On this building, more of an Art Deco style with long vertical lines.
00:51These recessed panels are key details in this otherwise flat piece of a facade.
00:56As is the shadow-line from the corners up at the top and the spandrel detail
01:01or the panels above and below the windows here. Those are key details we need to see.
01:07What I'll do in planning out a building like this for construction is draw on
01:12the photo in Photoshop in blue and green, blue for mesh lines and green for
01:17geometry, so that when I go to model in 3ds Max I can cleanly see what I need to do.
01:23I'll start out with a new layer and first work in blue for major mesh lines and
01:30I'll draw mesh lines to start up here at the cornice.
01:34And what these will tell me on this building is that I need to extrude these
01:39polygons out so I get that shadow-line correctly.
01:42I'll also put blue mesh lines to start around these windows, and I am holding
01:50Shift to constrain that line to straight, getting it as close as I can.
01:54These mesh lines will later be extruded in.
01:59Referencing the earlier chapters on the division between geometry and texture,
02:03we can see I've marked this piece out as geometry.
02:06Now for texture work, I'll switch over to green, so it's easily recognizable.
02:11Major mesh lines for texture include these recessed panels, and why I am putting
02:19these in here, both steps, is so that as part of the texture in the self
02:24shadowing trim, I know that I need to come back and draw in or render in a
02:29shadow line and I'll add some here on the panels as well.
02:34What I'd encourage you to do then is with your reference imagery, whether it's
02:38drawn reference or from photos as shown here, draw the mesh lines right on.
02:43That way when you come back to this building, one of many, you can cleanly model
02:47and texture to get the character of the building across and that's really the
02:52important thing, that the buildings have a character as being from a certain
02:56time, place, and construction in the evolved city.
02:59The next step is to identify these details as either geometry or texture, so
03:04they can be economically constructed for the game, imparting a sense of place
03:07without sapping rendering power.
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Identifying shadow details as generated or painted
00:00In many buildings, we can actually paint the shadows right into the texture.
00:05In some of them what we actually need to do is model a high resolution model
00:09in 3ds Max and render To texture with those shadows on possibly complex curves' ornate detail.
00:17And use that detail on a lower res model.
00:20This building, this modern one in the foreground here, is an example of where
00:24we can paint shadows.
00:26The detail right here on the windows and also the shading on this bevel is a
00:31great place to paint detail in. It's very easy.
00:35And this building, which I've marked out with both texture lines in blue and
00:39mesh lines in green, this building has ornate detail up here in the cornice.
00:44While we could possibly paint it, this is much easier to model, replicate, and
00:50render in 3ds Max in high res for use as a texture with complete lighting.
00:55What we want to do as part of our planning is mark out areas like this in
01:01another easy-to-recognize color.
01:03I'll go on a new layer and I am going to use purple with a polygonal lasso in the general area.
01:12And very roughly lasso around this ornate trim and fill it in purple and I'll
01:18slide the opacity on this layer back to about 40%.
01:22This will let me know as part of my plan that I need to budget time to model
01:26and render this piece.
01:29Trim like these panels below we can probably do as a drawing, because the
01:33shadows are very, very small and this shape is easy enough to draw with the Pen tool.
01:38This is another example of trim that we can probably paint the shadows pretty nicely.
01:45As we can see in the dentals here, there's a general darkness around and on the
01:49flutes it's a nice even shading. We can do this with a gradient in Photoshop
01:53very quickly, versus having to model and render this piece.
01:57What I'll do is I'll mark out areas like this in pink.
02:01So that when I look at my plan, which is actually my reference photo with the
02:05overlaid lines of my building, I can see that this is an area I need to
02:11texture with shadows.
02:14The theme from this chapter is that we need to plan out what we're doing so that
02:19each building is a recognizable system of steps, versus a one =-off in a design,
02:25because we need to build a city with.
02:27In this chapter we learned how to plan the development of building elements
02:31for game environments.
02:32We identified key details that signify a structure's age and materials and most
02:36importantly, whether to construct those as texture or geometry.
02:40This is vital for the game designer, as the environment should be as simple as
02:43possible, while maintaining the quality of the design and the visual continuity
02:48of the story being told.
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2. Planning the Modeling of Cities for Games
Planning the visible overlaid history in a city
00:00In any city we can see various phases of growth and decline and
00:05construction materials.
00:06This is evident in any picture in a city that's been there long enough.
00:11Example of this is in Seattle, and again, I want to encourage you to get out and
00:15shoot photographs and to use Google Street View to go see the kind of city
00:19that you're modeling.
00:21In this particular view we have evolution and revolution evident.
00:26An evolution is a gradual change.
00:28In this case of building materials and methods. We have load-bearing
00:32construction here to the left of the one -way sign, and in this larger building
00:37as well, with the brick skin and stone below.
00:40A revolution then is a dynamic or sweeping change that takes hold in a design.
00:47We can see in the background here with these steel frame buildings.
00:51This is a tall skyscraper where the skin doesn't support the building, as
00:56opposed to the brick here in front.
00:58This is a revolution. This took hold truly after the Chicago fire actually, when
01:03people began to build in iron and then later steel, and buildings got taller,
01:07slimmer, and had more windows.
01:10A revolt then by definition is a failure.
01:13We don't hear about a successful revolt. We hear about a revolution. Revolts are put down.
01:19But in design a revolt is often one of our most cherished pieces.
01:25It becomes the icon that makes a city recognizable, in this case this is a
01:29Seattle Space Needle.
01:30Why is it a failure in design? Because the style of Googie, with this modern
01:35space architecture, didn't catch hold everywhere.
01:40Most buildings were still constructed in other design styles.
01:43However, the Space Needle is much beloved. It is an icon of Seattle.
01:48In design of a city what we need to pay attention to actually is the
01:52evolved mundane background.
01:55As we can see in this other view there is a clear evolution, both of design
02:00style and construction methods.
02:02On the right, older brick, load- bearing buildings. As we progress here is
02:07a concrete parking garage with a new cladding, steel or concrete frame
02:12office buildings, concrete frame warehouse, etcetera, and the overlay of transportation.
02:19We have roads and later were added electric lines for buses, possibly replacing
02:25trolleys or something similar, that at any given point in the city, we can
02:28visibly see this evolution.
02:31And the point here is that the city should not hatch as one piece. It will look unnatural.
02:36If you think about cities in movies such as Cloud City or Coruscant or the
02:41cities from the Fifth Element, they are plausible in these megalopolis.
02:45These megalopoli? This uber city. But they look odd, because they're all of
02:50the same stuff, and they don't appear to have evolved to become what we
02:55recognize as a city.
02:56This framework will allow you as a designer to evolve any city and with the
03:01evolution, invent the icons of a singular place that make the city unique.
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Planning a "wedding cake" building: Base, middle, and top
00:00Buildings aren't hatched as whole creatures nor are they sculpted from a
00:03large block of clay.
00:05Acknowledging the assembled nature of structures I'll demonstrate the planning
00:09of the wedding cake building in this movie.
00:11These buildings are often the city fabric against which hero structures can
00:15shine and are well-suited to a modular construction design as well as design
00:20variation using a common kit of parts.
00:23In this first example this is a wedding cake building.
00:26We'll see it from the side.
00:30As we can see we have retail floors and these floors are often larger or taller
00:39than the next floors because they have possibly restaurants or other things in
00:43them and they need more space for mechanical work up above and want taller
00:48windows to better show off what's going on inside.
00:52Above the retail we see retentive floors which are often offices or residential
00:58or warehouse or similar.
01:00What I'm drawing in here is roughly where the floors are. What we see in
01:04buildings like this is the floor to floor height, the distance from one finished
01:08floor to the next, is smaller than the retail. Where the retail might be 14 feet
01:14up to the second floor,
01:15these might be 10 or 12 Florida floor.
01:19Finally on the top of our wedding cake building we see a cornice element and
01:24often as we can see here these cornice elements overlap the top floor.
01:29Rather than just being one piece on top of the building, the cornice and
01:33frieze and entablature and other parts of the building actually go one,
01:38possibly even two stories tall.
01:39So that when we look at them as a proportion relative to the base and the middle
01:45is a match, versus being too thin or too tall.
01:48What this kind of building is very suited for is a modular construction and
01:51also the forming of a kit of parts that we can take these pieces and reuse them
01:57to make other buildings.
02:00This is an example of a common kit of parts from previous building being used to
02:05make what appears to be another new building with the retail below and the same
02:09elements, the frieze and the cornice and the windows, reused in a different
02:14spacing and it looks like another building.
02:17The thing to keep in mind is that you as the city designer need to make a lot of city.
02:21You need an enormous amount of simply buildings to fill the space even on just a few blocks.
02:28The more we can reuse and make modular our construction, the more successful the
02:32building of our city fabric will be.
02:35In this movie we identified key elements of stacking structures belonging
02:39to rapid design and replication of the vital background of the city, the every building.
02:44This framework will enable you as the city designer to plan for the vast amount of city.
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Planning a modern building: Base and shaft
00:00The modern skyscraper differs dramatically from the wedding cake of the past city fabric,
00:04driven by a hero complex on the part of the architect and enabled by
00:08revolutions and construction technique material, it truly reach to the sky.
00:13In doing so they often deny the human scale and detail of their predecessors, and
00:18consequently require a different design approach.
00:21In this movie I'll demonstrate planning techniques for the modern skyscraper
00:25with an emphasis on modular textures.
00:27In this first example we have a skyscraper and I went out and I took photo
00:31reference of it and I had to make this example out of five photos because this
00:36building was so tall in order to see the top of it.
00:39And this is really typical of skyscraper design.
00:41They're called skyscrapers; they reach up to the sky.
00:45So tall we often have to bend back to see them.
00:48As part of this what we see is that we can't see the whole building all at once.
00:53We can see the base or we can see the middle or we can see the top, but it's
00:57very difficult to see it all, and it's so high up, especially way up here at the
01:02top that it's very difficult to make out more than large details.
01:08With this lends itself to very nicely, is low polygon geometry and elegant use
01:13of textures to make it look like a complex skyscraper.
01:17Additionally ina modern building we see streamlined construction, that in this
01:23example and in this one and again in this one, they lack a lot of the ornate
01:29construction in previous pieces and they also often lack a cornice or a cap.
01:34The building simply goes up and ends on top of the last floor.
01:38What we do see is some kind of base here, often different characters. It may need to
01:43relate to adjacent buildings over the street life, and above that above this
01:47podium, which I'll highlight here,
01:53we see the shaft of the building, and this is essentially one large repeating texture.
01:59Now this one happens to have right here in the middle an interim step,
02:04these extra windows.
02:06But above that tis cladding, the curtain wall, the wall that hangs from the
02:10floors, repeats endlessly.
02:13We can take this building and stretch it up another 20 floors with the same material.
02:17And this is really different from older buildings or a load-bearing masonry or
02:22city fabric of the past that we saw previously.
02:25One of the last things we'll see in our skyscrapers that makes it different from
02:30our previous buildings is a larger footprint on the base or podium.
02:34And this has to do with a setback, where the building has to be back from the
02:39sidewalk a certain distance so it doesn't completely shadow over its neighbors.
02:43So we don't get canyons for streets.
02:46So we want to plan for in this type of construction is a modular or repeating
02:51texture from floor to floor to floor, with a different condition down here at
02:57the base, possibly even reused from another building.
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Designing the zoning: Planning the visible uses of buildings
00:00The city is rarely a single- purpose collection of buildings.
00:03More often, given the evolution of the city, different activities are plainly
00:07visible in different areas, from offices, to warehouse, to retail, to abandon and ruin.
00:12In this movie, we'll examine the techniques for the planning and design
00:15of zoning in the city.
00:17As part of this I'll demonstrate quick techniques for constructing a white box
00:21kit of parts of buildings for laying out a city.
00:24In this photo we can see that there are different ages, sizes, and purposes of
00:29buildings evident in just a few city blocks.
00:32What we start with here on the right side are older buildings.
00:38And these are delineated here by taller retail floors, as we saw before in our
00:43wedding cake buildings,
00:45shorter floor to floor heights above from second up to the roof, and often a
00:50cornice or a parapet.
00:52And this extends above the roof and as a way to add a little extra height to an elevation.
00:57Beyond this, we can see a larger block of a building, and this may be either a
01:01warehouse or in this case a department store.
01:03And this is typified by a larger overall mass, possibly to get a taller roof
01:09structure to accommodate mechanical and electrical components, and greater
01:13floor to floor height.
01:15Beyond this in the background we have tall office buildings.
01:19These often have a greater floor to floor height, 12 to 14 feet, a much
01:23more uniform facade.
01:25Different geometry on the roof than in our standard cornices and the podium we
01:30discussed previously.
01:32In 3ds Max, I've put together a couple examples of white box elements of
01:37buildings and the trick here is we're making massing models, not final models.
01:43On the left side here these three are historic building-sized. This is a
01:48five-story historic building with the lower floor being 14 feet tall and 12 feet
01:54from floor to floor with a 4 foot parapet.
01:56The others follow suit roughly about the same size, give or take a few feet, with
02:02mesh lines showing me the floor to floor heights.
02:06These next ones are mid and high- rise modern structures on podiums.
02:11Again using the mesh lines as part of a box to show floor heights for massing
02:16and for rough ideas of texture sizing.
02:19To make one of these I'll start by creating a box. I'll hold
02:23Ctrl+Right-Click and choose Box.
02:27Clicking and dragging out a box.
02:30I'll put in the Length, Width, and Height either on the Parameters in the
02:34Creation tab or on the Modifier panel.
02:36For a historic building I'm going to make this Length 60 feet.
02:40Notice that Max converts for us between feet and generic units, which are set to inches.
02:45I'll make the Width 100 feet back to the alley of this building, and a Height of
02:5160 feet giving me either 6 floors at 10 feet from floor to floor for
02:57residential or 5 floors at 12 feet for office.
03:01I'll put the Height Segments at 5.
03:03Now I need to make the base a little taller and add a parapet.
03:07I'll right-click and choose Convert To: > Editable Poly.
03:12Holding Alt and the middle mouse I'll spin over to see the top of the building
03:16and check Polygons in the Selection menu.
03:19I'll pick the top polygon.
03:20Notice I've pressed F2 to turn off displaying the shaded selected polygons.
03:26Now I'll right-click and choose the dialog next to Extrude.
03:31In this dialog these are generic units.
03:33I'll put in 4 feet for my Parapet and check to accept the transformation.
03:40Then over on the Selection menu I'll grow the selection 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 times to
03:48catch all the floors except the bottom.
03:51On the Transform Type-In, access by pressing F12 or on the right-click menu next to Move.
03:58I'll move these floors up 48 inches or 4 feet, giving me that taller
04:04retail bottom floor.
04:06Finally, I'll right-click and choose Top-level and my white box of a historic
04:12building is ready to use.
04:17For a modern podium and shaft building, the process is similar.
04:21I'll start out with the base of a box, pressing Ctrl+Right-Clicking to access
04:25the Box on the Creation menu.
04:28First I'll add a podium in, creating the box and clicking on the Modifier tab
04:34and then entering a Length, Width, and Height.
04:36I'll make this one slightly larger, 120 feet on a side, and I'll give this one a
04:42Height of 20 feet for much larger first story, putting the Height Segments at 1
04:48so this is somewhat oversized of a podium.
04:51Now I'll add the shaft on.
04:53I can take this box and clone it, or create a new one.
04:57I'll take the first option and press Ctrl+V to clone this box as a copy.
05:04I'll make the Length 80 feet, the Width 80 feet so this will be a square, and
05:09for a Height I'm going to make it 30 stories tall at 12 feet floor to floor
05:14giving me a height of 3600 inches.
05:19Now in the Height Segments I'll put in 30.
05:22I'm not as worried about extruding the top polygon for a cap, as this will be up
05:26at the top of the building and I can put it in later.
05:28Really what concerns me here is the massing of the building.
05:31Does it have the right scale and the right number of floors I'm looking for?
05:35Finally, I'll use the Align tool,
05:38clicking on Align with the shaft selected and then selecting the podium, and in
05:43the Align tool first I'll align the Minimum of the Current Object with the
05:47Maximum of the target, placing them one on top of the other and pressing Apply.
05:52Then I'll align them X and Y Position, Center to Center, and pressing OK, so
05:59that the shaft is centered on the podium.
06:02To complete this I'll right- click and choose Convert To: >
06:06Editable Poly, and right-click and choose Attach and select the podium.
06:12Making sure I right-click to stop attaching lest I attach another building to this one.
06:17We moved in this chapter from the analysis and planning of a city to the design
06:21of the overall layout and placement of building volumes.
06:24Careful construction of a white box city is absolutely essential as it
06:28establishes clear relationships of time, place, and function that are evident in the city.
06:33Planning the variance in a white box city cements the evolution of place
06:37and will let you design a city that grew into being, instead of being
06:41hatched overnight complete.
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Laying out city blocks
00:00Building on the zoning of the previous movie, this movie will demonstrate the
00:03planning of a city grid.
00:05In any city there is a perceptible hierarchy of the streets with major,
00:09secondary, minor, and often tertiary arteries.
00:12In this movie, I'll show how to quickly use the snap tools and white box
00:16elements to lay out a street grid for a city.
00:19What I'll begin with here in 3ds Max is a plane, and what I want to think of are
00:24major and minor streets for this example.
00:28To start I'm going to lay out a major street that goes along a 400x200 foot block,
00:33and I'm going to make this major street three lanes in each direction,
00:37plus a center safety lane, giving me a total of seven lanes at my Width of 9 feet,
00:42or a Width of 63 feet and a Length of 400 feet.
00:50What I'll do for white box elements and design in this is change the Width
00:55Segments of the street to match the number of lanes.
00:58Putting my Width Segments at 7, giving me seven lanes visibly across in the mesh
01:03lines even when the object is not selected.
01:06That way as I lay out this white box I can see clearly do I have the traffic
01:10arteries the right size in the right direction?
01:12I'll continue working on this and show the completed version.
01:18Now I've built my kit of parts for my streets, major and minor streets, 400 and
01:23200 foot lengths and intersections for each of the three conditions, major-major,
01:27major-minor, and minor-minor.
01:31Now with my Angle Snap on and 2.5 degree Snap on and set to use Vertices, I can
01:40lay out my irregular grid of streets.
01:42In a city what we want to have is not necessarily a square grid, but an
01:49irregular rectangular grid of streets, major and minor, that don't quite all
01:56match up in instance or direction.
01:58I'll continue working on this and show the completed version.
02:04Now we see what I've worked on.
02:06I've built my grid of streets or at least a chunk of a city here.
02:09We have a rhythm between major and minor streets. On one direction every
02:13third street is a major.
02:15In another direction again every third is a major and the blocks are
02:19rectangular, allowing me to place an alley down in the middle if needed.
02:23I can extend this on infinitely if I need adding major/minor streets, maybe
02:28even large boulevards and other arteries in.
02:30This will feel like a city where there is a variance in both street width and size.
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Planning modular textures and geometry: Streets and sidewalks
00:00Once a street grid has been constructed we can further refine our
00:03transportation routes in the city.
00:05This movie will demonstrate the construction refinement of sidewalks, more
00:09streets, corners, and intersections,
00:11with a strong emphasis on modularity. After all we have miles of texture to deal with.
00:17I've got my basic street layout from the previous movie here, showing major and
00:21minor streets and intersections.
00:22Now what I'll do is make modular white box elements for use in corners, straight
00:29pieces of sidewalk, and driveways.
00:32For a corner I'll use a cylinder to start with, and again this is really a
00:37placement icon rather than an exact model.
00:41I'll make a cylinder and in this case give it a Radius of 8 feet, fairly
00:45common for city sidewalks.
00:48Then I'll make the Height, 8 inches, curb height, 1 Cap Segment, and 6 Sides.
00:55Looks kind of chunky at the moment. It's a hexagon.
00:58What I'll do is turn on Slice On and Slice From 90 degrees to 0, which gives
01:03me a quarter circle.
01:06This is missing its ramps and doesn't have enough geometry along it, but is a
01:10reasonable white box element to let me place pieces to make my city blocks.
01:17Then I'll hold Ctrl+Right-Click and choose Box.
01:22This box will be a sidewalk element.
01:24A Length of 96 so it matches the width of my corner.
01:28A Width of 100 feet, because I'm not going to use it exactly like that, I'm
01:34going to stretch it as needed, and a Height finally of 8 inches.
01:37Again, I'll want to optimize this and map it correctly, but this is a white box
01:42element for placement. Then I usually want to do a separate element for
01:45driveway. I'll make another box.
01:49In this case, my Length will be 96, my Width will be 240 or 20 feet, and a Height of 8.
01:58I could model the driveway at the moment, but really what I prefer to do is
02:02simply let it be a different color, as we can see in the Object Color here,
02:05so that when I clone it I can recognize the driveway elements from the straight
02:10sidewalks, as they may have different textures such as red curbs.
02:14We'll get into texture on the streets in later movies, but I at least want to plan
02:18for mapping on all of my elements.
02:20The neat part to this approach is that I've taken my street elements and cloned
02:25them as instances. Notice the Make Unique button is available.
02:28So later I can come in and right-click on the spinner for Width Segments and
02:32reduce it to 1, giving me optimal geometry.
02:35Then I can apply UVW Map modifier to this. That's a square.
02:44The street width becomes the length of the map, and there is my square mapping.
02:49Now I've made up a texture here. I'll show how to make in a later movie.
02:53I'll press M for Materials, and in the Diffuse slot I'll add a Bitmap.
03:01And here is my street texture.
03:04This is a tiling texture with three lanes and a center safety lane, just like we planned.
03:10I'll apply it to this module, show it in the view, and there is my street.
03:16I can apply this to all of my major streets and they will all map the same.
03:22Finally, I can take this mapping, right-click on it and copy it, select a
03:28minor street and paste that mapping on, then assign this material, reducing the Width Segments.
03:36Assign this material to my minor streets and they have lane lines as well, using
03:42the same texture thereby optimizing memory in game.
03:45I can do this with my intersections which I'll show in a later movie.
03:49In this movie, we've made the lead from regional within a city to truly local,
03:53demonstrating how to design at the street level.
03:55As part of this we've also cemented the module and nature of our design,
03:58literally embedding it in the streets.
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Texturing intersections
00:00In the previous movies, we've laid out a white box of our streets in a grid and
00:05started to apply textures to the streets.
00:07In this movie, we'll texture the intersections as specific objects, making them
00:11fit nicely on to the corners and pave the way to add other street elements in.
00:17As we can see in the view, I have an intersection object still in purple,
00:21surrounded by textured streets with mapping applied.
00:25I've copied and pasted the map modifier from street to street.
00:28However, I have a problem.
00:31At the corner, where I've inserted on this intersection my white box elements
00:35for corners and ramps, along with white box elements for part of the sidewalk, I need pavement.
00:41What I'll do is transition carefully here from a white box in design to an
00:46actual model and what this means is reducing the poly count, optimizing geometry
00:51wherever possible, and also making sure that I'm closing up my game environment,
00:56that polygons hit at either surfaces or edges exactly.
01:01For the intersection, I am going to increase the size by 8 feet in each
01:05direction, going from 63x63 feet up to 79x79 and also I'll reduce the Length and
01:14Width segments to 1 and 1.
01:16We can see the slides under my streets.
01:18So I need to reduce my streets here by 16 feet again, 8 feet for each corner on each side.
01:25Dropping down under the UVW Map modifier, changing the Length from 400 feet to
01:30384 feet, on the small streets on the side, my short streets, I'll drop down
01:37under the UVW Map and in the Plane, change from 200 feet to 184 feet.
01:43Now the edge lines of my streets meet cleanly at my intersection, which flows
01:48cleanly under the corners.
01:49Lastly, with the Intersection selected I'll press M for Materials and in the
01:54Material Editor, I'll assign a material for the intersection.
01:59I've created a texture as an example of an intersection with crosswalks.
02:03I'll put it in the Diffuse Materials slot, choosing a Bitmap, and picking the
02:08intersectionC for color.
02:10I'll go up to the parent and show the shaded material in the view and there
02:16is my intersection with crosswalks, with extra asphalt at the corners to
02:20accommodate round corners of various sizes and providing a cap or end for my
02:26lines on my street.
02:29In a render, we can see cleanly that I have a street with worn intersection and
02:34crosswalk lines and even dirt right over it, ready for construction of ramps,
02:38corner ramps, driveways and other street elements.
02:44In this movie, we saw a very clear example of a transition from a white box for
02:48planning within 3ds Max, to an actual model, making very sure that we reduce
02:54polygon count wherever possible and optimize the use of textures through careful
02:58and elegant mapping, planning for closed environments that are bounded, where all
03:03the polygons meet and there aren't open edges.
03:06In the next movie, we'll add on the sidewalks and ramps and driveways to finish
03:11out our streetscape.
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Modeling modular curbs, gutters, and ramps
00:00Once the modular design of streets and sidewalks is done, we are ready to start
00:04building our kit of parts to add detail to the city.
00:06This video will show techniques for building driveways, curbs, and ramps, so
00:10that they can be placed as needed.
00:13We'll explore polygon modeling techniques for optimizing geometry while
00:16achieving the look of the most common place, the very sidewalk under our feet.
00:20In this model, I've finished replacing my proxy or placeholder streets with my
00:25actual streets, complete with mapping and texture, and the intersections sized to
00:30include the radius corner.
00:32Now I am going to make part of my kit of parts for driveways and ramps.
00:36I have placeholders in of just boxes color coded that let me know that I need to
00:41put a driveway object there.
00:43What I'll do is I'll take this driveway and press Ctrl+V to clone as a copy and
00:48I'll move this clone off to the side temporarily.
00:52Because it's still a parametric box, I can put the Width Segments at 3, then
00:58convert this to an editable poly.
00:59This is why we need to replace this object rather than just adjusting or
01:04remodeling in place is that we end up with fundamentally different geometry.
01:08First, I'll press 2 for edge and pick the two center edges and press Loop on
01:14the Selection menu.
01:16Then press R for scale and scale these out on the x-axis.
01:22Now I'll take the front center edge, press W for move and F12 for the Transform
01:27Type-In, and move this down -7 inches, giving me a one-inch lip of the driveway.
01:34Finally, I'll optimize this, removing any back and bottom polygons so that they
01:40don't add to the poly count in the game.
01:42I'll continue working on this and show the completed version.
01:46The driveway component is optimized and ready for smoothing correctly.
01:51I'll pick the Element button and select the whole element and scroll down to the
01:55Polygon Smoothing Groups menu.
01:57In Smoothing Groups, I'll clear all.
02:00That way I have hard edges all the way across here.
02:04Lastly, I'm going to take these top- middle vertices and weld them on to the
02:08corners to give me triangles here on the ramps instead of possibly all mesh lines across.
02:15I'll press 1 for vertex and then right- click and choose Target Weld and Target
02:20Weld from middle to corner.
02:23So this shows up cleanly, I'll press F3 to switch to a wireframe and click and drag--
02:28notice the dragline-- across.
02:37I'll press F3 again and F4 to turn off a wireframe on shaded or edged faces.
02:43So I can see my object cleanly.
02:45I have crisp corners at the ramps and a crisp edge along the bottom of the driveway.
02:50This object is ready for texture and placement in my model.
02:54I'll rename this to driveway001 to differentiate it from the proxies.
03:02Sometimes we also need a small straight ramp in the middle of the sidewalk.
03:06I'll take my driveway object, clone it by pressing Ctrl+V, renaming the object
03:12to ramp001, and moving it over and then simply grabbing one side of the vertices
03:19and pressing F12 for the Transform Type-In and moving them back by 8 feet.
03:26This gives me a small ramp I can add in the middle of my sidewalk.
03:31Now I can take these objects, F4 for edged faces again, and replace my driveway
03:37white box models and further complete my street.
03:44Now with the actual driveway complete, I'll replace my placeholder object,
03:49selecting and deleting or using the Align tool.
03:52I'll pick the driveway and then press a line and select the placeholder.
03:57And for these, I'll align on the x, y, and z position, center to center, as it
04:02both came in the same size object.
04:04Pressing OK to accept the alignment and finally selecting the placeholder a
04:08proxy object and deleting.
04:11I can do the same with the ramp.
04:12I'll continue working on this and show the completed version.
04:17As you can see, my ramp is a little bit bigger than the original proxy, as I need
04:21to adjust the sidewalks to fit.
04:23I'll select my sidewalk proxy objects, press 1 for vertex, and using my 3D
04:29Snap in this case on just the x-axis in red, snap these vertices onto the edge of that ramp.
04:37Later, I'll come back and replace this sidewalk proxy with a proper sidewalk
04:43that's textured and has fewer polys.
04:46Constructing street and sidewalk elements is an exercise in careful placement of
04:49minimal polygons, beyond the simple placement of mesh lines.
04:53We as designers are charged with constructing conditions and transitions that we
04:58navigate regularly, that the sidewalk under our feet we have to think about, even
05:03though in walking around the city we may not notice it.
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Modeling modular street elements
00:00This video continues with the construction of the kit of street and sidewalk
00:03elements started in the previous one.
00:05I'll be focusing on construction techniques for sidewalks, building the linear
00:09elements that bridge between the corners and driveways.
00:12This video will particularly emphasize clean modeling practices, including
00:16attention to smoothing groups and optimizing polygon count while maintaining the correct look.
00:21We'll pick up in the model where we left off in the previous video.
00:25We have detailed ramps in place, proxy objects for sidewalks and corners, and
00:29detailed textured streets.
00:31What I'll do is start to replace my proxy sidewalks, here's one, two, and three,
00:37with one sidewalk element in multiple pieces.
00:42I'll take two of the parts and delete them.
00:45Then I'll take the existing element for a sidewalk and make sure it's not an instance.
00:49Notice that the Make unique button is grayed out.
00:52For this sidewalk I really just need to optimize the poly count to check the smoothing.
00:57I'll switch to polygon and spin around the backside to delete back and bottom faces.
01:11With the back and bottom gone, this is a two-polygon sidewalk element.
01:17Now I'm ready to clone so that it can be part of one object, having one texture
01:22spanning cleanly between the driveways.
01:24I'll switch to element and select the whole element, which is really the whole object.
01:29Press Spacebar for selection lock and move only on the red x-axis, making sure
01:34my 3D snap is enabled, holding Shift and cloning this element to snap to the
01:40edge of the existing ramp.
01:41I'd like to clone this as an element instead of a new object.
01:47Now I'll press 1 for Vertex, release this selection lock by pressing the
01:51Spacebar, and grab the vertices here at the end.
01:54Press Spacebar again for selection lock and snap these back onto the driveway.
02:00I'll repeat the process one more time.
02:02I'll continue working on this and show the completed version.
02:08Now I have my elements of one object cloned cleanly down the block from corner
02:13to corner and between the ramps.
02:16Lastly, I'll pick all of the elements again and scroll down to the
02:20Polygon Smoothing Groups.
02:23In Polygon Smoothing Groups, I'll clear all the smoothing. This will prevent any
02:27accidental roundness from distorting my curbs.
02:31Finally, I'll right-click and pick Top-level.
02:35This object is complete and ready for cloning or further adjusting.
02:39What I'll do to finish out this block is clone the driveways and ramps as I need,
02:44stretch the sidewalks between, and attach the objects together to get one
02:49complete sidewalk for the entire block, which will share one texture we'll see in the next video.
02:55Construction of street and sidewalk elements is an exercise in careful placement
02:59of minimal number of polygons.
03:01Beyond the simple placement of mesh lines, we as designers are charged with
03:05constructing conditions and transitions that we navigate regularly in our world,
03:10making the mundane world appear correct and well, mundane.
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Modeling corners with ramps
00:00In this video, I'll continue taking my proxy objects and replacing them
00:04with actual geometry.
00:07For this, I'll focus on these round corners, adding ramps in and adjusting the
00:11smoothing groups and optimizing the polygon count.
00:13First, I'll take an existing proxy object in our model and hold Shift and clone
00:18it off into a blank space and then copy.
00:21Then to make things easier to see, I'll right-click and choose Hide Unselected.
00:27Then press Z for zoom extents.
00:29Since this is still a parametric cylinder, it can be easily adjusted to give me
00:33an optical mesh flow.
00:34I'll make the Sides 12 and the Cap Segments 2.
00:40This will give me a division along this for shorter ramp runs and a flat
00:45space in the sidewalk.
00:47Next, I'll convert this object to an editable poly and optimize the back and bottom faces.
00:54A quick way to do this is to press 1 for vertex and pick the back bottom face.
00:59Then hold Ctrl and click on the Polygon button to select any polygons
01:05adjacent to that vertex.
01:07Then I'll delete them.
01:10I'll pick one and hold Ctrl to add to the selection.
01:21Now I'm ready to model the ramps.
01:22I'll press 2 for edge and select the third and fourth edges in from the corner,
01:29holding Ctrl again to add to the selection.
01:32Pressing F12 for the Transform Type-In and moving these edges down -7 inches on
01:37the Z giving me my ramps.
01:41I'll optimize the polygon count further by selecting the middle edge on the ramp
01:47and choosing a Loop selection off the Selection rollout.
01:51I'll scroll down to the Edit Edges menu and hold Ctrl and click on Remove to
01:56perform a clean remove, removing the vertices as well as the edges.
02:01Now we need to adjust the smoothing groups in this object.
02:04As a possibility, you can also remove other edges to eliminate tries if you need.
02:10For this, I'll just hit Remove because I want the vertices still there.
02:15I'll right-click and choose Element, select the whole element, and scroll down to
02:19the Polygon Smoothing Groups.
02:25In the Smoothing Groups, I'll clear all the smoothing.
02:28Then I'll come back to polygon and pick the polys around the edge of the curb.
02:37Scrolling down to the Smoothing Groups again, I can clear their smoothing if
02:42needed and apply one consistent smoothing group so they look round.
02:46Then I'll choose the polygons to the sides of the ramps and put them in their
02:50own smoothing group, so they're smooth but not with a curb.
02:55Finally, I may need to redirect the triangulation.
02:58You can just see a little bit of a dark line across this ramp, which means the
03:02edge is in the wrong direction.
03:05I'll right-click and choose Edit Triangulation and also press F3 to switch to a
03:10wireframe so I can see the dragline clearly.
03:13Clicking and dragging from corner to corner edits the triangulation inside the
03:17polygon, which will produce the correct smoothing.
03:20I'll do this in all of the side ramp polys.
03:30Switching back over to shaded or realistic view with Edged Faces by pressing F3
03:36again shows me the correct smoothing.
03:38I'll turn off the Edged Faces by pressing F4 and check my model.
03:43The model looks right.
03:44I have the shine on the curbs where it should be round and my ramps have clean
03:48facets where they should be angular.
03:51My sidewalk is flat and my object is optimized on polygons and ready for texture.
03:56I'll right-click and choose Top-level and name this object Corner01 and then I
04:05can replace my proxy objects and my model with it and apply a texture.
04:09I've made my ramp and I'm ready to place it in the opening here.
04:14I've removed the proxy object.
04:15I'll go in a top view and snap this in place.
04:19I'd like to use my 2.5D snap for things like this, so it doesn't jump up accidentally.
04:27Spacebar for selection lock lets me put my mouse where I need and I'll snap it
04:31right into the corner. But I can see I have an issue here.
04:35Probably because this was started as a cylinder and then converted to an
04:38editable poly, my width is off slightly and I have a small triangular gap.
04:43This, however, is easy to fix.
04:45What I'll do is add a symmetry modifier on to this object.
04:49As we can see, the symmetry modifier mirrors the object with a mirror
04:58plane shown in orange.
05:00I'll right-click and choose Mirror and then press E for rotate, making sure my
05:04angle snap is on by hitting A if it's not already, and I'll rotate the mirror
05:09plane by 45 degrees, giving me a clean mirror of now the gap on both sides.
05:15In the symmetry parameters, I'll check Flip and my object is fixed, matching
05:19cleanly from sidewalk to sidewalk.
05:22I'll right-click and convert this object back to an editable poly, deleting
05:26the symmetry modifier.
05:27Pressing 2 for edge shows me that the new edge where symmetry did a slice
05:32and weld is selected.
05:34I'll go down to the Edit Edges rollout.
05:39In the Edit Edges rollout, I'll hold Ctrl and click Remove again to perform a
05:43clean remove, thereby taking out the vertices as well and my object is ready.
05:49I'll right-click and press Top-level to return back to the whole object and
05:54proceed with texturing.
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Unwrapping sidewalk elements
00:00With all of the objects of our sidewalk modeled, we are ready to start to lay
00:04out a texture sheet.
00:06The idea with the texture sheet then is we are going to have multiple UVs of
00:09multiple objects stacked over each other, sharing one texture to economize on
00:13texture size and UV usage.
00:16For a sidewalk like this, really what we care about is that we have a grid
00:20pattern in the sidewalk that's interrupted by new pores of concrete for things
00:24like driveways and curbs and ramps.
00:26So as long as we get most of the sidewalk texture right, occasionally it can
00:30crash into a driveway and visually we are okay with that. We see that in the city.
00:35For the ramps, I will texture one and then clone it later.
00:38So as you can see in the model, I have some of my ramps in place and some gaps
00:43where I'll put in others.
00:44In the sidewalk, I will right-click and choose Isolate Selection to show this cleanly.
00:49The sidewalk is one object that's been all attached together and collapsed to an
00:54editable poly. All the smoothing groups are cleared off and it's just a series
00:58of blocks basically.
01:00To lay out the texture on this object, I will add an Unwrap UVW Modifier
01:05available in the Modifier List.
01:12In the Unwrap UVW Modifier, I will open the UV Editor to better space out the
01:16UVs where I'd like them.
01:20When the UV Editor pops up, we may want to make it a little bit easier to see.
01:23I will make this a little smaller so everything shows on screen.
01:26I will also turn off the CheckerPattern and zoom out so I can see my objects
01:32here outlined in green.
01:36What I like to do when unwrapping is work side-by-side in the Editor on one side
01:41and the viewport on the other.
01:42I will right click and choose Face in the editor, select all the faces of the
01:47objects, and under Mapping, choose Flatten Mapping.
01:53I'll make the Flatten Mapping just the default. A Face Angel Threshold of 45
01:56will explode the curbs and sidewalks cleanly.
02:01When I press OK, I get this. All the curb elements are the same size and
02:06proportion as are the sidewalks and now I can stack their UV shells very
02:11cleanly, so that they use up one small slide of my texture space, reserving the
02:16rest of it for other things.
02:19I'll pick these shells and move them over the others.
02:23Getting fairly close, I will use the Align UVs tool to be able to get these
02:28in the right place.
02:31All of my sidewalk elements are stacked cleanly here.
02:34What I will do is right-click and choose Vertex and select all of one side of
02:39the vertices and on the UV tools, right up at the top of the Quick Transform,
02:44is the Align Vertical.
02:46I will align them vertical and then choose the other side, just dragging
02:50window all the way down.
02:52aligning vertical keeps all their UVs together.
02:55Notice I have staggered the edges in here so that a grid pattern on the sidewalk
02:59elements isn't always in the same starting place on the same UV.
03:03That way if I have things on that sidewalk, like different concrete, gum, dirt,
03:08whatever's on there, it shows up in a different place on each piece.
03:13Now we'll do the same thing with my curb elements, which right now are
03:16scattered all over.
03:17I will align them as well as I can and then use the Align Vertical tool to get
03:21them all lapping over.
03:27Now I've got all the elements of the curbs aligned together as well, using the
03:32Align Vertical tool.
03:34Note that if you need, you can fly out this tool and choose different ways of aligning.
03:38Right now I am aligned to the center.
03:40I have also used down here at the bottom the Select By Element UV Toggle, which
03:44is very handy in moving things around, allowing you to select one vertex or one
03:48edge and select the whole UV element.
03:52Now I'll take this whole selection and move it over fairly close to my sidewalk
03:56and if I need, I can move some stuff in.
03:59This is an elegant use of this texture space, where I can do one sidewalk texture
04:03all the way down at a fairly low res and it will look like a sidewalk, saving
04:08the texture space for other elements in here.
04:15The next step would be to unwrap the driveways and corners the same way so that
04:21we can align them over those existing shells and they will share textures,
04:24reserving that texture space as one texture sheet from basically all of our
04:29sidewalk and streetscape, allowing us more room if we need for plazas, steps,
04:35wider sidewalks, even things like different paving around or under cafes.
04:39What we have seen here is that if we plan carefully, we can really economize on
04:46our texture space, lapping over UVs to a tremendous degree
04:50so they all share one texture in a way that will seem, well, seamless and
04:54non-repeating to the viewer of the game. But of course, they look like sidewalks
04:59with the right dirt and grunge on them, but if we happen to see the same dirt on
05:02another side of the block, nobody is going to notice.
05:06That's the art in forming these kinds of repetitive elements.
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3. Modular Construction of an Urban Environment
Laying out rectangles and planning how to clone geometry and texture
00:00In this chapter we'll descend from making streets to buildings, looking at
00:04techniques to make modular buildings that are easily cloned and form a kit of
00:08parts we can use to make other buildings that share elements and textures.
00:12We'll start on this building, a typical city fabric building showing older
00:16construction, stone below, brick above, and a one story cornice and frieze at the top.
00:22What I've done is to start to sketch out major mesh lines on the building, to
00:26give me an idea of how to lay out the modules.
00:28You can see that these pair of windows and sill clone all the way up the facade.
00:33Therefore if we needed, we could actually stretch this building taller or
00:36shorter and make another structure for a city.
00:39In 3ds Max we had a street layout from the previous chapters.
00:44In this case, I have turned off the blocks and sidewalks except for one block
00:48and left the streets on. We're ready to add a building into this space.
00:53What I'll do is in a Front view start to layout rectangles. On the Creation menu
00:59under Shapes there is a Rectangle object and the neat thing, why do I like
01:03rectangles here, is that rather than just using a ruler I can put in an exact
01:08length and width in feet or in inches.
01:11What I'll do is I'll check against the reference.
01:14In the reference I'll gauge the floor to floor height as well as the width
01:17between major features, such as these vertical pilasters on the building.
01:21In this building I could count bricks and a standard brick being 8"x3"x4" would
01:28give me an accurate measure. It's like the building has a ruler built-in, but
01:32I'm going to gauge it roughly based on the windows, that these are probably 5
01:35feet tall, giving me give or take 10 feet from floor to floor.
01:40The floor running right through the middle of this brick spandrel.
01:44The spandrel is the piece of wall above and below windows here, concealing the
01:49floor and other structure.
01:50I'll also make this module the width of these pilasters, going if this is 10
01:55feet tall, roughly 10 feet wide with a 2 foot wide brick protrusion, giving me
02:0010 foot, 2 foot, 10 foot, 2 foot.
02:03Notice that I've rounded off my dimensions.
02:05The actual dimensions of the building, if you could get out there with a tape
02:08measure, may vary slightly.
02:09Things do vary when they're built. That's fine.
02:12For our purposes and construction making it even will be much easier.
02:16Back here in 3ds Max then I'll make the length of my rectangle 10 feet.
02:21Remember we can add in 10 feet and it'll convert inches for us and I'll put the
02:26Width in of 10 feet as well.
02:31Now I'll make other rectangles that stand in for the window opening, not
02:36necessarily both windows, but really where do the window sit and am I getting
02:40the proportion right of wall to window on the side?
02:43Referencing back to the photos if this is 10 feet from floor to floor, this
02:47window is 5. If this window is 5 tall it's probably three wide as a good guess
02:53or maybe two and a half feet.
02:55We can always resize it. Given that this is two and a half, we have two and a
02:59half, 8 inches or one brick, two and a half, giving us 5 foot 8 inches
03:05centered in that rectangle. Back in Max then,
03:09we can either make a new rectangle as I've done and put the dimensions in, or we can
03:15take the existing rectangle and clone it by pressing Ctrl+V as a copy.
03:21Then in the parameters for this rectangle I'll put in my length, 5 foot 6, to
03:28accommodate the sill, and a Width of 5 foot 8, which gives me the windows.
03:34Because objects think their center is in the center by default, this rectangle is
03:38now centered on the existing one and there's my module. And I can use this to
03:42gauge the size and say, does this work if I clone it?
03:48To clone objects then I'll select both, press Spacebar for Selection Lock,
03:53make sure my Snap is on, 2.5 works fine, and that the snap is configured on
03:57vertices. I'll on go on the y-axis only, hold Shift, and click and drag from
04:03the top to the bottom.
04:05This pulls up to Clone Options dialog and I'll put the Number of Copies at 6 to start.
04:13What I have then is a reasonable idea of how these windows will stack up and
04:17what I'll do is look at the proportion of wall to window opening and gauge it
04:22against my reference.
04:23Am I getting enough windows in here versus the amount of wall I need? And it
04:28looks like I could be a little bit taller on the windows and getting maybe too
04:31much wall above and below.
04:34When I cloned I cloned as an instance.
04:38We can see the Make Unique button is available here.
04:41That means if I change one they all change.
04:43I'm going to make my windows a little taller, 6 feet, and again I'll gauge the
04:48proportion of wall between windows to window opening.
04:52This looks better. The windows are little taller.
04:54Now I'm ready to build the mesh that actually fits inside this template.
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Using layers to organize construction elements and actual models
00:00In this movie I'm going to show some layer management.
00:03It's important to keep things organized when you're making a project or making a
00:07building or making a game, as you can have literally thousands of assets, and if
00:12we have extra stuff coming across from export into the game editor or game
00:16engine again it's more geometry and possibly issues with objects that the editor
00:21or the engine don't like.
00:23What I'll show here is the layer manager.
00:25Note that I've taken the previous exercises single row of buildings and cloned
00:29it out to approximate the spacing of the original building and added in some
00:33slim rectangle to stand for the brick pilasters.
00:36Essentially, I have tried to map out this short side of the building
00:40figuring that this same arrangement will repeat on the long side once I've
00:43got the elements together.
00:45In 3ds Max we can access the layer manager either by a button or under Tools.
00:50For layers everything starts out on the default layer 0.
00:54If we open up that layer we can actually see all those shape objects on it
00:58with various switches here for Rendering and Color and Frozen and Radiosity and so forth.
01:03The check denotes that this is where objects will be created on this layer.
01:08What I'll typically do is organize my layers, select my objects if I've made
01:13them already, and clicking on the Create New Layer (Containing Selected Objects) button.
01:17Alternately, I can make a layer and set it as active and objects will be created on that.
01:23For this I'm going to name this layer Construction objects.
01:28That way things that will be placeholders, layout tools, measuring tools,
01:33shape objects I'm going to delete, maybe center point objects for referencing
01:37things, will all go on this layer so I can always hide it or delete it so it
01:41doesn't get exported.
01:44Next I'll make a new layer and I'll name this new layer Building or
01:51building elements or actual objects or something that denotes that they are
01:55the real construction.
02:00Notice that by clicking on the square you can switch the active layer.
02:04Now when I start to make a mesh it will show up on the Building layer and my
02:08construction objects here can be hidden or frozen, so they can't be
02:12accidentally touched or move.
02:13What I find as a best practice is lot of times I have to save me from myself,
02:18that I need to actively hide, freeze, and manage objects so don't move a reference
02:23and end up with a model that's slightly off.
02:26Now I'm ready to build my actual model in here, which will show up on
02:30the Building layer.
02:31I'll close the Layer Manager and in the Snap Constraints accessed by Shift
02:36and right-click, I'll Snap to Frozen Objects, so I can snap to my layer which is frozen.
02:41Switching to a front view I'm ready to create my first plane of a wall.
02:50This object as we can see in the Layer Manager is on the Building layer.
02:56It's really important to organize. We can't stress that one enough.
03:00The big deal is that we're not just making one building, we're possibly making
03:04dozens or even hundreds, and we're not just making one street. We're making city
03:08blocks worth and that we may have thousands of objects in a game, and if we
03:13can't find them or if they come in with off names or they coming with extra
03:16objects, it's going either slow down our game or make the export more difficult.
03:21And we'll have enough issues trying to bring things across in the way we want,
03:24so we don't need to complicate our lives further.
03:27So remember to name your objects, name your layers, and organize your objects by layers.
03:32That way you can find things easily in your scene when you're dealing in
03:35thousands of assets.
03:37So remember to name your objects, name your layers, even color code objects and
03:42organize them by class such as shapes, so you can find things easily in a scene.
03:46Remember we're dealing with possibly thousands of assets and organization is key.
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Extruding edges to form major shadow lines
00:00Now that I have drawn out the shapes for construction, I can actually start
00:03to model my building.
00:05I will check and make sure I have got the geometry in the right place prior to modeling.
00:09As we can see in the photo, I have drawn the floor to floor lines on this, but
00:12that may not be the optimal place for texture.
00:15Part of modeling is considering how to texture the building.
00:18What I will do is actually plan the texture division at the bottom or top of the
00:23window, to the bottom or top of the next window.
00:26That way instead of a text to break in the middle of a field of brick, I can
00:29have it at a place where I am likely to see less brick adjacent to brick, such
00:33as the top of the window, where there is a window surface and a possibly
00:36different material, or underneath the sill. With white sills that will be
00:40handled in texture, I have a clean line to break.
00:43So I'll make my geometry go from the bottom of the window to the bottom of the window.
00:49Why/ Because right here down on the retail level these windows sit down on that
00:54table, and up at the top these windows, their tops, sit up at the freeze, so
01:00that's a good breakpoint.
01:03In 3ds Max I have a plane.
01:05Notice it has 4 and 4 Width and Length Segments, the default for creation.
01:08I will turn on the Edged Faces by pressing F4.
01:12What I want to do is use the Length and Width Segments to give me the geometry
01:16to be able to make my window and the division between easily.
01:18I will set the Length Segments to 2 and the Width Segments to 5, then I
01:22will make sure I move this plane, pressing W for move and hitting spacebar
01:27for the selection lock.
01:29Up to the bottom of the next window, snapping to the frozen objects. Now I can
01:34use these shapes to line up the top, bottom and sides of my window cleanly.
01:38I will right-click and convert this to an Editable Poly.
01:42Then switching to Vertex by pressing 1, I will move the vertices to line up
01:47to those gray lines.
01:50I've moved the mesh lines to line up with the window opening.
01:53I can then switch to Polygon and select the 2 Polys that will form the window
01:57openings and delete them.
01:59Now I need to size the brick between correctly, which I'd measured as 8
02:03inches or one brick wide.
02:05To do this, I'll switch over to Edge and select one of those edges.
02:09With the spacebar on for selection lock, I will constrain the motion on the
02:12x-axis and snap this edge onto to the other edge.
02:16Then pressing F12 for the Transform Type-In, I'll move it back on the
02:20Offset:Screen X by negative 8.
02:23Now I can take both of these edges and center them.
02:27Turning off the selection lock, I will select the opposite edge and press
02:31selection lock again.
02:33I'll snap this edge onto an existing window opening and then move it back by negative 30.
02:39This small piece of brick, or what will be brick, is now centered between two
02:42long window openings.
02:44Now I am ready to cleanup the mesh and make it into quads.
02:48I have right here a polygon at the corner.
02:51I can target weld these vertices up to the corner here and eliminate one more poly.
02:56Every poly counts when you are dealing in low polygon work for a game.
03:00I'll switch over to Vertex, release the selection lock, and right-click and pick Target Weld.
03:07To see it easier, I will press F3 to switch to a wireframe.
03:10And I will target weld the vertices onto the corner.
03:15With the vertices target welded, I can eliminate one more polygon.
03:18I will take these two center vertices and target weld them over to one side.
03:26Lastly I'll press 2 to switch to edge and pick that center edge in the middle
03:31of this large triangle, and on the Edit Edges rollout press Remove.
03:37Now I have an all quad model.
03:39All the polygons are four sided and it is optimized as it can be.
03:44The last step in this is to Extrude the Edges.
03:48I'll orbit around and pick these side edges as well as the tops.
03:55Right-clicking and choosing the dialogue next to Extrude, I will extrude back
04:00with a base Width of 0 and Height of negative 6.
04:06This is a rough gauge by looking at the side of the wall next to the window.
04:10We can always adjust it if it looks too deep later in a shadow line.
04:13I will hit the checkbox to OK or accept that transformation.
04:21Now in a shaded view, I have got my module ready, where I have clean edges above
04:26and below ready for texture, and a clean break right under the window sill.
04:31One last step would be to bridge these openings closed.
04:35I will select these bottom edges next to the windows and under Edit Edges choose Bridge.
04:44With the edges bridged closed, my module is complete and ready for texture and windows.
04:49Now I can clone this and be assured that I will have as minimal break in
04:52texture as possible.
04:55Now that I bridged the bottoms, I can also bridge across the windows, either
04:59capping a border or bridging edges.
05:01I'll select a border, hold Control to select the other, and under Edit Borders choose Cap.
05:12Now I'm ready to clone this and continue making the building elements in the next movie.
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Testing the module for correct floor-to-floor heights
00:00The next step in producing a model is to check and make sure that the floor to
00:04floor height matches,
00:05to do a test clone of this. That way you can adjust the mesh before unwrapping.
00:10It's important to get the mesh right before putting an Unwrap UVW Modifier on.
00:14If you change those vertices in the model, the unwrap will be invalid.
00:18We will check this by using the Clone Option dialog.
00:21I'll switch into a front view and take the module I had previously.
00:28Press spacebar for selection lock and make sure my axes constraints are on Y.
00:33I'll register the snap here on the bottom right or left, hold Shift, and drag up
00:38until the module clones to the top.
00:41In the Clone Options, I will make the Number of Copies 6, as an Instance.
00:48Stepping back to view the construction shows me a clone nicely, that the
00:52bottoms and tops match and all the windows line up with the shape.
00:55If I switch to a wireframe by pressing F3, I can see cleanly that my mesh lines
01:00overlay the gray shape lines and that from top to bottom has a 10 foot repeat.
01:06We know it's 10 foot, because this Plane was 10 by 10.
01:09At the top and bottom, because of the 10 foot repeat, we see that we have no gaps.
01:14Now we can delete the clones.
01:16This is merely a check to make sure that this module will work correctly
01:19before we texture it.
01:23In this movie, we have looked at the interim step of cloning and checking.
01:27It's important to do this to make sure that the mesh works before unwrapping.
01:31That way if there is any issues that need fixing, minor gaps, etcetera,
01:34they can be taken care of and the unwrap will be done once, instead of going
01:39back and repeating work.
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Trimming down the module and cloning
00:00Once you have got a module ready to clone, it's important to check over it to
00:04see if there's any last geometry you can eliminate prior to texturing.
00:08We know we are going to clone a module so that the text to repeat seamlessly.
00:12However, we know we are also cloning modules.
00:15Therefore, if we can eliminate one or two polygons on one module, that may
00:20translate into 50 or 100 polygons saved over a whole model of a building.
00:25That means you really need to take a careful eye to optimizing a mesh prior to cloning.
00:31I had taken my module and done a test clone, seeing it was aligned with my
00:34construction shapes.
00:36Now I'm going to pick a module and carefully look at over and see if there is
00:40anywhere in here I can eliminate a polygon or two.
00:44The first place I will look at is down here on the windowsill.
00:47If I look in the photos, this windowsill is actually a continuous piece, which
00:52means the top of the windowsill gets a continuous color.
00:55For modeling, that means I can go to polygon by pressing 4 and instead of using
01:012 Polygons to span, I can bridge from outside edge to outside edge and I can do
01:07this on the top as well.
01:08What we're seeing here is the difference between design and the actual
01:14construction again, that I've designed it, bridging across edge to edge to make
01:20sure the openings work, but in the actual construction I am going to let a
01:23polygon span all the way across.
01:25I will switch to Edge, pick the top edge hold Ctrl and pick its opposite, and
01:32under Edit Edges choose Bridge.
01:36Down in the bottom I will repeat this step, picking a bottom corner edge,
01:40holding Control and picking its opposite, and choosing Bridge under Edit Edges.
01:46On this module now, I have two fewer polygons.
01:49As these are stacked seven high and three across the narrow side of the
01:53building, this is a decent savings and every polygon counts.
01:58For this building, the savings on the narrow side alone is 42 polygons, just by
02:03this simple optimization.
02:05Now I am ready to check the clone of this again, if I need, using either
02:09the Array or the Snap.
02:11I'll show the Array tools, a possibility in cloning, just to make sure that the
02:14design works overall one more time.
02:19If I have one module like this, to clone this using the Array dialogue
02:25I'll choose Tools > Array.
02:31In the Array dialogue, we can do 1, 2 or 3D arrays, specifying a number and
02:36a distance for each.
02:37The first move I will do is on the X-axis, 144 units.
02:42This accommodates the width of the module plus the two foot spacing between.
02:47On the 1D Count I will put in 3, for 3 modules across the bottom.
02:51The 2D Array, going on the Z-axis will give me the height of the building.
02:56On the Z, I'll put a height of 120.
02:59That was the height of my plane and also the floor to floor height.
03:02On the 2D Count, I will put in 6.
03:04I will check Preview and see if this works.
03:08It looks like I need one extra on the 2D Count to bring it out to the right height.
03:13This is good and here's my building facade.
03:16Cloning as an Instance, in case I need to make further changes and see how they look.
03:23Now in my facade, I have a clean clone from floor to floor, right below the
03:28windows to right below the windows.
03:30Turning off the edged faces by pressing F4 and possibly hiding a Construction
03:35layer allows me to see clearly.
03:37In the Layer palette, I'll check Hide on the Construction Objects.
03:43Now I can look at my building and see if there are any gaps or anything else I need to adjust.
03:49It looks good.
03:50It's important to remember when you're modeling to check every step of the way,
03:54rather than getting knee deep in a module and figuring out that, whoops you
03:58missed a couple of pieces or couple of inches. It's better to do it, test it,
04:03check it, prior to texturing.
04:05Once for into texturing, moving meshes around is a very big deal.
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Stretching the vertical elements to minimize geometry
00:00Now that we've cloned our module vertically to produce some of the building
00:04facade, we need to add the vertical elements that go between the modules.
00:08Tall brick pilasters that give us an extra shadow line.
00:11We will do these as continuous elements.
00:14We don't want to waste geometry by cloning the same block over and over.
00:18I will start out by making a box, making sure that my Snap is on in 3D.
00:25I'll zoom in down at the base where one of the vertical elements sits and
00:29create a box snapping clearly between the vertices and up to, well, somewhere.
00:34It doesn't really matter where at the moment.
00:36This gives me the box at the right width and now I can stretch the height as I need.
00:40I will go to the Modifier panel and change the length of this box to 4.
00:47Well, it's small. I will optimize this.
00:49I will right-click.
00:51Choose Convert to Editable Poly and delete the back, bottom, and top faces,
00:57selecting polygons and pressing Delete.
01:06Now I have clean geometry.
01:08I will press 1 and switch to Vertex and then select the top vertices and in the
01:13front view, stretch them up to the top.
01:19I'll zoom out to view the whole building, press W for Move, and grab the y-axis
01:24and pull these up, matching it evenly with the top of my modules.
01:28I will also check in the Top view, pressing T for Top view and maybe F3 for
01:35Wireframe instead of Shaded, making sure that my brick is snapped to the
01:39front of the module.
01:41Again I'll move on the y-axis, snapping on one of the vertices and pulling it forward.
01:46Now I'm ready to map this.
01:50We can see I have got one vertical brick element, which optimizes the amount
01:54of geometry I have.
01:56For mapping these, we're going to map at a 45.
02:00The idea is that we can push the mapping through from two sides by rotating the
02:04mapping gizmo, thereby getting the text to flow around the object.
02:08It's a great technique for things like this where we need to see that continuity.
02:15When we are working with texture at 45, we need to scale down the mapping and here's why.
02:20As an example, I'll make a plane.
02:23Onto this plane I'll put some on unwrapped checkers I have generated.
02:26I will press M for Materials and in the new material, in the Diffuse Color, I
02:31will add in a Bitmap.
02:34In the Bitmap, I'll go browse to my images directory under sceneassets and
02:39choose one of my texture-based files.
02:41These are included with these exercises for you to use.
02:44I will choose texture-based 512x512.
02:48This is a series of rainbow checkers with letters and numbers in them.
02:52This will let me see if this map is distorted and also let me see where it
02:56repeats from red to green and blue to orange.
02:58I will press Open and assign that material to my plane.
03:08I'll make sure in my Material Editor that this map is showing.
03:14When I apply UVW Map Modifier to this object, I'll map the texture on square.
03:21Let's say this texture is 200x200.
03:26Right now the mapping gizmo is straight on the plane, giving me square squares.
03:31When I right-click, choose Gizmo and rotate this Gizmo 45 degrees, those scores will stretch.
03:41This introduces distortion in the texture.
03:43We can tell as the letters and squares are stretched horizontally.
03:46What we need to do then is multiply the width on this by half of the square root
03:54of 2, which will scale these back to the right size.
03:58Based on that multiplication, I will put the width in my UVW Map at 141.42.
04:06Because I have scaled down the width but rotated the mapping, I've compensated
04:10and the width is essentially back to 1.
04:12My squares are square again and my letters and numbers are not distorted.
04:20Now I'll switch over to my vertical element.
04:22I will right-click and choose Top Level to get out of the mapping on that plane.
04:29For this, I'll assign a brick I've got made already as part of a texture sheet.
04:33I will press M for my Material Editor and in a new material, on the Diffuse Color,
04:39I will choose a bitmap.
04:43In the sceneassets, I'll choose my texture.
04:46I will make sure the texture shows in the view and I'll make sure I know how big
04:55this texture should be.
04:56One way to do this, especially in a unit surface like bricks, is to count bricks.
05:02This one comes out at 16 feet square, figuring that a brick is 3 inches tall
05:07and multiplying out.
05:12I'll apply a UVW Map Modifier to this object and I'll put a Length in 192.
05:20If I put a Width of 192 in, that'll be a square.
05:23I need to get that aligned correctly first.
05:26In the UVW Map, I will scroll down and try alignment one on X or Y until it
05:32flips in the right direction.
05:40With the material assigned to the object and mapped on the Y alignment, I can see my brick.
05:45Now I need to compensate using that scale factor to get the width right, after I
05:50rotate this mapping at a 45.
05:52Using the formula, the Width for this comes out to 135.7.
05:58I will add that into my Width.
06:02Then right-click and choose Gizmo.
06:05Now I can rotate that Mapping Gizmo by 45.
06:07I will zoom in on my object to see if this worked.
06:15It looks like the bricks are wrapping cleanly around.
06:18I can right-click and press Move if I need to move this backwards and forwards.
06:23I will hit S to turn off my Snap as well.
06:25I will pull this in and we can see the texture cleanly sliding on the building.
06:30I will get the bricks just in the right place, mapping around that vertical element.
06:37It's almost there, except I have a white space.
06:40One thing with mapping, especially when using a texture sheet, is we may need to
06:44move the map side-to-side to work right.
06:46I will pull this over on the x-axis, until I get the continuous section of brick
06:51to wrap around the object.
06:53I'll check on both sides.
06:54It looks like my brick is good and my vertical element is mapped with the brick
06:58flowing cleanly around.
07:00It's also optimized.
07:02I have stretched this element the whole height of the building, using the
07:05minimal amount of geometry to make the maximum shadow impact.
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Unwrapping the elements for correct proportion
00:00For games, we want to maximize the use of one texture on as many objects as we can,
00:05thereby referencing the texture again instead of reloading or opening a
00:10new texture, which uses more memory in the game and may cause a slowdown in frame rate.
00:14For this building, as I have the same brick on vertical elements and the modules
00:18made in previous lessons, I want to use one texture sheet.
00:22That way I get continuity in color and can adjust brick accordingly to map
00:26between different objects.
00:29The first thing I will do is assign the material to these objects, the same
00:32material I used on the verticals.
00:34I will put it on one so we can see it clearly.
00:41We can see that the original UVs have been distorted by the modeling
00:44process, this is fine.
00:46What we want to do is under the Modifier List, add an Unwrap UVW Modifier on.
00:56With the Unwrap Modifier on, we will go into the UV Editor, flatten the faces,
01:01and then align them on the brick where we need.
01:09With the Editor open, it's difficult to see what's going on.
01:12The first thing we'll do is under the CheckerPattern drop-down pick the
01:16texture we're actually using to display.
01:20There is our texture sheet laying on to the polygons.
01:21Now, we'll take these polygons, right-click and select Face or Vertex.
01:29Select all the polygons and under Mapping, choose Flatten.
01:34We'll flatten them at the default.
01:3645 on the Face Angle Threshold and the Spacing .002.
01:41All of our intersections in the mesh are at 90 degrees.
01:44So flattening like this is a great way to break objects apart and maintain the
01:48proportion of one element to the others.
01:52In the Mapping, first in the Quick Transform I will rotate these 90
01:55degrees around their pivot.
01:59Now, I have got the brick in the right direction.
02:01I may need to force a redraw by scrubbing slightly in the view here to get
02:05the brick to lay on.
02:06I will press the Spacebar for the Selection Lock.
02:13With the Selection Lock engaged, now I can move these elements around nicely.
02:17I will scale them and move them.
02:20The important thing here in scale is to watch the brick from the vertical
02:23element to the courses of the brick around the windows, scaling all the elements
02:28together make sure that the brick spans cleanly.
02:31As I scale them up and down, we can see the brick size changing on the object.
02:35What I will do is scale them in and switch to Move and move the elements down to match.
02:43One of the things to watch out for is continuity.
02:46We made sure that in this module this element would line up cleanly at the
02:50bottom of the windows where there is a mortar joint.
02:52In scaling, I am going to get as close as I can. If needed, I can even move
02:56vertices ever so slightly to align so that I go from mortar joint to the bottom
03:01of a brick and the texture appears to be seamless on the next module.
03:05I will also watch out for the connection between the vertical element and
03:10the module. Do the bricks line up as well as possible or as close as
03:14somebody can see reasonably see?
03:16It looks like my brick needs to be just a touch bigger.
03:19I will scale this out.
03:21Notice that the background color of my texture module here is the
03:25background color of the brick.
03:26So if I need to spill over slightly, as I am going to do, I will get a clean line-up.
03:31I will hold these UVs off the edges of the editor, zooming in to check and
03:35lining up as well as I can.
03:37I can always come back and adjust the mapping on one or the other, but I think I
03:41am in pretty decent shape.
03:42So we can see a little adjustment is all it takes to put it in the right place.
03:48That maybe a little extra scale.
03:49I am going to get these as close as possible.
03:52The other thing I have as my ally in this is this will be possibly several
03:56stories up and have shadow lines obscuring that transition.
04:00I will press Spacebar to unlock the selection.
04:07Now, I can take the other texture elements, such as the side of the window here,
04:11pull them over next to the mesh or even inside the window and get them aligned,
04:16so that the brick flows cleanly around that opening.
04:21In the interest of time, I will take the texture elements and align them and
04:24show what it looks like when I am done.
04:26As we can see both in the viewport and in the UV Editor, I have taken the sides
04:31and cleanly aligned them on top of each other, these green rectangles with their
04:35vertices highlighted. Actually four, all four vertical sides here lapping over,
04:41sharing the same UV space to economize on textures.
04:44There is simply not enough brick here to be able to see that it's really the
04:47same brick from vertical to vertical.
04:50The windows in the final won't be bricked in; they will have their own texture.
04:54Those I can stack as well, make smaller, and place inside the openings here in the brick.
04:59I will select them, move them down and stack them on each other, place them
05:09inside the opening, and scale them down.
05:16One of the things I am doing is taking advantage of different materials to
05:21affect different sizes of UV elements.
05:24These windows are slightly smaller because they are painted wood adjacent to
05:27brick, therefore I can scale the element down without a loss of continuity, as
05:32we can see here in the view of larger and smaller bricks.
05:35Once these window elements have their window texture, it will look fine.
05:39The same goes for the sill.
05:40We can just see it down here in brick.
05:42I will rotate down to be able to tell.
05:44This will disappear, this will be in white stone, and I will probably put a
05:48matching white up above on the header.
05:52I've still got extra texture space left over in the other window opening.
05:56I can either stack other elements in or use it for something else, like corners
06:00and stone elements in the future.
06:02I will close my editor, right-click and pick Top-Level, and assign the same
06:10material to the other objects to check for continuity, at least one or two,
06:14holding Ctrl to add to the selection, pressing M for Material, and assigning that
06:19material onto those.
06:22What I am looking for in the unwrap as I press F4 and turn off Edged Faces is
06:26any gap in continuity.
06:27I have a small one right here at the top where I need to scale these elements
06:31ever so slightly to fix it.
06:33In the interest of time, I will scale and fix the texture elements and show the
06:37result when I am done.
06:38I've fixed that minor issue in the editor by moving the vertices ever so
06:42slightly to make sure that the brick lines up from top to bottom of the module.
06:45Right here in these bricks is where the sill will go and texture, further
06:50reinforcing the illusion. We're only leaving a few bricks adjacent to each
06:54other, covering anymore minor issues.
06:58In this movie, we looked very closely at unwrapping techniques: using a texture
07:02sheet and matching the polygons to them versus unwrapping things and figuring
07:07out how to put the texture on.
07:09This technique of making a texture sheet first and aligning elements on them is
07:13very powerful when you use it on things that need to line up, like brick.
07:19We've also looked at stretching vertical elements along a building to economize
07:24on polygon usage, making sure that they are as slim as possible while still
07:28maintaining the shadow lines, and then mapping them using Rotated and Scaled
07:32mapping to get a tiling texture to repeat all the way up.
07:37You can use this technique or both techniques on one object with one texture, to
07:41get one material to do multiple things on one building and look like, well, of
07:46course the building it's supposed to look like.
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Laying out a texture sheet for a façade
00:00One of the things we do when planning elements in a texture sheet is to
00:04gauge the relative size of the element versus the viewing distance and
00:08lighting condition.
00:12In this example, zoomed in on one of the modules we've created earlier, we have
00:16clear shadow elements around the windows from those deep recessed window openings
00:21and also a shadow line next to the vertical brick we put in.
00:25On the windows we have a different texture and if we reference our photos, we
00:29can see that these windows are largely white or off-white paint.
00:33We can see in the window elements that largely they are solid colored, with
00:37something going on in the reflection of the glass and some sort of solid color
00:41up here on the top of the sill, which means we can get away with a texture
00:44element size that's actually fairly small.
00:47The same goes for the bottom of the sill and the sides as well as really the top
00:51of the sill adjacent to the window.
00:54It's up several stories.
00:55So really we don't need to see a lot of it as long as it has the right color.
00:59In 3ds Max then when I lay out this texture sheet in my UV Editor, the biggest
01:03piece I care about is getting the window itself, this opening where the window
01:07resides, getting the window itself the right size and being able to draw the
01:12steps and the window on it and the glass.
01:17In the UV Editor I've already placed window elements inside their openings
01:22and scaled them down.
01:25I'll highlight these here by selecting them.
01:27Notice that I'm using down at the bottom of the Edit UVWs dialog the Select By
01:31Element toggle, allowing me to select one vertex edge or face of an element and
01:36grab the whole thing.
01:37This is very handy when you're moving elements around and want them to stay
01:41coherent and proportion and if they have other parts associated.
01:46I'll move this to make sure it's not overlapping any of my wall and make
01:50sure that it's scaled as large as possible in that opening so I can paint
01:53the most detail on it.
01:56Over on the side I've stacked my top and bottom elements.
02:00By selecting the elements in the UV Editor here I can see their selected
02:04vertices in the main viewport, the red at the top and bottom.
02:08Alternately, if I switch to Face and select those faces in the viewport, pressing
02:14F2 to shade selected faces shows me where those elements are.
02:17We can see the top of the sill highlighted in red.
02:20I can take these elements, which will be a solid color, and scale them down
02:24almost so they become aligned.
02:30Then I'll rotate them in the Quick Transform 90 degrees and move them in just
02:35under the windows with a-- They'd just get a solid color.
02:40So really they can be as small as I can stand and still be able find them,
02:44freeing up texture space in the side here for other pieces, such as cornice
02:48elements which may need more linear space in the texture sheet.
02:53As always, I'm looking at continuity in color and adjacent surfaces and where I
02:58can break it when I lay out texture.
03:00That's part of planning a very elegant use of the texture sheet, reserving space
03:04for high detail or items that really need to show correct matching, like the
03:10brick on the major face of the wall.
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4. Texturing the Modular Construction
Making brick texture
00:00In this chapter we'll look heavily at texture techniques for use in game environments.
00:05Quite often we need to paint textures from scratch versus using photographs, as we
00:09simply can't get a close enough or straight enough view in the photograph of
00:13the element we need.
00:14As an example in this building, we can see we need this pink brick or tan brick
00:19as it runs up the side.
00:21There is really not a good place to get a large enough photo of it straight on
00:25in any kind of neutral lighting.
00:27So we need to paint it by hand.
00:28That also gives us the advantage, painting textures by hand, of getting
00:32exactly the color and matching we want on our texture sheets, like we've seen
00:35in previous chapters.
00:37In this first movie then I'll show how to paint clean brick from scratch in
00:41Photoshop using the Offset filter and selections and clouds to make what looks
00:46like naturally varying brick.
00:48I'll begin with a new document.
00:49In my new document in Photoshop I'll make this first width and height a multiple
00:54of the size of a brick.
00:55A standard brick is 8 inches x 3 inches tall and 4 inches deep, including one
01:00mortar joint on the side and bottom.
01:02If I assign a working ratio, as an example, of 20 pixels to the edge that gives me
01:08a brick plus a mortar joint of 160 pixels wide by 60 pixels tall.
01:13I'll start with that ratio, giving myself a two brick by two brick document.
01:17This gives me a Width of 320 and a Height of 120.
01:21Games always work at screen resolution.
01:23So we will leave it at 72 pixels per inch, RGB 8 bit is fine, and a
01:27Background of white. Great!
01:30In this document I'll hit M for my Marquee or choose it off the toolbar and
01:34under the Style choose a Fixed Size.
01:36We will make the Width slightly less than that, 160, just a brick width. I'll
01:41put it at 155 and a Height of 55, giving myself a 5 pixel mortar joint between the bricks.
01:49I'll land a brick on there, snap it against the top on left, and fill it
01:52in really any color.
01:55I'll make sure to either do this on a new layer or cut and paste this onto a new
01:58layer so I can move it cleanly off the background.
02:00I'll press Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V to cut and paste.
02:04Now I'll take this brick, make sure it's snapped against the top left, then hold
02:08Alt and clone the brick over, letting it snap against the adjacent layer.
02:14Then I can move this, either with the Error keys or the Offset, five pixels over.
02:18I'll use my Arrow keys, tapping the Right Arrow five times.
02:23Now I want to clone the layer.
02:24I'll do it in the Layer palette by holding Alt+Dragging and then in the Filter
02:29under Other I'll use the Offset filter to move this brick.
02:32In the Offset I'll offset it half a brick to the right, or 80 pixels, and I'll
02:38offset it full brick down, 60 pixels, giving me a half brick.
02:42I'll pick the first layer, clone it, and repeat the process.
02:48Finally, I'll clone the half brick to the other side, either using an
02:51Offset or an Alt+Clone.
02:54Now I have my base pattern for the brick setup.
02:57I'll press Ctrl+Shift+E key to merge the visible layers.
03:00Then I'll Select All by pressing Ctrl+A and choosing Edit > Define Pattern.
03:07We can name this if we would like.
03:08I'll leave mine at Pattern 3 for now.
03:11Now I need to make a larger document of brick that's the multiple of this brick size.
03:16These bricks multiply out into 1920x1920 image size.
03:21I'll start a new document with a size of 1920x1920.
03:25I'll fill this document, choosing Edit > Fill, and under Use instead of Foreground
03:31Color I'll choose Pattern and select the custom pattern I just made.
03:35Now I have an even square of brick. In fact, two even.
03:38What I need to do is add variety into this.
03:41I'll go to my Paint Bucket, pressing G or choosing it from the toolbar.
03:45In the Paint Bucket settings making sure that Anti-alias is off, but Contiguous is on.
03:50Now I'll choose easy to recognize colors, such as green, blue, red, or
03:54yellow, and I'll fill select bricks, one at a time, clicking through here.
03:59I'll do this with at least three or four colors.
04:02What I have done here is to fill in large areas of brick with select other
04:06colors, again using easy to recognize colors so I can find them, select
04:11them, tell them apart.
04:12Trying to work in brick color and a slightly different color is very hard on the eyes.
04:17This is actually going to be a selection layer.
04:20I won't actually use this as the proper color.
04:22I'll rename the Background layer to selection.
04:27Now I want to find my brick color and the easiest way to do this is to
04:30eyedropper it from the reference.
04:32I'll go to the reference photo, zoom in on a section of brick, and
04:36eyedropper one of the brick colors, looking at the foreground color to make
04:39sure I didn't get any odd shades.
04:41Then I'll press X to swap foreground and background and pick a slightly
04:45different brick color.
04:46In this case maybe a little deeper and a little redder.
04:50Back in my original drawing I'll use my Magic Wand, pressing W for Wand, noting
04:55that Anti-alias and Contiguous are not checked.
04:57I'll Magic Wand one of the brick colors, create a new layer, and fill this with
05:03clouds, choosing Filter > Render > Clouds.
05:08Then I'll press Ctrl+D to deselect.
05:10I am going to repeat this process, probably changing foreground and background
05:14colors of brick ever so slightly each time.
05:16What I have done is to select each of the colors in my selection layer.
05:22On a new layer with that selection, fill them with clouds of the foreground and
05:26background colors, varying ever so slightly.
05:29It's difficult to tell at the moment, but I actually have bricks that are
05:32slightly warmer, slightly cooler, slightly more saturated, slightly less
05:35saturated. Brick is never the same color.
05:37There is a slight variance within the tonal range.
05:40Now I'll put a new layer underneath my brick layers, which would be the mortor,
05:44pressing Ctrl+Shift+N for a new layer.
05:48I'll fill this mortar color in a variant of the foreground, using the hue but
05:52desaturating almost down to 0.
05:55Then maybe just a little bit brighter.
05:57So it's a pretty good match.
05:59Raw concrete is sort of a yellow gray, but sometimes it helps to bias it in the
06:02right direction, to match the brick so it doesn't stand out.
06:06Now I have a raw section of brick ready to apply across a wall, span of the
06:11texture, or use further in a texture map, and it has the natural variation we
06:15expect to see in brick.
06:16By extension we can use this technique in things like stone block, paving, other
06:21sides of brick, and even cinder block.
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Adding detail to the diffuse texture: Sills and arches
00:00As part of forming a textured sheet for a modular building we need to add detail in.
00:05Often in a building like this we see details like sills, brick arches,
00:09corbels, and other pieces.
00:11For this I am going to choose to make a design variation.
00:14I am going to put a flat arch or a jack arch over these windows so I get a
00:19difference in brick direction.
00:20Right now these windows probably have a concealed piece of steel holding up
00:24the brick right there.
00:25To start, I'll go over to 3ds Max and in the UV Editor render the UVW template
00:31to bring into Photoshop.
00:32Here in 3ds Max I have my polygons in the UV Editor, shown cleanly by turning off the texture.
00:38What I'll do is choose Tools > Render UVW Template.
00:42I'll set my Width and my Texture size 1024 square and hit Render.
00:46This produces these UVs.
00:48Notice it looks like some are missing.
00:49It's really a question of being zoomed out to 50%,
00:53noted by the 1:2 up here.
00:55I'll save this image and then go bring it up in Photoshop for use.
00:58I'll call this wall template.
01:01What I typically do is name things template so I can find them and note that any
01:05file with template in the name is a temporary file that can be deleted later.
01:08I'll also save this out as a Targa to avoid introducing any lossy
01:12compression such as JPEG.
01:15Back in Photoshop I'll open that document and copy and paste it onto my
01:19existing texture sheet.
01:23Now I've got my template open.
01:25I'll select all by pressing Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C for Copy, or Ctrl+X for cut.
01:29It doesn't really matter at this stage. Go over to my texture sheet I had
01:33previously and paste this over.
01:36Typically, what I'll do is invert the colors by pressing Ctrl+I and set the
01:41blending mode of this layer to Multiply.
01:43That way, areas multiplied by white are essentially invisible and I can see the
01:47color cleanly underneath.
01:49It may be helpful also to desaturate this layer.
01:52I'll hit Ctrl+Shift+U to desaturate and possibly bump up the Brightness and Contrast.
02:03Now I can see my mesh lines cleanly.
02:05I'll also make sure to lock this layer so I don't ask accidentally grab it and move it.
02:09I'm ready to do my brick arch up above the windows.
02:12I'll go to the background layer of my texture sheet or my brick wherever it
02:15happens to be and using my marquee at a normal style, select a large piece of
02:21brick, roughly as tall as the windows are wide and at least two bricks tall to
02:26give me the right size on the arch.
02:31With this brick selected I'll copy and paste it onto a new layer.
02:35I'll take this new layer and under Transform I'll rotate it 90 degrees.
02:39This avoids introducing any odd distortion and makes sure I get an exact rotation.
02:44Then I'll move this layer up on top of windows.
02:47Zoom in and see if it needs any cropping. It may be helpful to turn off the
02:51background at this stage to see clearer.
02:53What I am going to do is line up this layer over the windows, making sure
02:58that the brick sits evenly on top of the UVs, and then use my Marquee if I
03:02need to erase a little bit.
03:03A little overlap right here doesn't bother me.
03:06We'll eliminate that as part of the scaling.
03:08Now I'll use the Transform tools to squish this in and make wedge-shaped bricks.
03:14Under Edit I'll choose Transform > Distort.
03:18I'll grab the left top node, hold Shift, and pull this brick out.
03:24I'll do the same on the right side.
03:27Then I may need to grab the center node on the right and just pull these
03:31bricks in a little bit.
03:33When I'm done I'll hit Enter to accept the transformation.
03:36Now I have an arch almost over the windows.
03:39The one less thing is to make sure it comes across correctly and has mortar
03:42joints all the way at the top and bottom.
03:45I'll use my marquee, selecting a small region or using a Paint Brush and adding
03:49a white mortar joint just on top of the bricks here, because it needs a
03:53transition element, getting the size as close as I can and using the arrow keys
03:56to nudge it over if needed.
03:58I'll eyedropper my mortar color and fill this probably on a new layer so I can
04:04find it and move it cleanly if I need.
04:06Now I have a brick arch over the windows, ready to save out as part of my texture
04:11sheet and I add additional detail to this building.
04:14I also use this technique on sills.
04:16I use it on soldier courses, turning a roll of brick to go at a floor line, and to
04:21add detail to an otherwise blank wall.
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Adding stone accents
00:00Often in a building we have a mix of materials we need to show in a diffused texture.
00:05In this building the main body of the building above the retail floors is brick
00:09with stoned windows sills and other trim and accents.
00:13We have precast concrete or stone forming the retail floors.
00:16Additionally, we may want to add other detail into the stone that makes this
00:20building different from other pieces.
00:22In stone, it can be dressed, finely honed, polished, or even rough chiseled.
00:28How we do it is really an artistic decision more than a hard and fast rule
00:32one way or another.
00:34In this movie, I am going to demonstrate how to put stone sills onto
00:37our windows and also an option for making the middle of them look rough and chiseled.
00:42I'll start out with the texture sheet of the module, plus the vertical element
00:46and the arch from the previous lessons.
00:48First, I'll zoom in on the bottom of the windows and use the brick as a
00:51measuring tool to get the sill size right.
00:53I'll press M for Marquee and make a new layer to do the sill on.
00:57As a general practice in Photoshop I tend to make a new layer whenever I am
01:01doing a new element.
01:03My motto is when in doubt, it's another layer.
01:06We can always flatten layers as we need, but it's better to have the flexibility
01:10to be able to tune things a little bit and test them in the texture and making
01:13separate layers really helps in that, versus trying to pick unique elements on
01:17one flatten background.
01:19I'll start my marquee with a normal style, making it fit the windows as well as I
01:23can and just about two bricks tall.
01:26This is pretty good for the sill, although I realize it needs to be a little bit wider.
01:29I'll handle this in the next step.
01:32Then I am going to fill this color with just a slightly yellow gray.
01:36Now this will be my stone color.
01:38Alternately, instead of a yellow gray, I can eyedropper a brick color and swing
01:43it less saturated, brighter, and maybe a little yellower on the Hue, for a
01:49matching stone that's somewhere in the range of the brick without being too off.
01:52I'll go a little brighter on this.
01:54It's perfectly okay to adjust and tune it.
01:57Part of the flexibility I am building in by using new layers is tuning the color
02:01of the stone which will be different from the chisel marks I'll add on.
02:04I'll press G for the paint bucket and fill this marquee.
02:08This would be my stone.
02:10I'll press Ctrl+D to deselect and now I need to move it over to make up for
02:14that width I forgot.
02:15We can see in the reference image that the stone sill actually goes outside of
02:19the window openings just a little bit.
02:21I'll use the Move tool, pressing V,, and pull this stone over just enough
02:26outside of that window.
02:27It seems to look pretty good, then I'll hold Alt and clone this over an equal
02:32distance on the other side.
02:33Sometimes I'll use the arrow keys to nudge this texture over, or pieces like it,
02:38to get that look right.
02:39Then I'll press Ctrl+E to flatten the layers.
02:42Now I have a clean stone sill that I can put in the right place on my texture.
02:46Remember, we made the match line for this at the top of the wall.
02:49There is not actually a texture underneath the windows here. The geometry just sort of ends.
02:54I'll take this layer and I'll slide it up, holding Shift to constrain the
02:58direction so it fits right under the window.
03:00Again, I am going to zoom in and use my Nudge tools.
03:04As a possibility, I may take my Template layer and reduce the Opacity down
03:09just to make sure that this texture sits into, over, or even a pixel beyond that line.
03:15I'll relock that layer just to make sure I don't move it.
03:18Now I have a clean stone sill ready for tiling.
03:21What I may want to do is now add chisel marks in.
03:24This is an option I am going to do to add further detail in here.
03:28I want to look for a sec at clouds in Photoshop before I get into making chisel
03:32marks, because it's important to understand how they are generated.
03:35If I make a new document, as an example, with the width of 800x800 and I choose
03:41Filter > Render > Clouds, I get generated clouds.
03:45A document that is 200x200 will get the same size of clouds.
03:53Applying that same filter gets me the same clouds and less of them in my smaller document.
03:59What I'll do to get a lot of chisel marks here is actually make a document
04:03that's quite a bit larger.
04:05I'll start my clouds out at 4000 square and I'll run these clouds in light
04:12gray to medium gray.
04:13So I get good variation without having a color bias one way or another or any odd banding.
04:20In this document, I get a lot of clouds.
04:22Now I can reduce this, choosing Ctrl+Alt+I for Image Size, and downsizing this to
04:27maybe 400 on a side, giving me a document with an abundance of cloud which will
04:33be my chisel texture.
04:34I'll select all and copy and paste this on to my existing document.
04:40Now my clouds fit fairly nicely over my windowsill.
04:43I also may want to scale these down to get the chisel marks to run in more of a direction.
04:48Pressing Ctrl+T accesses the Transform and you can move and rotate and scale
04:53all within this tool.
04:56I'll pull mine down and scale it in to get more horizontal clouds.
05:00Hitting Enter accepts that transformation.
05:02Now I'll constrain that selection to this sill.
05:05I'll hold Ctrl and click on the layer thumbnail for layer 4, my sill, invert
05:10that selection by pressing Ctrl+I, and on Layer 5, my clouds, deleting everything
05:15that's not on the sill.
05:17This is pretty good, although we can't really see the sill color and I'd like to
05:21have a dressed or nicely done edge around it.
05:24Once again I am going to select the sill and then contract this selection,
05:28choosing Select > Modify > Contract, and I'll pull it in by four pixels.
05:34Then I'll invert that selection.
05:36Once it's inverted I'll delete the outside ring on those clouds, leaving me this
05:41center ready for chiseling.
05:43Finally on this layer, I'll choose Filter > Pixelate > Crystallize.
05:48I'll pull down the preview and bring the Cell Size way down so I get what
05:52appears to be a lot of crystallization or faceting marks on that stone.
05:56It looks like chiseling.
05:58The last step then is to choose a blending mode that works and I'll often try 2
06:02or 3 before I find the right look.
06:04In this case Multiply may be too dark.
06:07It darkens my stone and makes it look almost pushed in and dirty.
06:10I may want to try a Hard Light or a Soft Light or something similar to get
06:15this to look right.
06:16I can also adjust colors if that's needed to get the chisel marks to stand out more.
06:20I am going to try this again as a Multiply, but I am going to bring back the
06:24Opacity just a little bit so the chiseling marks are almost the same color and
06:28now the middle of the stone has a rough look while the outside is dressed.
06:32The last step is to save this and test it in 3ds Max and see if it works in the texture.
06:38I'll turn off my template and save a copy of this.
06:48I'll press M for the Material Editor and in my material where I have applied my
06:52texture sheet, I'll just load in that new bitmap, clicking on the bitmap
06:56parameters Bitmap button.
06:58When I pull in that new texture, I get a rowlock or jack arch above those
07:02windows and it chiseled the stone sill flush with the brick, ready for a bump
07:07map or a normal map and other things that make it look like it has more detail.
07:11Pulling out and I can see I have got my sills above and below.
07:15When you are adding detail to the diffused texture like this it's important to
07:18keep in mind not only the colors you want, but how things were made.
07:22Buildings are an assembled language.
07:24Now we want to think of assembling our textures as, well, pieces of a building.
07:29Stone sills, brick arches, and so forth with matching colors.
07:33So it looks like a coherent whole with the same vintage.
07:36In this case, using a filter and some selections modifying and expanding,
07:40allowed me to produce what looked like chiseled stone sills, adding a further
07:44refinement of detail on my texture.
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Layering color in window frames and doorways
00:00When we are adding detail to a texture of a building, we need to consider the
00:04small steps and small details we see in areas like windows where we may see
00:09more stepping or level changes in the window frame than there is in the entire facade.
00:15The brick is actually fairly flat, but in the windows they have upper and lower
00:19frames and a frame around which may have its own trim.
00:23We need to paint this in Photoshop so it looks right, even though it's just
00:26really a flat polygon.
00:28These windows are single hung where the bottom moves up inside of the top.
00:32They also have a wood frame around.
00:34We can just see here in this sort of warm tan.
00:38To begin with, I'll start out in that diffused texture I had used in previous
00:42exercises, where I have my window polygons inside the opening of the window,
00:47sized as big as possible without overlapping.
00:49What I will do to begin a window is make a new layer.
00:53As always, make a new layer for new construction.
00:56It makes it easier to adjust and separate.
00:58On my template layer, just called Layer 1, as a note, I am going to rename this.
01:02I am going to call this template.
01:04That way I can always find it and make sure I turn it off when I save the texture.
01:08I am going to select using the Magic Wand with the Contiguous option checked
01:12inside of the window.
01:14Then I'll expand this selection by a couple of pixels to make sure it overlaps
01:17the line of the polygon.
01:19Select > Modify > Expand, and I will push it out by 2.
01:23Then on that new layer, my Layer 6, I am going to fill it with a window color.
01:29I'll go back to my reference photo, zoom in as close as I can, and eyedropper a color.
01:34I may want to try a couple of times.
01:37These are looking rather pink and I have a feeling we're seeing a little bit of
01:40extra red in the image.
01:42I am going to take this color now that I've got it and just pull the Hue around
01:49or desaturate it till it's not quite as pink.
01:52I am going to swing the Hue a little more towards yellow and brighten it up.
01:58Sometimes the reference maybe a little misleading depending on the conditions it was shot in.
02:02So we may need to push these just a bit.
02:05That looks pretty reasonable.
02:06Sort of an off-white buff color.
02:08The first step then is on this new layer to fill that selection and then deselect.
02:13Now we have at least a clean blank space for the window.
02:17The trick with painting a window is to put in steps of color, to make it look
02:21right, as if there was extra framework in there or extra geometry.
02:25I'll start with a solid color and then make the frame of the window and finally
02:29the window frames around each light of glass.
02:32I deselected this so I could see clearly where that color sat.
02:36To reselect around a certain layer or a certain color, I can either use
02:39the Magic Wand or hold Ctrl and click on the layer thumbnail, and there's
02:44my selection again.
02:45The first thing I'll do is contract the selection in to get me the first layer
02:48of frame, choosing Select > Modify > Contract, and I will contract in by 4.
02:56Then I'm going to fill this with a slightly darker variant of my existing window color.
03:01Choosing the window color and pulling the Brightness down by four or five points
03:07and filling the selection again.
03:09I'll do this one more time.
03:12Contracting the selection, darkening the color down, maybe down five points,
03:20down to 87, and filling.
03:23What I'm starting to get if I deselect to show is a little bit of color stepping
03:27in there that we read as window frames.
03:30A lot of times window frames actually do have multiple colors like this or they
03:34get different amounts of dirt depending on where they sit.
03:38Now I need to make the interior frames on the windows.
03:41What I want to do is use the Magic Wand to select that color, making sure
03:45that the Tolerance is low. As you can see my Tolerance is too high and it's
03:49grabbing all the colors.
03:50I'll try a Tolerance of 5, deselect and reselect again.
03:55That works much better.
03:56The important piece here is to use the Info palette and look at the height of
04:00this to get the size right.
04:02I'll go to Window and Info or press F8.
04:05I can see that my Height is 336.
04:09I want my size to be half of that for a top or bottom of the window.
04:13Half of 336 is 168.
04:17So I'll make my marquee a fixed size at a Width of 132, which I am getting from
04:22the width of that selection, and a Height of 168.
04:29Now when I land a marquee inside this color, I can make sure that it's in the right place.
04:35The first step is to make sure the marquee sits cleanly inside, again using the
04:41arrow keys to nudge, and then contract it in maybe a pixel or two.
04:50This gives me an additional step in the window.
04:52Now I will fill this with one more slightly darker color.
05:03Zooming back out shows me a slightly deeper rectangle.
05:06And again, I'm going to contract that marquee, this time to provide the
05:10thickness of the frame around the glass.
05:12I'll contract in by 6.
05:15Actually, it needs to be a little thicker.
05:17I'll contract in by another 2.
05:19It's fine to look at it and do it again. Much better.
05:26Now I am going to make the glass.
05:28And for the glass, it's not blue as it's a scorching bright blue.
05:33It's much closer to really a deep blue purple gray.
05:37Really windows in the outside have a reflection and not much color of their own.
05:42So I am going to mute this out and fill here.
05:46That will read as glass fairly nicely.
05:48Now what I'd like to do is take this whole assembly and clone it down, pressing
05:53M for Marquee and lining up my marquee inside that dark window frame, zooming in if I have to.
06:00Notice I am hitting Ctrl+0 to Zoom Extents and Z for Zoom to zoom back in.
06:05Now I'll hold Alt while in the Move tool and moving that selection and
06:10cloning it down to fit in the window frame, zooming in as needed to see if
06:15it's in the right place.
06:18With this selection still active, I'll choose Image > Adjustments >
06:22Brightness/Contrast and lower the Brightness by 10 or 12 points.
06:29Now the bottom of the window looks slightly darker, as if it's a little more in shadow.
06:34This is the basic diffuse texture for a window.
06:37We can continue to add to it, adding in either localized dirt by selecting colors
06:42and then painting, or adding gradients and reflections across.
06:46I'll show a little bit of dirt to finish the exercise.
06:50What I'd like to do is to simulate some age in the window, as if the corners
06:53here are slightly dirty.
06:55As an example, I'll use my Magic Wand with a very low Tolerance and Contiguous
07:00on to select the window frame around the glass.
07:04Then I'll use my Brush tool, on a new layer of course, to add in some dirt.
07:09I'll work in a version of the window color, eyedroppering one of the window
07:14colors and then setting it darker.
07:18And in the brush, I'll brush with a soft brush, right-clicking to choose
07:23my brush if needed.
07:25Hardness at 0 and Size fairly low, brushing in a Multiply at maybe 10% Opacity.
07:32It's important to do it in little bits, not just to smear on a giant brush of dirt.
07:37And now in the selection in the corner, I'm going to brush in a little bit of
07:42dirt just around the edges, almost outside of the marquee so it sort of
07:46carries in little bit. That's fine.
07:48A little more in the top is okay.
07:52And it starts to look like either a mix of dirt or shadow.
07:56Making it irregular is just fine.
07:58I can repeat this process all the way around, getting me what looks like a dirty window.
08:03When you're painting textures then, you want to step back and look at the pieces
08:08you need remembering it's an assembled language that has been there over time.
08:12That the building was put up in pieces and has aged in different ways depending
08:16on which way the surface was facing.
08:19So build up your textures in pieces, using your selection and expanding or
08:22contracting to add steps in the color which look like additional levels of trim or detail.
08:28Then on new layers, selecting colors and adding in dirt for acceptable wear,
08:33keeping in mind that this will repeat over and over and over on every element
08:37you use the texture for.
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Copying diffuse layers for normal map foundations
00:00Once we've crafted a diffuse texture or that matter any other texture as
00:04part of a material, we can reuse these layers if we do it carefully and we are organized.
00:09What I've done here in this example is first to go through and name all of my
00:12layers, separating out cleanly things that are geometry or essentially of hard
00:17surface from things that are painted on detail such as dirt.
00:21I have brick and mortar and brick arch and mortar so they lay over properly as
00:24well as windows and dirt and stone sill and chiseling, etcetera.
00:28What I'd like to do in my layers is to go in and group things.
00:32In addition to naming the layers I'll name the groups.
00:34That way I can take this whole diffuse layer and clone it and decide what parts
00:38will become a bump map or a normal map.
00:40To start with I'll pick all of my layers except for my template.
00:45We can pick one, hold Shift, and pick the end to select all.
00:48Then press Ctrl+G to group the layers.
00:52I'll rename this group to Color. Or diffuse works nicely too.
00:56Now I can take this whole group, hold Alt, and clone it in the Layer menu by
01:00dragging, renaming the new group to Bump.
01:04Notice that I've left my template layer above everything, still as a multiplied
01:08layer unlocked, but that way I can see it, no matter what texture I am working on.
01:12I'll turn off that, turn off the Color layer, and in the Bump layer sort through
01:16what's going to be actually relief on the surface and what's simply painted on.
01:21Things that are simply painted on are going to disappear for this.
01:24I'll select the dirt, the sill dirt, the window dirt, and hit Delete to
01:29delete all of them.
01:31Now I can take these, grayscale them, and make a bump or a normal map out of it nicely.
01:36The important thing to stress here is to be organized.
01:39In any working drawing, in this case a PSD, we should be organized by name and by
01:44layer and when possible in any other method available so that we can find things
01:48easily and adjust them.
01:50In this case, if I had to adjust the color of the brick or maybe add variation,
01:53it's very easy to come in and select just the brick layer to constrain that
01:57selection without worrying about affecting dirt or mortar.
02:00Likewise, I can adjust things like dirt or windows or even window glass very
02:04easily and reuse it whenever possible.
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Desaturating the diffuse map copies and prepping for normal maps
00:00Once we've drawn a diffuse or color for a building in Photoshop, we want to
00:04reuse those layers and that texture much as possible to device things like
00:08diffuse or bump or normal or specular maps for use in other parts of a material.
00:13As we can see in this building, we've added in relief for things like the windows.
00:19We can also see just barely a little bit of darkness in the grout and the brick.
00:23And what this is from is well, the grout or the space between the brick, the
00:27mortar, being recessed slightly and over however many years of this building
00:31standing here gathering a little bit of dirt.
00:33This is something that needs to show up in a normal map, which is an
00:36approximation of surface detail that appears to light correctly.
00:40We also need to add in relief around the sill, making it look like it sticks out
00:44a little bit and making sure that the stepping in the windows shows up with as
00:47much relief or depth as possible.
00:50Additionally, we've added stone chiseling on the windowsill.
00:53We want to make sure that really pops out.
00:55In the previous texture document, we had taken the layers, grouped them as
00:59a color group, cloned the color group as a bump, and are ready to begin a bump map.
01:03What I'll do to start is we can see here in the Layers palette is eliminate
01:06anything that's simply painted on, like the dirt.
01:09Now I'll take my layers and desaturate them for use as a bump, selecting layer
01:14and pressing Ctrl+Shift+U for desaturate and quickly zipping through those
01:18layers and pulling their color out.
01:21Bump maps are grayscales where white is high and black is low and it's a
01:25relative measurement.
01:26It's not a particular white is 1 inch tall.
01:29It just happens to look higher.
01:31What I'll also do then is start to invert layers.
01:34As an example right now if I were to use this in a bump map, the grout between
01:38the bricks would stick out.
01:39I'd like recess it so I'll invert it by pressing Ctrl+I. The same will go for
01:45the brick arch mortar.
01:47I'll invert that layer so in a bump where it's dark, this will appear to recess in.
01:51I may want to do this with the windows as well.
01:54Notice in this map that the window is considerably brighter.
01:57That's okay. Even though by reason it should stick out, we have to remember that
02:01the polygon this window was on is actually recessed back, so no matter how high
02:06it goes in a bump map, how bright these values get, it's still simply recessed
02:10back in the geometry.
02:11We can use that to our advantage, giving us what looks like extra depth or extra
02:16recess in the bump map.
02:18Most of this looks pretty good.
02:20We'll have to try it out.
02:21My first inclination though is probably to take the mortar and just bring it a
02:25little bit lighter by pressing Ctrl+U is a quick way to do it for a
02:29Hue/Saturation and adjusting the Lightness.
02:32If you have another method such as Levels or Brightness/Contrast, feel free to use that.
02:36Use whatever is quick.
02:37We are just bringing up Luminance.
02:39It's very easy to go overboard on these.
02:42So what I'll do is make sure that the differences between colors are very subtle.
02:46I'll do the same adjustment with the brick arch mortar, brining up its Lightness
02:50until it's a reasonable match for the mortar around it.
02:54Finally, I'll look at the stone sill.
02:56This does need to stick out which is good, but I need to either do something
03:00with the chiseling or flip it so it looks like it maybe sticks out further or
03:04has a little more relief.
03:05In this case, I can pick the chiseling layer, because it's very easily selected,
03:10and adjust Brightness/Contrast or even Levels to get it in the right place.
03:14I'm going to use my Brightness/ Contrast and pull up the Contrast of the
03:18chiseling, maybe even using the Legacy just to boost that a little bit.
03:22So get what looks like more relief in that stone.
03:26Now this is ready for conversion to a Normal map or for use as a bump map if
03:30your application accepts it.
03:32Some game editors want normals, someone bumps.
03:34It depends really where you're going with it.
03:36In this case, in the next step, I'll take this and make a normal map out of it in Photoshop.
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Converting bump maps to normal maps using nDO
00:00Once we've got a color and a bump texture constructed for an object or a
00:04building, we're going to use that bump to make a normal map.
00:08A normal map is basically you can think of as a bump map plus a direction so the
00:12surfaces look like they are oriented correctly to the light.
00:15It is more involved with it, but that's the nuts and bolts on it.
00:18What I want to do in this building is in a normal map, pop out certain details,
00:22such as the sill here, the detail around the window, the stepping and the color,
00:27and also little bit of relief between the bricks.
00:29This darkness right here between the bricks is dirt that's collected over time
00:33in the recesses in the mortar.
00:36I have my Color and Bump groups ready from the previous exercises and in them
00:40are the layers so I can get to them easily.
00:42I've taken my bump map and desaturated all the layers and eliminated the ones
00:47that aren't going to affect the depth in it.
00:49Now I'm ready to use nDo, a free script available from cgted.com, to make my
00:55normal map in Photoshop.
00:56Alternately, there are plug-ins available form NVIDIA and other manufacturers and
01:01also standalone programs that can do this.
01:03We have many options available.
01:04It's really a question of what workflow you'd like to use.
01:07For this, I'll start with my Bump group and make sure that I have enough range
01:12between the brick and the stone for things to show.
01:14I will also make sure that things like the stepping in my windows have enough
01:18range or contrast between them.
01:20Lastly, I will clone this group by selecting it in the Layer palette,
01:24holding Alt and dragging,
01:26turning off the original and then on the new group pressing Ctrl+E to merge the
01:31group into one layer.
01:33Now it's ready to become a normal map.
01:35To activate nDo we can either install it or simply run the script straight from the drive.
01:40I'll choose File > Scripts > Browse and on my Desktop is the nDo folder.
01:46In there, I'll select the Adobe JavaScript file nDo.
01:51This will take a second to run and start to modify those layers pretty heavily.
01:56When this message comes up, we do want to remove the bevel for pixels that
01:59intersect the canvas edges. This is because this map is tilable and we don't
02:03want to introduce a bevel in the middle of bricks on the edge.
02:07Yes, this map is tilable.
02:11As you can see, nDo went through quite a few steps to get this normal map.
02:15The rainbows here in the normal map are due to the way the normals affect
02:19direction and surface orientation,
02:22with blue providing direction or strength and red and green providing surface
02:26orientation on X and Y, thereby giving it that rainbow appearance.
02:31In the nDo dialog, then I have a choice over how does this look.
02:35Under the Style I have Bevel and Emboss. I will try Emboss and see how this looks.
02:42It's always important to try different ways.
02:45One way may not work exactly but another look may be available and get you
02:49the results you want.
02:50It only takes a little bit of experimentation.
02:53Under Technique I'm going to run it as a Chisel Hard, because right now my brick
02:56to me is looking a little bit pillowy, a little bit rounded. That's better.
03:01Now the brick is flatter.
03:02The last part is I will play with the Depth and the Scale.
03:05I'll bring up the Depth 2000.
03:08Every time I make a change nDo will update.
03:11It's going to give me a little more relief in there, and finally I'll bring up
03:14the Scale to maybe 500.
03:15I'm going to give this a guess and see if it works.
03:21One of the most important things here to note is that I'm working on a separate
03:25layer and I've preserved my original group.
03:27If this doesn't work I can always come back and very easily re-clone the group
03:31and make a new normal map without having lost any data.
03:34I'll try this and see if it works.
03:36I will hit Close on the nDo dialog and then save this out as a TIFF, bringing it into 3ds Max.
03:41I will also save the final color image as well.
03:45In 3ds Max, I have added a little light into my scene, so that once I turn on
03:49realistic with scene lights, I can see how the normal map reacts. After all the
03:53surfaces should look like they're oriented correctly to the light.
03:56I will make sure in the Viewport settings that under Lighting and Shadows, I am
04:00Illuminating with the Scene Lights.
04:02It takes a minute and there is my scene light showing nicely in the scene with
04:07its shadows done correctly as they are raytraced.
04:09Now I will update the material.
04:12Selecting an object, I will press M for Material Editor and here's my material I
04:17have running for the texture.
04:18I will click on the M for the Diffuse Texture and in the Bitmap Parameters
04:22change from the existing map to the new one.
04:25As a note, I like to name my map so I can find them easily in a list.
04:29In this case the color of the building has a C at the end.
04:32The normal map has an N.
04:33I will use other convention, say S for Shine or B for Bump.
04:37In the absence of the naming convention which may be an alphanumeric string
04:41given by a studio, something like this let's you recognize easily where texture should go.
04:46Under Maps in the Bump slot, I will add in a normal bump.
04:51First select a normal bump and then in the Normal slot, updating it with a
04:55bitmap, in which case I'll go find my normal map.
05:00Once I've done that, and this updates, hopefully I can see my normal map in action.
05:05What I may do to make it easier to see is in the unwrap UVW Modifier, turn
05:09off the scenes, as we can see them overlaying on the mesh and possibly obscuring detail.
05:14I will uncheck the Map Seams and Peel Seams and then I need to adjust the
05:21strength of the normal map.
05:23In the Normal we have the strength and also a bump strength.
05:26I will bring up the Normal strength to 6, go up to the parent, and bring the Bump
05:31up to 100%, and now I can start to see some detail.
05:34What I really notice it is in the chiseling here on the stone. As I select the
05:39light and move, we can see that chiseling appear to change lighting somewhat.
05:44That is the normal map in action.
05:46I can also see as I move the light and even better when I turn off the Occlusion
05:50how the window stepping is working.
05:53With Occlusion off, the lights selected and moving, I can see how the windows
05:57appear to have more detail and levels.
06:00Even though they are really just flat polygons.
06:03It's a very quick workflow.
06:04To work in a grayscale bump in Photoshop and then convert to a normal map
06:08afterwards, rather than taking a hard surface object like this, a building, out
06:13to an external sculpting program, we can have a very easy time doing normals
06:17that look really good in a scene by painting them gray and then converting them.
06:22nDo is one such plug-in and there are many available.
06:25Whatever works to get the normal map out is good.
06:28In this chapter, we've constructed diffuse and bump maps through an organized
06:33named and layered workflow.
06:35We've also taken that bump map and converted it easily to a normal map for
06:39adding extra depth and realism to our facade.
06:42We can apply this best practice and workflow to any building we need to
06:46construct for our city.
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5. Creating Cornices, Parapets, and Roofs
Analyzing the necessary silhouette and geometry
00:00In this chapter, we'll continue the development of our building, looking very
00:04closely at major elements of silhouette.
00:06In the workflow so far we've looked at the middle section of the building, the
00:10modular repetitive elements, and now it's time to look at the top where a lot of
00:14times buildings make a statement.
00:16This is the top, the hat if you want to think of it that way,
00:19where it's most visible, it's probably the highest part of the building and
00:23often there is extra ornament or detail up there, especially on an older
00:27historic building such as this one.
00:29In this example, this building has two -part cornice, with a lower table, or
00:34frieze and even pilasters with ionic snails up at the top.
00:39And then finally a more elaborate, engraved or cast cornices with relief
00:43panels and at the top several steps in cornice with, I believe, egg and dart
00:48moulding or something similar.
00:51The question we need to ask for games then is really how much are we going to see?
00:55Given that we're going to see it a view something like this at the best,
01:00where we're back far enough to see the whole building if we can get there across the street.
01:05And hence the detail becomes stuff going on, versus being able to see every
01:10scroll and finial and every piece in there.
01:12What we want to look at first then is what is the lighting in the scene and how
01:17are we handling detail regarding that light?
01:20In this case, this photo was shot fairly early in the morning, about 7:30 or so,
01:25and the lighting is fairly general.
01:27It's a little bit overcast and while the building shows decently, the sky is
01:31definitely kind of a blown-out white gray and the lightings fairly even.
01:35In other times of the day these cornice elements may cast stronger shadows and
01:39so the first thing is really where are the major mesh lines that are going to
01:44cast the major shadows,
01:46as differentiated from, where is the detail that's essentially flat as we've
01:50seen much detail is, that really needs to show up as stuff going on versus a
01:55particular shadow element?
01:57On this building, the major mesh lines that cast shadows are easily visible
02:02scrolling over to the edge of the building.
02:03Most often buildings are essentially two-sided.
02:07This building has two nice faces and on the back here, which we can't see, is
02:11fairly raw, common brick or something similar and it's meant to be adjacent to
02:15another building, not have windows all the way around.
02:19High-rises like we can see in the background maybe four-sided, where they're
02:23meant to be viewed all the way around, because they sit back from the street.
02:26As we saw in the white box chapter on modern structures, they may sit up on the
02:30podium and we are able to see all the sides.
02:34This one, we can tell it's two-sided. Instead of wrapping around, this corner
02:38simply cuts off and gives us a great tool as a profile for understanding the
02:42mesh lines we need to make.
02:47I'll employ the same technique on this building of previous chapters, drawing
02:51mesh lines straight on the photo, on a new layer, to get an understanding of the
02:55major elements that need to cast shadows.
02:57I'm going to change my brush from Multiply back to Normal and up the Opacity to 100%,
03:03so that as I draw on this photo I can clearly see the mesh lines.
03:09I'll start up on the top of the cornice or nearly so, looking at the difference
03:13between planes and the cornice, the vertical and the horizontal. This is one
03:18place for a mesh line.
03:20Another major mesh line maybe right underneath it, or right above it, for a change in trim.
03:26Finally, I definitely need a mesh line out here, the farthest out part of the
03:30cornice, and one along in the corner, probably one of the deepest places.
03:35This is only giving me 1, 2, maybe 3 or 4 polygons to make of this whole corner
03:41section all the way along the building.
03:42I have another major mesh line at the bottom of the frieze or entablature, this
03:47relief or carved area here.
03:50Possibly a mesh line on top or the bottom of the small bracket. These windows
03:55and their modules here?
03:56That's all flat texture.
03:58We can tell it is because it's not standing out in silhouette immensely.
04:01Right here this edge is basically flat.
04:05I definitely need a mesh line at the table, or frieze or whatever we want to
04:10call this here and one underneath.
04:12This is going to cap the windows at the top of our middle section and probably
04:16at least one or two more along it.
04:20Again, I'm really trying to delineate detail that's flatter in texture from
04:25major shadow casting elements that if the sun is more direct or straight down,
04:29will cast a shadow onto itself.
04:32The major cornice elements are an example of it.
04:34To continue this, I can also start to block in or mark in areas that will be
04:40texture, that will require additional time, and I'll often do this in a separate color.
04:44I'll work in a Polygonal Lasso and make my way along the building, blocking out
04:49large areas and modules that will need attention to detail in time as part of a texture sheet.
04:55I'll fill this in blue, again on a new layer, and just pull back the Opacity.
05:01This is the start of a plan to be able to get the cornice looking right.
05:05Recognizing that this is obviously an area in the building where the developer
05:09or builder has spent a lot of money and time in design, but tempering that with
05:13the lens that we're going to stand back and see it from the street level.
05:17And so we can reduce it to major shadows and stuff going on, versus every
05:21picture pronounced in exacting detail.
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Examining existing buildings in different lighting conditions
00:00When we are adding a cornice on a building, we need to recognize the kind of
00:04lighting we'll be dealing with.
00:06It's very common to have most of the subtlety and sophistication in the lighting
00:09for a game baked-in or rendered as part of a texture. Where it looks like it's
00:14lit, in reality it's actually just the color.
00:17Then in the game you add maybe one large light, which simulates the sun and
00:21gives you your direct shadows.
00:24For a cornice, we can talk about them in terms of needing general light and direct light.
00:30In this case, this previous exercise is cornice.
00:32Most of the cornice is in general light.
00:35A lot of the panels such as these relief panels are always in light.
00:39They don't really shadow.
00:41The major shadow element is up here at the top, but it's got this extra piece in
00:45it, so it's really shade not a direct shadow, because it's a hard corner.
00:50In other buildings, we see different things in different lights.
00:54This building as an example has a very large cornice that protrudes out, which
00:58will cast a very, very big shadow down on the facade.
01:01This one, the cornice is fairly flat.
01:04We can really paint in shading in shadow and not worry about directly casting shadows.
01:09This will let us simplify the geometry considerably, so it's almost flat all the way up.
01:14This building is an extreme example.
01:17We can really handle this cornice here as texture.
01:20Do we need to have actual geometry to make that?
01:23The answer is not really.
01:25It'd be very difficult get to this side enough and close enough on this building
01:28to see this grey cornice elements stick out at all and the shadow underneath it,
01:33even on a sunny day, is really kind of a dark range.
01:37We can paint that in Photoshop also, because it's straight.
01:41This building is an example of a cornice needing dynamic shadows and lighting.
01:45We can see in here it's a two-step.
01:47A lower green sill or table that's underneath the windows and up above a two-
01:52part white and green cornice.
01:55These are fairly flat and even with their limited depth we can still see a
01:58shadow line pretty well.
02:00The big shadow line is actually from the lower piece, where even though it only
02:04comes out by maybe a foot at the most,
02:07that shadow extends all the way down and has a very hard line on the flat facade.
02:12That's a place where we need to have geometry to make a direct shadow.
02:16Most of the stuff up above we can probably get away with a flat polygon and texture.
02:21Finally in another building, we can see we need a mix.
02:25We have brackets underneath this cornice.
02:27To do these in geometry would be excessive.
02:29This building would be huge and slow down gameplay.
02:32So most of this would be handled in texture where we'll fake in the shadows.
02:36However, we need to cornice to stick out,
02:38because it goes so far out that we get shadow all the way down on the windows.
02:43We probably need some of this brick banded geometry to give extra shadow lines,
02:47but again, most of it is done in texture.
02:49We'll have enough geometry to worry about dealing with the windows and
02:52their deep openings.
02:54This building to get fairly complex fairly fast and we really need to question
02:58in it, how much do we need to see accurately, and how much given the lighting on
03:02it can we fake in, where we have a dark range versus needing a hard shadow?
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Planning cornice elements
00:00When ratting a cornice to the building, once we have decided where our major
00:04shadow casting elements are, it's time to plan the modules on a cornice and
00:07really see how much of it can share a texture.
00:10This is an example of what looks like a very, very complex cornice.
00:14I'll zoom in to see better detail.
00:16We can see this cornice has a large throw or it sticks out from the building
00:21quite a considerable distance.
00:23Underneath we have several layers of detail, which are somewhat dirty and
00:28occluded, so it really needs stuff going on and underneath are these fairly
00:32ornate, fairly tall, fairly deep looking brackets.
00:35However, the thing to look at in this, when we are talking about sharing a
00:38texture sheet with multiple elements sharing one texture and overlapping in the
00:43UV Editor, these brackets seem to be all the same, or rather they're close enough
00:48that reasonably if we had two or three of them in a line that were fairly
00:52dirty, but uniformly so, so it repeated without a noticeable pattern in the dirt,
00:57we could make all several hundred of them out of just a few. And because we can
01:02handle this in texture on a polygon, as it's all in its own shadow or
01:06self-shadowing, we can get away with a very, very limited number of well-done
01:10pieces and it looks like a whole cornice.
01:14In other buildings, we may need other elements that help us make what looks like
01:19a very complex cornice.
01:21This building has a very simple piece of trim.
01:24The big deal in a cornice is often the corner piece. How does that corner work?
01:29For this, this is mostly geometry with a simple map.
01:33Other buildings may have a more elaborate corner for that cornice.
01:37As an example, we'll duck over to the original building.
01:41In this case we can see several distinct elements we need.
01:44Again, we can see stuff going on.
01:47If we could get up to the seventh or eighth floor, we could actually see that
01:50detail, but really from street level, there is some kind of engraving.
01:55For this cornice, we need several pieces we can see fairly clearly.
01:59We need a section of this top molding with the egg-and-dart and other relief up here.
02:05These will simply just miter at the corner.
02:07I'll draw a line so we can cleanly see that mesh.
02:16And just so we can see I'll bump up the Opacity.
02:18This cornice line will miter at the corner.
02:21These lines continuing over to meet up and the mesh will simply turn the corner there.
02:26The map will be a section that repeats evenly, as shown in the previous models
02:31with its own shadows painted in.
02:33However, this relief panel needs some separate textures.
02:37We need at least one straight panel, one corner element, and one tall panel.
02:42On this building we'll see the same tall panel repeated. That we happen to see
02:46the exact same one, versus absolute accuracy to the design where the panels may vary,
02:51is a trade-off we are going to make for a game.
02:54We want to save texture space by repeating at the expense of maybe seeing the
02:58same carving over and over.
03:01We also need a corner condition right here on these ionic scrolls.
03:05In this case, the flat ones don't quite match up with the corners.
03:10So we need an extra piece there which will share one texture.
03:13The big deal then in a cornice is looking at the elements, because we have
03:17different conditions between a straight run or a module and a corner, and
03:23oftentimes this corner may be further accented with signage or additional
03:27detail, because the corner is important.
03:30It's seen from two sides.
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Extruding cornice elements from polygon edges
00:00Now it's time to model.
00:02I've added on to this drawing additional linework showing mesh lines in green
00:06and shaded in yellow to show texture modules.
00:09So you can see actually the whole top floor is one big texture module.
00:14This will give us the vertical relief panels, a small and a large horizontal, a
00:18large section of cornice, and a section of table. If we do it this way,
00:22we can tile this texture all the way around the building.
00:26I'll miter the material right here at the corner and the texture will simply
00:30flow on to the extra geometry.
00:32At the end then, this'll be limited geometry using part of a texture module.
00:37I'll go into 3ds Max and the first thing I'll do is measure the distance between
00:42windows using a poly plane, because it looks like the cornice sits on the top of
00:46the window and the bottom of the next window up, matching this arrangement.
00:50So I'll start out with that.
00:51Then I'll use the Extrude and Bevel tools to make the additional cornice elements.
00:57Here in 3ds Max, I have the existing model of the building from
01:00previous exercises.
01:02Notice that I've kind of tuned up the textures a little bit, getting the
01:05brickwork looking sharp, adding little detail to the window and the sill, and
01:09generally giving it another pass.
01:10It's perfectly okay to do that.
01:12It's very fine to look at the first pass of work and say,
01:16"That was a neat learning exercise. Let's do this again."
01:19And I did it here and I think I got a better result from it.
01:22The other thing I'm doing is I've added in a direct light.
01:26And this direct light, which is really just big enough to catch the scene,
01:29has raytraced shadows.
01:31So I can take advantage in Max of using the Realistic+Edged Faces Display Mode
01:36and see the elements shadow as I make them.
01:39After all we're after shadow lines.
01:40That's the big deal here, and I want to know that I'm doing it right.
01:44I'll start out by pressing F for Front View.
01:47Then I'll hit Ctrl+Right-Click and make a plane for measuring.
01:51I'll snap this plane onto any convenient vertices.
01:55And really what I care about on the plane is the Length, 48.
01:59I'll do this technique quite often, using a plane or a rectangle to measure,
02:02especially between points that are not aligned with each other and I need
02:05one dimension, rather than using a measuring tape which may give me a
02:09different measurement.
02:11I'll delete the plane and go up to the top of the building.
02:15What I'll start out with here is another plane. Ctrl+Right-Click and choosing Plane.
02:20And I'll snap this plane cleanly all the way across the building.
02:24Really I don't care that the Length is 0. I'm going to come back and change that.
02:28What I care about is it's snapped cleanly across from corner-to-corner.
02:32I'll put in a length of 48, 2 Length Segments, and 1 Width Segment.
02:37This will give me the geometry I need to match the mesh lines I had drawn.
02:41I've moved the plane up and now I'll snap it down to the top of my windows.
02:46I can already see the shadow lines are emerging where I want them.
02:50It looks like based on the reference that I need to move this edge up slightly.
02:54I'll convert this Plane to an Editable Poly, select Edge, and move this edge up
03:00maybe five or six inches using the Transform Type-In.
03:03Alternately, you can just pull on the Y-axis, turning off Snap, to get in the right place.
03:07I'm going to watch the X, Y, and Z fields down here at the bottom to see
03:11how much I'm moving. That's good!
03:15Now I can spin over into an isometric view and move the top edge out to give me
03:22that protrusion on the cornice which is important in the silhouette.
03:25I'll use the Transform Type-In for this, moving out by -12 on the X. This gives
03:30me the downward facing polygon that will be mostly in shadow but has detail.
03:36Finally, I'll extrude this edge back.
03:38I'll right-click and choose the dialog next to Extrude.
03:42Alternately we can simply choose Extrude and move this later.
03:45I'll extrude it out to give myself some geometry.
03:49The danger with extruding like that is we do get a base width, giving me an extra
03:53piece and moving that edge down.
03:55This is a case to actually use the dialog in extrusion.
03:59That way I can take out this base width by zeroing it and putting that extrusion
04:03where I need it to be.
04:05If you notice, I didn't care about how far it extruded.
04:08What I'll do is now use my Snap tool, first on the Y and then on the Z axis, to
04:13get this in the right place.
04:15I'll register on an edge and snap over to the existing geometry.
04:19Then I'll take it on the Z axis, register on a vertex, Spacebar for selection
04:24lock, and snap it down onto itself.
04:27Now I know it's in the right place.
04:29I need to make the rest of the cornice.
04:31What I'll do in this is back here in the front view use Bevel to make the whole module.
04:37Then the texture will tile across.
04:39Alternately, I can do it in pieces and see if there's any geometry I need to eliminate.
04:43I'm going to take the first approach.
04:46With the edge selected, I'll use the dialog next to the Extrude tool again on
04:50the right-click menu.
04:51I'll spin around into an orthographic to see this properly.
04:55Once I've got this polygon flattened out, using this Edge dialog to go in the
04:59right direction is really useful and easy.
05:02I'll make this first one -120.0.
05:06That way the edge pops out.
05:07If you notice, it went in the wrong direction.
05:09Sometimes we need to check this and take the negative out or add one in.
05:13+120.0 gives me my wall.
05:15Now I need to go back and look at the reference drawing and see if I'm getting
05:18enough length and width in here.
05:21Where I've gone to so far is from the bottom of the window all the way up
05:26to that first line.
05:27I need to add in some extra mesh lines in here eventually.
05:31But first I'll extrude out for that cornice.
05:34I'll hit the plus to apply and continue.
05:36The extrusion went out to 120, which is too far.
05:40I'll change that distance to 18 inches.
05:43Now I've got the throw or the reach on my cornice to give me a shadow
05:47underneath correctly.
05:48I'll hit the plus and change to a negative.
05:51This one will go -12.
05:54Hit the plus again, I'll come up, and now I can extrude and move, or extrude,
06:00move, and shape later.
06:02In this case, I'll hit the plus once, twice.
06:06This gives me geometry but it's in the wrong direction, but now I've got the
06:09steps in my cornice I need.
06:11The last part then, I'll go into a side view such as the Left or Right, and move
06:16this up where I need, looking at the profile.
06:19I'll switch over in orthographic here to Left.
06:26I'll also press F3 to go to a wireframe and check OK.
06:31Now in my extrusion, I can pull this up where I need.
06:34I'll pull it up and out to give me the proper throw on the cornice.
06:39Then maybe switch to Vertex and move this as it needs to be.
06:43Now I can start to get the feel on my cornice in the right way.
06:47That big, big shelf there that's going to cast my shadows.
06:55Switching back to a shaded view, it looks like I'm in pretty good shape.
06:58I've got big shadows off this, self-shadowing, and it's ready for
07:02smoothing groups and texture.
07:04I also need to miter this corner here.
07:06A quick technique for mitering corners is to switch to a wireframe and start to
07:11move these edges out until we get a 45.
07:14What I'll do sometimes is to measure that distance and move as needed.
07:22I'll copy that length and move my vertices.
07:26If I did this to an exact extrusion, I could also move it.
07:31And I'll make this miter by grabbing these pieces and moving them.
07:36My cornice is almost complete.
07:38What I've done is to move these vertices out, measuring the distance, and
07:42creating a miter so that when I mirror this over at a 45, it'll match exactly.
07:47I've created in the cornice those long shadow lines as well as the pieces that
07:52really need to stick out in silhouette, remembering that the back side of the
07:55building, which would be here on the right, is effectively blank brick.
07:59It's made to go next to another structure.
08:04The last part then for shadowing is to take this top edge by selecting Edge and
08:09extruding it straight back.
08:12I'll right-click, pick the dialog next to Extrude, and give myself some
08:16dimension, just checking OK.
08:19Now I can use my Move tool and snap to pull this all way back to the wall.
08:24I'll work on the Z-axis first, pressing Spacebar for selection lock, pulling it
08:30down, then switching to the Y-axis, and snapping all the way back.
08:38The important thing with cornices is to think of them often as long-spanning
08:43elements, similar to the vertical elements we added on the building in
08:46previous exercises.
08:48In this case, this cornice, which appears to be one monolithic piece, will
08:52actually get three plus texture modules.
08:55The texture will simply span onto the miter and over here to cap the end where
09:00the texture repeats, we just don't have the extra windows.
09:03This would be simple geometry but will give me the shadow lines I need, and
09:07that's the important part because it's really up in the air for everybody to see.
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Assigning smoothing groups for optimal shading
00:00Once we have a cornice element modeled, we need to think about smoothing groups
00:04and the polygons to get that detail to stand out right, because we aren't dealing
00:07with very many polygons.
00:09In this model I've modeled the cornice and I've taken out the middle section and
00:14incorporated a version of one of my upper floor modules as we can see.
00:18What see I've done in this is to take the module, clone it, and reuse the UVs
00:23as much as possible.
00:24I'll open up the UV Editor and show how those layout briefly.
00:29What I've done is I've taken the existing texture sheet, cloned it ,and added a few pieces.
00:34This area up above is where I'll lay out my cornice elements, the squares and
00:38relief panels, these are here for size, just these color elements.
00:41And then clearly we can see the window element from the previous model as well
00:45as the side elements and sills.
00:48What I've done then is to stretch out this large polygon and incorporated in
00:52a rectangle with a graphic on it that is part of the entablature, the relief that's carved in.
00:59Later I'll come back and add cornice detail the tiles cleanly across, from
01:04square to relief and so forth.
01:09Now we need to work on smoothing groups and the idea on the smoothing group is
01:12that we have limited geometry we need to interpolate as a curve.
01:16Right now we can see I've got some curves and some hard shadows and some areas
01:20that really can't decide how to react properly, such as down here.
01:24When you extrude edges, you may get original smoothing groups propagating or hard
01:29or soft looking polygons that may be can't decide what they're doing and simply
01:33take on what they were before. To even this out, because I like a nice hard-line
01:37right here at this detail,
01:39I'll drop down to the Editable Poly in the Modifier List.
01:423ds Max is going to tell me that the world is going to end and I'm going to say
01:47yes that's okay at the moment.
01:48I'm not going to change any geometry or move it around which will affect my UVs.
01:53I am just going to play with the smoothing groups.
01:55I'll right click and pick Polygon and first I'll pick this polygon and the one
02:01above it and clear off the smoothing.
02:03That should do pretty nicely to bring out that edge and I'll check and see.
02:07I'll scroll down to the Smoothing Group rollout and clear these.
02:15In Polygon Smoothing we can see that some but not all of these polygons are in group 11.
02:20That's what the blank means.
02:22And both of these are in group 23, which is why they are sort of looking curved.
02:26I'll clear them and when I release the selection, we can see cleanly I get
02:31that hard line back. That's my detail.
02:33I'll make sure that the top polygon as well is not in the smoothing group.
02:38That way it didn't try to curve over this crisp edge.
02:45I'll repeat the process up on the top.
02:47We'll see a drastic change.
02:51At the moment once the display resolves, we can see where this should be a round,
02:56I have two polygons and I have a crisp edge.
02:59We can also see some odd kind of bubbly looking shading where this polygon can't
03:04decide to be smooth or flat.
03:06I'll fix this by clearing off all the smoothing groups and then show how to
03:10assign the smoothing to two polygons.
03:12So I cleared off all the smoothing of all of my polygons.
03:16If I pick any one of them, none of the polygon smoothing groups highlight.
03:20What I'll do to put a curve in this top cornice is select these two polygons,
03:25picking one, holding Ctrl and selecting the next, and then putting them into
03:28a smoothing group by clicking on the button.
03:30You can see the immediate change in the shading.
03:33Now these two polys, which I know have a hard corner, try to look round.
03:36They interpolated curve.
03:38I'll right click and choose Top-level.
03:42Now these look round.
03:44This is the roundness I want in that cornice and when I back out far enough,
03:48roughly impersonating a street-level view,
03:50it looks like a round cornice and I have the detail I need.
03:54The important thing I'm also doing is backing out to check, saying reasonably
03:58from eight or nine stories below, does it look close enough in a curve,
04:02including right here at the edge in silhouette that it is believable as the
04:07cornice I need to make.
04:09I'll check it one more time against the reference, and I think I've got the cornice.
04:13Smoothing groups are a great way to add extra detail and make sure that things are
04:17either crisp or round.
04:19The important thing is not to let 3ds Max decide, but rather to go in and
04:23put them in yourself.
04:25So the things are either crisp or round and not sort of one way or the other.
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Unwrapping cornices for lighting
00:00Once you've got the geometry in place in a cornice, you can start unwrapping it.
00:04In this case what you're seeing, aside from the additional geometry of the windows,
00:08is that I've unwrapped it piece by piece.
00:11If you notice, I have a lot going on in the Modifier stack on this object.
00:15It starts out as an editable poly, but then we see a sequence of UVW Map and
00:19Poly Select with the Polygon icon next to the Poly Selects.
00:24Here's what this is doing.
00:25I'll drop down to this Poly Select as an example.
00:30What I've done is to select these two polygons on this cornice element and the
00:35next unwrap then only respects the selection.
00:38There is my mapping gizmo.
00:41What I have done is to size it at 144.0x144.0.
00:45That's the size of one module from this engraved pilaster to the edge of the
00:50next where it repeats across the wall and including the height.
00:54What this corresponds to then is the texture map for this whole cornice module.
00:59What this looks like when I'm all done, when I jump back up to the Unwrap UVW
01:03Modifier is part of it is tileable and part of it is not.
01:08When I go up to this Poly Select, if you notice, I'm getting this warning.
01:12Max wants to say that because changing topology or changing the mesh will affect
01:17the unwrap. We'll get distortion.
01:19So it's telling me, would you like to keep going, do I want to hold, which is
01:22kind of a temporary save?
01:24I'm going to say yes, I'd like to continue because I'm just jumping around in the stack here.
01:29Now I've deselected everything, and finally the Unwrap in this case, if I go
01:33down and open up the Unwrap Editor.
01:39The Unwrap Editor shows me a large spanning polygon over the Normal or 0-1
01:44space in the Unwrap here.
01:46If I turn on my texture sheet called CorniceC for Color, I can see where
01:52I've got my repeat.
01:54Here's my wall with the window and I'm using the other brick as you remember
01:57from before for the other parts.
01:59This is the vertical pilaster and here is one square with its engraving and one panel.
02:05The pieces up above then will get further detail, egg-and-dart moulding and other
02:09fun things in there.
02:11And you can see the polygons run right off the edge.
02:13That's because of the UVW Map Modifier.
02:16In this case I'm using this part of the map as a tilable or repeating map,
02:20figuring that based on the reference this cornice detail can just run all
02:24the way along here.
02:25And I can just extend out this geometry as far as I need for the other
02:29side, tiling that map.
02:31Part of the reason to look at this is the difference between a tilable map and
02:36a non-tiling one, especially when we get into baked lighting and shadows.
02:41In the end, I can actually collapse the stack and the coordinates will still
02:45be there for mapping.
02:48What I want to look at when I'm dealing in ambient occlusion is where are
02:52the adjacent pieces for occlusion, because they may change depending on the geometry.
02:59The mapping will still tile but the darkness caused by ambient occlusion will
03:03vary from side to side and cornice elements.
03:08The other thing to consider then is we can use multiple mapping coordinates on an object.
03:13Right now this is Map Channel 1.
03:15That's the default.
03:16I'll scroll down to the Channel and show this in the Unwrap dialog.
03:21Here we can see this is Map Channel 1.
03:23In the Material Editor, pressing M, this image looks to Map Channel 1.
03:28We can see it right here under Explicit Map Channel.
03:31I can add on multiple unwrap dialogs and unwrap this again.
03:35That's what I'm going to do here, and I'll pull up the unwrap on the second
03:39channel for occlusion.
03:41In the interest of time, I'll unwrap this and show what it looks like when I'm
03:45done as this may take a few minutes to get right.
03:47So what I've done is to first collapse the modifier stack down so it's a little
03:52less messy, removing the Poly Selects and things, and putting a new Unwrap UVW on.
03:58In this case, this unwrap is Map Channel 1.
04:01If we open the editor, we see the pieces actually laid out tillable. They span across.
04:08The second unwrap I've put on is Map Channel 2.
04:11And we can see this here in the Channel rollout where it says Map Channel 2 and
04:16I move the UVs over once I have them.
04:19In the Editor here, I've put these cornice elements together at the top.
04:24I've saved the rest of the space for another object as part of this light map,
04:28trying to maximize my texture space as much as possible.
04:32I've used tools such as Stitching here.
04:34Stitching To Source, Stitching To Target, and aligning vertices using the Align
04:39Vertical and Horizontal where needed to put these back together, where the
04:42element seams are shown in green and the seams between faces are done in yellow.
04:49I'm ready to bake my occlusion or render the ambient occlusion out into that UV
04:54space so I can use it as a texture, faking lighting essentially.
04:58As a side note, what we really want to do is turn off these panel seams.
05:02It may make it easier to see in the viewport. We know where they are.
05:05I'll scroll down under the Unwrap UVW Modifier, all way down and turn them off.
05:15Down here under the Configure rollout, under Display, I can turn off Map and
05:19Peel Seams. It may make it just easier to see especially when I'm overlaying Edged
05:24Faces by pressing F4.
05:26Now I'm ready for the occlusion.
05:28With the object selected, I'll press 0 for Render To Texture.
05:31In this case, the Render To Texture shows Plane029.
05:35That's this object.
05:36If I scroll down here, I'd like to use the existing Map Channel 2 making sure I
05:42bake into the proper one.
05:44Under the Output I will add and choose Ambient Occlusion.
05:48MR stands for mental ray.
05:50I'll add the elements.
05:51And if I scroll down further, I can choose where is it going to and also a size.
05:56Being that I'm going to use this for a light map in Unity, I don't know if I'm
05:59going to put it into a target map slot yet.
06:02But I will bake this out at 1024, figuring we can always reduce it later, but I
06:06want the detail at the moment.
06:09Finally, I'll tell this where to go and give it a name.
06:12I'll put this one in Chapter 5 images and a 32-bit target is fine.
06:20Really what I care about is the RGB data.
06:23Now I'll hit Render and wait for it to process.
06:28My ambient occlusion rendered, although it didn't really show in the view that
06:32it was just a diffuse texture.
06:33What I need to do is browse over to see it.
06:36And when I select it and hit View, I can see the image.
06:40There are probably a couple of things to tweak in here.
06:43The occlusion has dots in it, the quality is not high enough, and it's also
06:46darkening areas possibly too much.
06:49This is an artistic choice to make: how much do these pieces darkened.
06:52But it is popping out the detail nicely on my cornices.
06:57I'll cancel this and test or tweak the ambient occlusion parameters just a little bit.
07:03Upping the Samples to 128 will help the quality.
07:07The Spread determines how much darkness clusters in the corners versus
07:10spreading on the surface.
07:11And a Max Distance determines how far apart in seam units will objects cast
07:17occlusion on each other.
07:18A Max Distance of zero is a special case, meaning that everything participates no
07:22matter how far apart.
07:24I'm going to set my Max Distance at 24, so I get nice zones of darkness in the
07:28corner without graying and darkening my whole mesh.
07:31I'll hit Render again and pull up the final image.
07:34Here's the image when the ambient occlusion finishes.
07:36It rendered but it looks like the diffuse texture into that map channel.
07:39I don't actually need this view.
07:42What I need then is actually the occlusion image which I'll click on the three
07:45dots for the file to go browse to.
07:48Select it and view it.
07:50That's much better.
07:51Now I can see right here on the top where the cornice meets the wall below,
07:55the occlusion rises and falls because it's adjacent to different geometry.
08:00In my cornices then for lighting, I have a nice solid darkness in the corner
08:04that will really pick out the details well.
08:10The important thing to remember here is to make the distinction in your mind and
08:14in your models between a tiling or repeating map and a non-tiling map that
08:19depends on different geometry, such as ambient occlusion.
08:22We'll use ambient occlusion as a foundation for dirt and grime and also as faked
08:27or baked in lighting in a game where I need things to look more soft and complex
08:32in the lighting than they actually are.
08:34We can use multiple Unwrap UVW Modifiers using multiple map channels in Max to do this.
08:40And many game engines including Unity can respect them.
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Modeling sloped roofs
00:00Sometimes in the construction of your environment, you need buildings with sloped roofs.
00:04What we've looked at so far are largely flat roofs, where the roof sits inside
00:09of the walls a little bit and isn't visible from the street.
00:13Occasionally though, we may be modeling houses, we may be modeling barns, or
00:17similar structures that really need a sloped roof.
00:20What we want to do is construct these as elegantly as possible, with a
00:23minimum of polygons but recognizing that the roof is one of the largest
00:27elements we are going to see.
00:29We are going to see a large expanse of thatch or shingle or steel or whatever
00:34that roof is made of.
00:35Additionally, we're going to see the edge of the roof and we need to make sure
00:39that's detailed correctly.
00:41To lay out roofs, I will start out with the building so I can look in a Top view
00:45and see a footprint, pressing T for Top and Z for some Zoom Extents.
00:50To lay out a roof, what I will begin with then are rectangles, splines or shapes.
00:55They give me the line with a throw of the eves, how far out do those come from wall?
01:01I'll start up a Rectangles.
01:03The first rectangle I will make will define how far out the eaves go. In this
01:07case, I'm going to put a roof eave all the way around, that we don't see the edge
01:11of the wall, that there is actually a slope all the way around the building.
01:14I will begin this one with a 2 foot x 2 foot rectangle or 24 on a side.
01:22Then using my Snap tools and the Spacebar for Selection Lock, I will start
01:27snapping rectangles around my roofs as a measuring tool.
01:31Holding Shift, I will clone this rectangle. A Copy or an Instance is fine for now.
01:36It doesn't really matter. These are construction objects. I will pick it.
01:41Occasionally, I'll hit X, which turns off and on the Transform Gizmo.
01:46That way I can find a vertex that would normally be hidden and distort where I'm moving.
01:50I will clone this around until my entire roof is done in rectangles at the
01:59corners. Sounds rather odd but very helpful.
02:04I can put one here, although I do have reference of both of these I am going to
02:08use with the Spline.
02:09The next step in making a roof is to actually lay out the roof planes.
02:13Most often we need a ridgeline in a sloped roof, and ridges tend to go in the
02:18middle or equally between the walls.
02:22Additionally in a roof, when two roofs meet, we will have one from one side, and
02:26one from the top here.
02:28They will meet at a 45 on both places.
02:32I'll use a rectangle to lay this out.
02:35The first thing I'll do is use my rectangle to measure.
02:39Actually this isn't on the roof but I'm looking way down in the bottom right
02:43corner at the Width, 240.
02:45Then I'm going all the way over and looking at the Width of the rectangle here.
02:49432 and a Length of 192.
02:53That's an important one to remember.
02:57Now this isn't exactly the full roof. It's too big.
03:01What I need to do is actually make one plane and so in here under theLength I
03:06will actually put divided by 2 and let Max compute it for me.
03:10I will move this rectangle down to match up with my eave lines.
03:17Remember this Length 96. I will convert this to a Spline, right-click, and choose
03:23Vertex and move this top-left vertex in on the Transform Type-In by 96.
03:33This will give me a 45-degree corner.
03:36I'll take a minute, fill the roof with rectangles as I've shown.
03:40Move their vertices and show what it looks like when I'm done.
03:43So I have taken my rectangles, cloned them around, and moved vertices as I need.
03:47What I need to do now is to get rid of this twistiness or the curve in the roof,
03:51as these should be straight.
03:53When you draw out a shape, those corners may be whatever the default is set to.
04:00As an example under a line, the Creation Method is Corner, with the Drag Type being Bezier.
04:06What that means in a rectangle then is if we make it, it looks like a
04:10rectangle, we convert it to an editable spline, and any one of these corners we
04:14thought was a corner is actually a Bezier corner vertex where it has handles to
04:19give influence on the connecting segments.
04:22What I will do is pick my splines, select their vertices, both or just all at
04:29once, and right-click and choose Corner.
04:32I can do this at any point but it's helpful to see sometimes, where those curves
04:36are as part of the process of making the roof.
04:39I've straightened out all the vertices, literally converting them to corners so
04:43that the adjoining segments are perfectly straight.
04:45I'll fill in the last part of the roof. For this I will create a line,
04:49by holding Ctrl+Right-Clicking and in the line, just to make sure it
04:53stays straight, I will make the Drag Type Corner, in case I
04:55accidentally click-and-drag.
04:56I will fill in the last part with a triangle.
05:03Close the spline and I'm ready.
05:06Now I can start to make my roof a surface.
05:10For each part, not all at once but uniquely, I'll right-click, choose Convert To:
05:16> Editable Poly, and if I switch to a Shaded mode I can see where that is
05:21taking on a surface or it's a solid.
05:25Converting to a poly gives me the rest of my roof.
05:30The important thing I think is to do it one at a time, so you can spot
05:34any possible issues.
05:35Occasionally, you may have a more complex shape that's not closed and will disappear.
05:40And if it's overlapping with something else, it may be hard to tell what's missing.
05:44I've made my roof or so it would seem but it's still flat.
05:46What I will do is I'll take this roof and move it up above the wall, so I can
05:51see clearly and then attach it together and elevate the middle.
05:55I have moved my roof up above the walls.
05:58Now I can start to attach it together, picking any one of the editable polys,
06:02right-clicking, and choosing Attach.
06:04Then I will select the other roof planes.
06:09Now my roof is almost ready to move.
06:13If needed, you can weld vertices.
06:15I'm going to leave these alone for the moment.
06:18So I don't get any accidental smoothing from roof plane to roof plane.
06:22That is they stay flat.
06:23I will go by Vertex and select those ridge vertices.
06:27I can do them all at once.
06:29So if there is different ridges at different heights because of different roof
06:33runs or how horizontal it goes, I can do it one at a time.
06:37For this, I will grab on the Z- axis and pull up till it looks right.
06:42In this case, I am designing on-the-fly.
06:45What I've got is a sloped roof.
06:46It's economical in polygons.
06:49As we can see in my Polygon Display, which you can toggle off and on with the 7 key.
06:57The total polygons I have selected are 5 or 19 vertices.
07:02That's pretty slim considering the amount of geometry it covers or the amount of
07:06texture it will show.
07:08Now I can take this roof and sit it down correctly on the walls and I am ready
07:12to fill in the edge detail, such as the soffits and fascia.
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Adding fascias and soffits
00:00Once we have the flat planes of a roof in place we need to add the elements that
00:04give us thickness at the edge or apparent thickness.
00:06In reality they are really built of planes of material and linear elements.
00:11For this roof I'm going to put a fascia on the outside and a soffit.
00:15The fascia is the board that caps the rafter ends, so it looks like a continuous edge.
00:20There is often a gutter or something similar over it.
00:23I'll also put a soffit underneath the roof. That way because the polygons in this
00:28roof face out, I have coverage underneath instead of a blank area.
00:32So in a game if I happen to duck into this doorway or next to the building and
00:35look up at the roof, I see what really should be there: a solid surface.
00:39To start with on this fascia I'll go into top view and change to a wireframe by pressing F3.
00:46With my Snap on at 2.5 I'll press Ctrl+Right-Click and choose Box.
00:51I'm going to make one piece of the roof fascia here and a soffit and then clone
00:56this all the way around to finish out this roof.
00:59I'll snap this first box across from corner-to-corner.
01:04If you notice, the box has a Length of 0, a Height of 7 point
01:08whatever really, and a Width of exactly 192.
01:11That's the important part.
01:13Now I can change the Length to 2, and I'll put the Height at 8 for 2x8 rough lumber.
01:19I'll take this piece and snap it onto the edge of the roof, then look at in the
01:23left view and make sure it's up to the right height.
01:27Now I need to optimize this before I clone it.
01:29I'll right-click and choose Isolate Selection so I can see this a little bit easier.
01:35I'll convert this to an Editable Poly and choose Polygon. We'll take out the ends
01:41of this so it's open.
01:44I'll also take out the top polygon so I'm basically left with the tall skinny U.
01:48Lastly, I'll take the inside vertex, which for me is here on the right, and I'll
01:53move it down by 2 or 3 inches.
01:56I use the Transform Type-In and on the Offset Y put in -2. That will give me some
02:02thickness up here in the soffit.
02:04That way it looks like the right dimension, that the roof isn't just a flat poly.
02:09Now I can exit the Isolation Mode and in a top view adjust the miters.
02:14Remember that the dimension of this was 2 inches.
02:17That way I can choose these vertices, on the Transform Type-In put in -2 and
02:24get a perfect 45 here.
02:26I'll do this in the other side as well.
02:31In this case I'll move 2 over.
02:35I'm almost ready to clone, but I have one more element to complete.
02:39All of my ridges and valleys meet at a 45. On a roof this is a hip-ridge, meets
02:46at a 45 degree angle.
02:49The valley where two roof planes come together is also at a 45.
02:52Occasionally this varies, but those roofs get pretty complex and require a set
02:56of plans to detail properly. This is a fairly simple roof.
03:00I'll look up underneath that soffit.
03:03Right now it's blank and I have the fascia.
03:06I can pick this top inside edge of my fascia and extrude it out.
03:10I'll do this in the top view so I can put it exactly where I want it.
03:15Notice that I switch between wireframe and shaded and move my views around
03:18to get where I need.
03:20Don't be afraid to really zoom in.
03:22I'll right-click and choose Extrude.
03:24I'd like to use the dialog for this.
03:26That way I can reset the base Width down to 0 and a Width of 10 is just fine here.
03:32I'll check OK and then I'll pick this edge and move it down where I need to go.
03:37Next I'll pick the vertices, pressing 1 for vertex, grabbing this corner, and on
03:42the X axis snap it onto the building.
03:45I'd like to use the Spacebar for Selection Lock.
03:48I'll release the Selection Lock by hitting the Spacebar and do this on the other side.
03:55Next I'll check this in the left view.
03:58Hitting Z for Zoom and making sure my soffit is flat. This worked nicely.
04:03Occasionally, we may need to snap it back down depending on which way it extruded.
04:07I'm ready to take this piece and clone it and stretch it around to my other roof elements.
04:13What I'll do now, probably in a shaded view so I can see what's going on, is
04:19duplicate, clone, rotate, and move this piece along with stretching it out along the roof.
04:25With this fascia element complete I'm ready to clone it around the roof.
04:29I'll clone, rotate, and stretch as needed and in the interest of time, come back and
04:33show the completed roof.
04:36I stretched the fascia and cloned it around the roof.
04:39Now on any side of my roof it appears to have thickness.
04:42Now when I look up underneath it I have polygons there.
04:45We're working in a single-sided workflow.
04:48Notice that if I pick any particular object, right-click, and choose Object
04:52Properties and turn on Backface Cull, it's still there.
04:55If I were to view this in the other side it would disappear, but there is a roof.
05:00My roof is complete.
05:01The important thing to remember when you're making roofs is that they need to
05:05look like they have thickness and we need to get the details right, because
05:08they do occupy a large part of the view of a building.
05:11They also tend to be down low especially sloped roofs like this on houses
05:15and such, and so there is a bigger chance for going to see them closer up in our game.
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Adding fascias and soffits for gable ends
00:00When we were building a roof we don't always have the luxury of eaves all the way around.
00:05Sometimes we have a roof that has a gable end where we can see the edge of the
00:08roof rise up to the peak and back down.
00:10And this wall below will actually come up to a point.
00:13We need to add a fascia to this and I'll show a common technique used to
00:17transition gracefully between a straight fascia here and a gable fascia.
00:23I'll add in an extra end which will allow me to take this soffit up and over correctly.
00:28To begin, I'll go into Left view.
00:31Zoom in and go into Wireframe so I can see my roof.
00:36I'll use my Line tool to draw in that profile.
00:39I'll press Ctrl and right-click and choose Line.
00:42Notice under Creation Method my Initial Type and Drag Type are set to Corner.
00:46What I'll do to begin this is start at the outside corner of the fascia, come up
00:51and over the roof, snapping cleanly on the points.
00:54Also, notice that I'm using my 2.5D Snap, so my line doesn't zigzag in Z space
01:00forward and away from me, instead appearing on the 0 plane.
01:03When I get over here to come to the wall I'll hold Shift and register the mouse
01:08on another point to snap to.
01:10Now I can come up and snap on my wall and my fascia.
01:16I'll land this next line somewhere up in the middle.
01:20Really, as long as it's up here and out of the way that's fine.
01:23Now I'll come back down, register the mouse again, even holding Shift and
01:28snapping, and bringing it back to a close.
01:34Notice mine was little off there.
01:36I can fix this easily in Vertex mode.
01:39I'll pick Vertex by pressing 1, grab that error in vertex, and move it down on
01:43just the Y axis, pressing Spacebar for Selection Lock and pulling it down to
01:48where it needs to be.
01:51Now for the middle.
01:52What I want to do is take this point that I sort of landed in space.
01:55Select it and first align it on the X axis so it's centered on the roof.
02:02The next step is to grab the bottom inside points of that fascia and pull them
02:08up to match the outside points.
02:10I'd snap them there because there wasn't an outside point initially.
02:16As an alternate, we may want to bring these up higher.
02:19What I'm looking for in here is that these bottom points plus the top give me a
02:24fascia width across that roughly matches the height of my others.
02:28So it looks like it's all made from the same material.
02:31I'll turn off my snap and pull them up and then grab this middle point and
02:35pull it up as well.
02:37As long as it's fairly close it will look right.
02:39What I'm trying to avoid is a fascia that pinches up at the top.
02:43That's a mistake I see made often when people simply add points in and move them
02:48up and we lose width across.
02:51My line was created in the middle of the house, because that's where 0 is.
02:55I'll snap it using my 3D Snap this time onto the edge of the roof.
03:02Now I can convert this to a poly and extrude edges.
03:05This would give me the additional geometry to be able to match that miter here
03:10of my existing fascias.
03:12I'll right-click, Convert to an Editable Poly, and check in a shaded view by
03:16pressing F3 to see if it appears. It looks good.
03:20It maybe facing away from me.
03:22That's very possible.
03:23In which case I need to flip the normals.
03:26I'll release my Selection Lock, which is on previously, and select this polygon.
03:30The way to check is by pressing F2 for Shaded Faces.
03:34If it's a dark red it's facing away.
03:37I'll scroll down to the Polygon Normal section and flip the mormals.
03:42Alternately, I can right-click and choose Flip Normals from the Quad menu.
03:46Notice how the shading is brighter and turning off the shaded faces shows me the right color.
03:51Now the normals are facing the right direction.
03:54Now I'll switch over the edge by right- clicking and pressing Edge or the number 2.
03:59I'll pick all of the bottom edges of this and extrude them out by two inches.
04:06Right-click. I'll choose the dialog next to Extrude.
04:09In this case, I'll zero out by right- clicking on the Base Width and put my
04:14Height in at -2, noting which way my X axis goes.
04:18I'll check OK and I've almost got my fascia complete.
04:22The last step then is to take the existing soffit, square it off into the
04:28fascia, and extrude an extra line up and over to match into that gable.
04:33I'll pick this soffit and square it off first.
04:35I'll pick a vertex and on the X axis using the Spacebar for Selection Lock, snap
04:43it up cleanly on to that fascia.
04:46I'm going to do this on the other one as well.
04:49I've squared off both fascias by vertex.
04:52Now I'm ready to fill in the back of this.
04:55The way to handle this, rather than trying to extrude these back edges out and
04:59get them into place, is actually to make the soffit first.
05:02I'll go back of my Left view or Right view, whichever is easier to see here,
05:07and make a new line.
05:09For this, I'll press Ctrl and right- click and snap a line over the existing
05:13fascia, making sure I make my snap 2.5 instead of 3.
05:23Now my line is in place and I'm ready to outline it and extrude it.
05:27The trick here in splines, if I go to the Modifier panel is to choose it by
05:31spline and select that spline.
05:33It's actually one shape with one spline in it.
05:36I'll scroll down into the geometry and offset that by an inch or two.
05:46In the outline, the field next to the Outline button allows you to offset that line.
05:50I'll offset here by -2.
05:51This gives me my line on the inside up above the edge of the fascia.
05:58Now I can delete any segments I don't need such as the ends and with the ends
06:06deleted I can extrude this line to form that soffit.
06:09I'll throw an Extrude Modifier on and extrude that back.
06:15For the Amount, I'm going to start with 24 and see if that works.
06:20In a Top view I'll grab this piece, move it into place, and see if I need
06:26to adjust it at all.
06:27It looks like the Amount can come down to 22 and I'm in good shape.
06:32If I switch over to shaded view I can see that my soffit is almost ready.
06:38I need to do some minor tweaks on the line to get it in the right place.
06:42I'll do these and come back and show the completed soffit in the interest of time.
06:46Really, I'll just be moving vertices and segments to make them match up exactly.
06:51I fixed the soffit, done some minor alterations and movements. Now I can take
06:56this wall and snap it up cleanly to the soffit, and pull the corners down as
07:00needed to finish out the gable end.
07:01We'll save that for another lesson, as we've probably want to plan that as
07:05part of a texture sheet.
07:09In a roof, it's important to think of all the different parts we're going to
07:12see it from, especially given that at person height we may be looking up at
07:17even a one-story building.
07:19So getting the detail right on the edges is important.
07:21Making sure we've what appears to be the right thickness of things and also
07:25surfaces aimed in the right direction so if we look up under the roof we
07:29don't see the sky.
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Texture sheets for roofs
00:00Once we have the geometry of a roof done, it's time to think about the texture.
00:04The important thing on a roof, as I've said in previous lessons, is that it's
00:08going to occupy a lot of the view.
00:10That visually, as we examine this little house we'll call it, roughly
00:14two-thirds of what we are seeing is house and a third of what we're seeing of this is the roof.
00:20If we stand down even more on street level, we still see an enormous amount of roof surface.
00:25So we want to think carefully about the textures that are going on there.
00:28As an example of this, I've made up a texture sheet of a corrugated metal roof.
00:33The big deal with a roof is we can map it plane by plane and it becomes very easy.
00:37Here's the texture sheet.
00:39Right now this is 1024 square, although we can always reduce it in size if needed.
00:43It's got a Color group organized by a layer as usual with corrugation, rust,
00:48splotches, and up at the top, siding turned across.
00:52This will be the ridge.
00:54The big deal in the roof is that we have special conditions at the ridge or the
00:58top of the roof and usually the same kind of sheathing all the way down.
01:03We'll handle things like the fascia and the soffit probably as part of the
01:06building texture of a sheet because they have more like materials.
01:10In this case, this is for the roof only.
01:11So I can reuse it in a number places if I need.
01:14As an example, I may be dealing in a number of dwellings that have corrugated
01:18metal roofs that can share a texture.
01:24In the Bump group on this, I've got the raw corrugations, I've taken out the
01:27rust, and I've added in the screw heads, which are really very, very tiny little
01:32dots with a little bit of white in the middle.
01:34They will be close enough.
01:36I can convert this to a normal map if needed.
01:38What I'll do is I'll save out this image, at least the color so we can tell how it maps on.
01:43Over here in 3ds Max, I've saved out those textures from Photoshop, running the
01:47Bump group through nDo to produce a normal map as well.
01:50Now I'll add this on as a material so I can see it mapped on the roof.
01:54I'll press M for the Material Editor and make a new material.
01:59In this case, I will put in the Diffuse slot my color, choosing under standard
02:03maps a bitmap, and picking metal roofC.
02:11I'll go up to the Parent and show this in the view.
02:18I'll call this metal roof rusty and select the roof and assign it.
02:28At the moment, we can't really see much.
02:30There aren't mapping coordinates on it.
02:32So we need to map it.
02:33I can come back later and add the normal map to this.
02:35I'm going to map this in the top view and I'll right-click and choose Hide
02:42Unselected just so I don't grab anything accidentally.
02:46The way to map this roof is by polygon.
02:49I'll select a polygon, let's say this one first, and under the Modifier
02:53List add a UVW map on.
02:56The big deal is to make the map size exactly to fit this distance, from ridge
03:02down to eave, which I know is 96.
03:05I can measure it if needed, remember, using a poly plane, quickly snapping it in place.
03:12The length and width of my poly plane are 96x96.
03:15That's going to give me my map size.
03:18Back here to the roof with my polygon selected, I can apply my UVW map.
03:28In that mapping, I'll set the Length and Width to 96.0x96.0 and then rotate it
03:35around in the right direction.
03:37For mapping this roof as I spin around here I want make sure that the ridge is up at the top.
03:42So I'll spin this mapping around by right-clicking and choosing Gizmo and
03:46rotating on the Z axis.
03:49That's pretty good although it's not quite aligned.
03:52We can see it's sort of sticking through.
03:53In the UVW map, we want to scroll down and try a different way of aligning.
04:02In the Alignment, I'll use the Normal Align, clicking on it and then
04:06selecting that polygon.
04:07This lets me align that Gizmo very cleanly on that roof, making sure it's
04:12snapped in the right place.
04:16We can see I may need to scale this up slightly as that distance is
04:20slightly longer than my 96.
04:23You have some options in here.
04:24You can do it this way, scaling up that gizmo to match, or map it flat down.
04:30This is really up to you how you would like it to be.
04:32I'm going to take the more exact approach and scale this up a bit.
04:40I'll try a Length of 110.0 and a Width of 110.0 as well.
04:46And that seems to fit pretty nicely.
04:47I'll remember that for future use.
04:50As we can see in my texture here, as I spin around to see it better, the rust is tiling.
04:55It repeats cleanly with some streaking in here.
04:58In a metal roof like this, it's okay to see streaking as it is part of the way these rust.
05:03If I needed to clean this up, my PSD is layered in Photoshop for just such
05:07an occurrence, making it very easy to come back and repaint the rust so it works nicely.
05:13Now I'm going to continue to map the rest of these.
05:16In the interest of time, I'll come back to the completed version with all the
05:19polygons of the roof mapped in the same way.
05:22I've used the mapping on this roof in every different direction, simply selecting
05:27polygons by their direction in the roof and applying a UVW map.
05:31As you can see here in the Modifier stack, I've used a Poly Select modifier to
05:35jump between different polygons.
05:37Now if I need I can collapse this whole stack back to an Editable Poly and the
05:42object will still have mapping coordinates.
05:46I'll convert it to an Editable Poly by right-clicking and choosing Convert to an
05:49Editable Poly, deleting the history or optimizing the object.
05:54I want to make sure that my mapping looks right before I do this.
05:57I can always come back and repaint the texture if needed, but I think it looks pretty good.
06:01I have a rusty metal roof on my building.
06:04The last step then is I'm going to add in the normal map and see if this behaves
06:08correctly in terms of the way it lights.
06:10I've put in a directional light in the scene to help me with that.
06:14I'll unhide everything.
06:15I'll press M for Material Editor and scroll down to the Maps rollout.
06:20In the Bump slot, I'll add in a Normal Bump.
06:27In the Normal Bump under the Normal, I'll click on the None slot and choose Bitmap.
06:33And finally, I'll pick the metal roofN for Normal.
06:38This should work fairly nicely.
06:40If this doesn't show as well as it needs to, I can always add another light in.
06:45I think for now what I will do is make sure that my shading or my lighting and
06:48shadows illuminate with the default lights instead of the scene lights.
06:52And I should get a better look on it.
06:54I'll also make sure that under Materials, I am using Realistic Materials with Maps.
07:00And I start to see my ridges, my corrugation pop out very nicely.
07:05In the Material, I can always increase the Normal strength or increase the Bump
07:10strength from the default of 30.
07:13As a final note, I design my bumps to run at a strength of 1.
07:16Many game engines only run a bump at full strength.
07:20There is not a question of how much.
07:22It's just is there one or not.
07:24So I design it to run so at a strength of 100 here in Max, it looks pretty good.
07:29It looks like a rusty corrugated metal roof on a building.
07:33For your roofs then, think about the amount of room you're dealing with.
07:37You're dealing with a roof that quite possibly is a third of the amount of
07:41building you are going to see.
07:42And we might be seeing it from fairly close and able to pick out detail.
07:47We also want to think about carefully how a roof wears and accumulates
07:51things like dust and dirt.
07:53Different kinds of roofs are going to have different materials applied, which we
07:56can paint in Photoshop easily using an organized layered workflow.
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6. Assembling Structures
Arranging, aligning, and cloning modular elements
00:00With the design of a structure together and the texture mapping underway,
00:04including unwrapping and sharing texture sheets, we need to think about how do
00:07we clone structures and start to combine them to head into unity.
00:11We don't want to leave our structures as a bunch of separate pieces.
00:15We'd like to unify them or attach all the objects together at some point.
00:18However, we want to make sure that the design is nice and solid first.
00:22One of the techniques I'll use in design is cycling the axis constraints.
00:27This allows me to move and clone things without using the Array tool; instead
00:31snapping and cloning based on geometry I already have.
00:34What I like to do is to configure it as a hot key.
00:37That way also, I can hide the move gizmo and see exactly what I am doing.
00:42To begin, I'll go to Customize > Customize User Interface.
00:46With the Customize User Interface window open, in the Keyboard tab I'll go down
00:51to find Transform Gizmo Axis Constraints, shown as Transform Gizmo...
00:56In this case, it doesn't have a hotkey assigned.
00:59You can assign any hotkey you wish.
01:01I prefer to put it where my hands are most likely to be.
01:04For me, I am right-handed. My right hand is on the mouse and my left hand is on
01:08the left side of the keyboard.
01:10That puts the signal quote under the Tilde or Escape button within easy reach.
01:14I am going to assign it here by pressing that hot key and switching it away from
01:18Redraw All Views and Assign.
01:21You can save out a keyboard chart if you need as well or just close this dialog.
01:26With the Transform Gizmo Axis Constraints cycle enabled on a hot key, now I can
01:31use it in cloning this building.
01:34I'll select one of my modules, and go into a left view so I can see it clearly.
01:40If I press W for move, the yellow handle is highlighted, showing which axis I am constrained on.
01:46What I like to do for design to make it easy and quick and also to really
01:50carefully constrain the movement is to use that to cycle which way I am going.
01:55As I press that key, you can see different parts are highlighting in yellow.
01:59That's the direction I'll be moving in.
02:01For cloning this, I am going to pick this whole left side, press Spacebar for
02:07Selection Lock, and zoom up to the top where I can see a vertex.
02:11I'll register my snap on one of the corners.
02:16In this case, I am going to use 2.5D Snap to make sure I am not snapping
02:20through the building on something, registering the snap and my axis is
02:25constrained to the x-axis only.
02:27Now, when I hold Shift and drag, I can constrain it to only move on the x-axis
02:33and clone parallel to the other elements.
02:37In the Clone Options I'll set these up as Instances and I'll make seven copies.
02:46This gives me the long side of the building.
02:48Next, I would mirror over and complete and stretch those cornices out, much in
02:53the same way we stretched out the vertical elements in previous chapters.
02:57The important thing to keep in mind is precision of movement.
03:01At all times when we're making an environment, we want to keep things snapped
03:05and tight. Anywhere we can avoid an environment leak, where there is a
03:09hairline crack in something that the game engine has to think about, we get
03:12better performance.
03:14Game engines, to put it humorously, get very existential.
03:17If there's a crack in the world, they'll spend a lot of time thinking about the
03:20nature of the crack in the world and incidentally your frame rate and hence your
03:24gameplay goes downhill.
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Setting pivot points for buildings
00:00Once we've gotten the building's design, ready we'd like to import it into
00:04Unity or a game engine.
00:06However, there is some final cleanup we need to do to make sure it's
00:08really ready for import.
00:10The first is this still a design model.
00:13There is lots of parts, nothing is named, there might be extra stuff and
00:17modifier stacks, it's messy, which is just fine for design. And we took some time
00:22to get the feel for this model and get it looking right and the unwraps right
00:26and everything works like the existing building. That's great!
00:29However, if I were to bring this across into Unity it would be another story.
00:32I've done this as an example.
00:34Here in Unity I brought in the building and I've imported its materials as
00:38assets as well, applying them so I've got the upper floor and cornices.
00:42However, when I bring this in, everything comes with it.
00:46This is a bit of a mess.
00:47I'll open up the Project window as tall as it can go and open up that scene.
00:52As we can see we have several dozen objects and their mesh controllers and all
00:58sorts of stuff with it. This is messy.
01:00In Unity every object requires a draw call, every texture requires a draw call.
01:05What I've done unnecessarily is put in maybe 60 or 70 objects for my game engine
01:11to think about as part of displaying one building instead of one object to come
01:15in with one texture to display on one building.
01:18So I'm possibly slowing down my gameplay.
01:21We want to streamline it before we bring it in.
01:24I'll go back to 3ds Max and show how to do this.
01:28In 3ds Max we want to look over our objects for any issues as much as we can.
01:32I'll look at this with an eye towards odd smoothing groups, odd shading,
01:36stretching textures etcetera, but I may see some minor issues here and there.
01:41Part of getting this ready for export is to attach it together as one object,
01:45transitioning from a design model to an exportable model.
01:48I'll make sure I save the design model as a separate file first or save the
01:54export scene as a separate scene so I don't lose the editability in case I need to go back.
01:59These are instance objects.
02:01What I'll do is make this object unique.
02:03It doesn't really matter which one I start out with as long as I have one that is.
02:07Now I'll convert this to an Editable Poly by choosing Convert To Editable Poly.
02:12I'll attach it to everything.
02:14Right-clicking and choosing the dialog next to Attach.
02:17In this dialog we can organize here.
02:20Right now I have a Display Geometry filter on. No other button is depressed,
02:25meaning I'm only showing the geometry.
02:28Additionally, I only have one object selected.
02:31I'm going to scroll down and make sure I don't see anything else odd and then in
02:35my selection filter I'll check Select All.
02:37Now it's going to attach everything to that object.
02:41When I press Attach it's gives me a warning.
02:43How would I like to attach the Material IDs to the object?
02:47I can come back and deal with that one in a minute. I'll hit OK.
02:51I do see a little issue pop up on the side.
02:54Apparently, in the attaching I had some weird smoothing groups happen.
02:58Smoothing issues are noticeable by odd shadows or dark lines where they're
03:04really shouldn't be one on a flat wall.
03:07However, this is an easy fix.
03:09I know this is all flat. I made it so.
03:12I'll right-click choose Polygon and select this whole mass of polygons.
03:17Then I'll scroll down to the Smoothing Groups and Clear All and that issue goes away.
03:21I'll right-click and choose Top-level.
03:24I'm just about ready. I could probably clean up my materials, although I will see
03:28some places in Unity to handle that.
03:30I need to name this.
03:32We'll call this Building01.
03:35That way I can find it when it comes in.
03:37In a city I may end up with Buildings 1 through 45 very easily.
03:40I also need to move the pivot to a place where placing in Unity is
03:44fairly straightforward.
03:46Right now the pivot is well up about the fifth floor and kind of in
03:49somebody's corner office.
03:50Not the best place.
03:52To do this I'll go into the Hierarchy tab and check Affect Pivot Only.
03:57I'll also configure my snap by holding Shift+Right-clicking and making sure that
04:01Pivot and Vertex are both checked.
04:04I can use the Align tool or I can use Snap to move this pivot down where I need it.
04:10So if I am moving this building adjacent to a sidewalk I can put it precisely on.
04:14I'll show the Align tool as one method of aligning a pivot.
04:17I'll click Align and align the building to itself.
04:20The Align tool starts out with whatever settings were in there last.
04:24What I'm going to do is align this from Minimum to Minimum or Minimum to Maximum
04:29until I get it where the pivot of the building goes down to the base.
04:32If I try a few options I'll find one that works.
04:35In this case, Y and Z from maximum to minimum seemed to do it.
04:40I'll hit OK when it's ready.
04:42When you align a pivot you want to make sure it's as close on to the place
04:46you're going to position the building as possible.
04:49I have it down on the floor correctly, but I need to move it over to that corner.
04:53I'll register my snap on it.
04:54Notice the yellow ring on the pivot showing that it is snapping and I'll bring
04:58it right over onto that corner of the building.
05:02I'll uncheck Affect Pivot Only and now this is ready for export out.
05:07As a test if I press E for Rotate and spin the building, it does spin around that corner.
05:13So if I needed to flip this building 90 degrees to be on a different block to
05:16flesh out my city, it would be fairly easy.
05:19I can also snap it down to the sidewalk, again to avoid leaks in my scene.
05:24The thing to stress here and the thing you should watch out for is keeping your
05:28scenes clean and making it difference in your mind into the scene between a
05:33design model, where you maybe moving lots of elements around to get the feel of a
05:37place right, and the final model for export which should be as clean as possible
05:41so that we're reducing the number of draw calls leading to one building having
05:45one draw call and a better game.
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Reusing elements: Exploring possibilities in modular building design
00:00In making a game you'll go through a lot of effort to build a lot of assets.
00:05The best philosophy is to see how many places you can reuse those assets.
00:09Especially on the design side, we need to populate a city with, well, a city
00:13worth of buildings, or at least a chunk of a city.
00:15We want to take our kit of parts, our assembly of windows and walls and frames
00:20and cornices we've made, and see if we can get one or two more buildings out of
00:24each one, rather than all this effort to make one place.
00:27This kit of parts I have here will easily yield me another building.
00:31What we've been doing so far is looking at elegant design.
00:35Not that it's necessarily in heels or streamlined, but that the mesh
00:40construction, I'll press F4 to show it, snaps clean and easily, that everything is
00:45on the module, that taking this and cloning it or replicating to make a new
00:49building, is very, very straightforward.
00:52As an example, I am going to take this building and lengthen it, adding in
00:57another course of brick and also a couple of more floors. Maybe it's a larger
01:02bank or a larger office building.
01:04What I'll do is first grab the upper floors and move them up.
01:08I'll select the top and then hold Alt to deselect those vertical elements.
01:12I am going to zoom in and use my Spacebar for Selection Lock.
01:18Press W for Move and I'm going to use my snap.
01:21I notice that possibly from a previous exercise, my Snap settings have changed.
01:27That I may be actually snapping to a pivot point on an object, as evidenced by
01:31the yellow highlight around it.
01:33I can set this back easily and I find I do so on-the-fly a lot of times,
01:37setting and reasoning my snap as I need, configuring my workspace to get the best results.
01:42I'll hold Shift and right- click and uncheck Pivot.
01:46Now I am only snapping on vertices, as we can see by the yellow plus here. I'm ready to move.
01:52What I'll do is I'll register that plus maybe three floors down and I'll move
01:56this up three floors, snapping evenly.
02:00You can see the green rubber band showing where I am snapping to.
02:04I'll deselect and zoom out, hitting the Spacebar to do so.
02:08Now I've destroyed my building, which is just fine.
02:11I am going to stretch out my vertical elements.
02:13You'll notice when I've cloned them, we'll look on the Modifier panel.
02:17They are instances largely.
02:19That means if I change one, they all change.
02:21So first I'll stretch them up.
02:23I'll drop down to the Editable Poly and this is a real advantage of
02:26keeping things separate.
02:27Going down to the Editable Poly I can select Vertices, grab those vertices, zoom
02:32in and stretch those elements right up.
02:35I'll press spacebar for Selection Lock and X to turn off to transform, so I don't
02:39accidentally change direction.
02:41I'll snap right up to the cornice, grabbing those three.
02:47Now when I release those vertices and go back up to the UVW map, my brick
02:51mapping I carefully put on earlier still goes all the way up.
02:55This is flexibility in design, that I can take these elements move, clone, snap
03:01them, and have that mapping I so carefully put on, still be in the right place.
03:06Here's the other side.
03:07Notice also that because I'm using my axis constraints I can register my mouse
03:11wherever I need, stretching those elements up to match the cornice.
03:15Finally, I'll finish out the corner.
03:18On this one, it's actually a couple of pieces and the reason is I had to move it
03:22and clone it and mirror it and take a piece off so it miters properly.
03:26It's only two, so it's not a big deal.
03:28While I am doing this, the main idea you should be getting from this is that
03:34it's fairly easy to stretch a building.
03:37That it should be a matter of moving and stretching a few pieces, and of course
03:41the mapping still works, because you planned it that way.
03:45Now I am ready to clone the middle floors.
03:48I'll select that row of three right here, making sure I have all of my
03:52elements by holding Ctrl to select any I missed, and then Alt to deselect
03:56those middle verticals.
03:58Now I can press spacebar for selection lock, hold Shift, and register on a vertex.
04:04I'll drag up and clone and I've added more pieces to the building.
04:08I'm going to clone these as instances, in case I need to come back and change something.
04:13This building suddenly got taller.
04:15I could in the future take the whole building and expand it to the side or mirror it
04:19over or even stretch one of these brick elements laterally, because that mapping
04:24will still apply once I've stretched.
04:26The big deal is to make yourself a kit of parts.
04:29If you make a kit of parts you can reuse it.
04:32If you make a one-off design, it's very difficult to repurpose and you end
04:36up making thousands of unique things for your city, which takes a huge amount of time.
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7. Creating a Texture Library in Photoshop
Creating a texture library
00:00A large part of making game assets is texture and while we can get photo
00:05reference for texture, getting a photo of a texture we can use on a game
00:09asset is difficult.
00:12I've included several videos to show how to paint things from scratch in Photoshop.
00:17That way, you can have well, like you see here, a large brick wall where the
00:21brick is uniform and lit by what's in scene, not by the lighting that's baked on.
00:28We'll also explore methods for painting rusty steel, wood, and granite to give
00:33you a good start for the textures you'll need in your city.
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Creating rusty corrugated metal texture
00:00In this video, as part of making our texture library, I will demonstrate how to
00:04make corrugated metal such as we can see in this rusty barn here.
00:08A surface like this is useful in a lot of ways. As well as the barn we have, I
00:13can also use this on warehouses in a city, let's say down by the docks.
00:17I can use it on an army base, standard issue army base games, zombies
00:22running around, etcetera.
00:23I can use this on tropical locales.
00:27maybe we need metal roofs on structures.
00:29So having a corrugated metal in library is pretty valuable.
00:33The trick with it is to recognize the wear and dirt and rust patterns as
00:37different from the metal itself.
00:39Corrugated metal when it's clean looks like this.
00:42This is galvanized.
00:43We can see this flaky fractal pattern is the galvanization intended to keep it from rusting.
00:48I have collected reference images of different kinds of metal in
00:52different states of rusts.
00:53We can see a difference in the corrugations and also a difference in the way
00:57it rusts in each one.
00:58more streaky and along the corrugations and really flaky and bumpy here.
01:04It's always important to start out with reference.
01:06We can't just imagine that. We need pictures of what does this material look
01:10like and this is fairly common.
01:12To begin, I am going to start out a new document by pressing Ctrl+N.
01:15I am going to make this texture 1024 square.
01:19I'd rather paint big and then reduce down later if needed.
01:22Textures are usually in a power of 2 and square, so 1024 is one of those.
01:27If you like, you can save a preset.
01:29I am going to save my preset and leave the name at 1024 Square.
01:32I am going to leave this as RGB, White, and 72 pixels per inch, which is a
01:38standard for working on screen.
01:40In this new document, the first thing I'll do is lay down my corrugation.
01:44I'll press M for Marquee and change my Marquee to a Width of 16 and a Height of 1024.
01:49I will land this marquee anywhere really on screen and zoom in on it so I can
01:55see it across the width clearly.
01:57I'll change my colors here, picking a white or near white for my foreground, and
02:02leaving my background at somewhere in a middle gray.
02:04Then I'll go to my Gradient tool, pressing G, and in the Gradient choose Reflected.
02:10I will start in the middle of this selection, click and hold Shift while I drag
02:16to keep the selection running straight.
02:18There is my gradient across that. One corrugation.
02:21When I zoom out, I have a thin line with a gradient on it.
02:25I will go to Edit > Define Pattern.
02:28I'll call this Corrugation.
02:34Now I can deselect and then press Ctrl+A to select my whole document.
02:38Then I will press Shift+F5 and under the Fill dialog where it says Use, I will
02:44drop-down and pick Pattern.
02:45In my patterns, I'll pick my Corrugation pattern.
02:51Now I have my document filled with even corrugations.
02:54I've got the right rhythm going. Now we need to add the chips.
02:57I'll press Ctrl+D to deselect and double- click on my background layer and rename it.
03:02I'll call this one Corrugation.
03:06I need a new layer but first I need to generate some chips at the right size.
03:11Remember that from previous lessons, render clouds always generate at the same
03:15size regardless of the document size.
03:17So I want more clouds in order to have more chips spread evenly.
03:21I am going to make a new document by pressing Ctrl+N and I'll make this new
03:25document 4000 pixels square.
03:29Now I will fill this new document using clouds that go between a light gray and a medium gray.
03:34I will set the foreground color to a light gray and the same one for
03:38the background is fine.
03:39I will choose Filter > Render > Clouds and now I have a lot of clouds in my document.
03:47Now I'm ready to crystallize.
03:49I will zoom in so we can see it, and choose Filter > Pixelate > Crystallize.
03:55I am going to crystallize this first at a size of 10 or so.
04:00Now I'll crystallize once more at a smaller size, choosing Filter > Pixelate >
04:05Crystallize and running a size of roughly half.
04:10Now I'm ready to take this document and downsize it and apply it.
04:14I'll go to Image Size by pressing Ctrl+ Alt+I and changing the Width to 1024.
04:19I will make sure that Constrain Proportions is checked if it's not already, so
04:25that the width and height change together.
04:27There is my document with my crystallization.
04:30I'll select all by pressing Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C for Copy, and into my other document
04:36with my corrugation I'll paste this by pressing Ctrl+V. I'll take this layer,
04:42zooming in to check the crystallization. It looks pretty good. I've got some good
04:45fractalization going and I'll set it over the other layer as a Soft Light.
04:51If this isn't show through well enough, I can always change the blending mode.
04:55In this case I might try a Multiply.
04:58Now, I start to get some phasing and chipping or crystallization on my metal as
05:02well as a nice blotchy pattern.
05:04I can adjust this later if needed.
05:06Now we are ready to add the rust.
05:08I'm going to do this on a new layer again, pressing Ctrl+Shift+N and naming
05:12the new layer rust.
05:14For the rust, I'm going to paint with a big soft brush, setting my foreground
05:18color to a good rusty orange.
05:20I will press B for Brush and Brush with an Opacity of 10 or 12 and a Multiply mode.
05:31That way, as I add the rust on, I can put everything from a gentle skim of rust
05:35to some hard splotches by brushing over and over in the same place.
05:39It's important when you're painting textures to not paint at full strength.
05:43We don't want to just smear a big color on.
05:47As part of this, I may want to zoom out, pressing Ctrl+Minus or using the Zoom tool,
05:51and I'm trying to get my rust fairly even across here.
05:55I want this to be old rusty, pretty well denigrated.
05:59That's pretty good.
06:00I can always adjust it later.
06:03I'll take this rust and set its blending mode over as a Color Burn.
06:07That's going to intensify that rust across here.
06:10I may want to reduce the Opacity just a little bit.
06:13I will pull it down to 60.
06:16Additionally, I may need to reorder my layers, moving around the flaking and
06:20corrugation to put them in the right direction.
06:23In each of these I am going to play with the blending mode, making the
06:26corrugation to Soft Light, and possibly switching the flakes to Normal and then
06:31taking the rust and trying other alternatives and if Color Burn doesn't look
06:35right, I'll try it as a Multiply.
06:38When you're building textures like this, play with it. There's not one right way.
06:42I've got some good blotching going on, I've got rust across it, and the final
06:46thing I need to do is to add-in some panel joints.
06:49For this, I am going to use a fixed size marquee.
06:52I will select by Marquee tool and on Width I will put-in 256 which
06:57divides evenly into 1024.
06:59I'll land my marquee first on the left side and choose my Eraser tool by
07:04pressing E. I will erase mostly outside, just lightening the edges of the
07:08panels ever so slightly.
07:11Then I will grab a guide, drag it across and snap it to the marquee, and
07:15repeat the process.
07:16In the interest of time, I am going to do this three more times and then show
07:20that final document.
07:22I've added the panel joints into my corrugated metal.
07:25I've also adjusted using the Brightness and Contrast, the cloud layer, so maybe
07:29it's a little less visible or obvious.
07:32I can come in and add any other rust now and bulk out any textures I need or
07:36erase any parts and redo any parts that look wrong.
07:40My corrugated metal is ready to apply.
07:42I can put in additional details such as screw joints or other pieces as needed.
07:47But this is a good base for my texture library.
07:49I can use this in a variety of places.
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Creating stone texture
00:00In the textures for a city, aside from brick, one of the main things you'll need is stone.
00:05Many buildings have a stone base and are often clad in stone as well.
00:09In the lower right corner of this photo we can see that this building has a granite base.
00:14Then it has precast concrete or another stone forming the blocks and relief.
00:20This modern office building is clad in marble, both on the columns as well as
00:25part of the facade above.
00:27Being able to paint a large chunk of stone and use it where we need in a texture
00:31sheet is a valuable skill.
00:34To paint the stone I'll start with a new document, pressing Ctrl+N in Photoshop.
00:39I'll make this new document 2000 square.
00:44We'll run this as an RGB white background 8-bit image.
00:48Stone is really a series of chips in a matrix or different colored dots in an overall color.
00:56To start then, we'll fill this document with a 50% gray, pressing Shift+F5 and
01:02under the Contents in Use we'll choose 50% Gray.
01:07I do this a lot because some filters need a color besides white to work on.
01:11Now I'll choose Filter > Texture > Grain.
01:17In the Grain filter, change the Grain Type to Enlarged.
01:21This gives us large soft clumpy grain.
01:25We'll crank up the contrast so we can see the colors as well.
01:29I'll press OK and return back to my image.
01:32I'll zoom in so I can see the colors.
01:35We're using grain here because grain generated in Photoshop is an even series
01:41of colors spread over the image and phases between colors we can select, such as
01:47purple, green, and blue.
01:49I'll press W for the Magic Wand, making sure that Contiguous is unchecked but
01:54Anti-alias is checked.
01:56A low Tolerance, somewhere between five and 10, is fine.
02:00First I'll click on one of the purple blotches.
02:04Notice that with Contiguous unchecked, my selection is an evenly spread
02:08series of blotches.
02:10Pressing Ctrl+0 to zoom out verifies that the entire document has little bits selected.
02:16I'll make a new layer by pressing Ctrl+ Shift+N. I'll fill this new layer with
02:22any kind of an off-white, choosing in my foreground color a brightness near 90
02:28and a slight yellow in the Saturation and Hue.
02:33I'll use the Paint Bucket, pressing G, and making sure that Contiguous is
02:37unchecked, but Anti-alias is on.
02:41Pressing Ctrl+D shows an evenly spaced series of off-white dots. This is good so far.
02:47I'll repeat this process three more times to get a variety in the chips of my stone.
02:55I've repeated the process of selecting on the background layer with the Magic Wand,
02:59selecting different colors each time, and then filling that selection on a
03:04new layer with another color.
03:06I've used black, white, gray, and a pale gold.
03:10Now I'll turn off the background color and make a new layer above the background.
03:16This new layer will be the matrix that the stone chips are in.
03:20For my foreground color I'll pick the main color of my stone.
03:24In this case I'm going to make a warm gray granite.
03:29I'll pull my Saturation down, make sure the Brightness is somewhere around 60,
03:34and shift the Hue over into the mid-20s.
03:36Now I use the paint bucket to fill this new layer.
03:43Zooming out by pressing Ctrl+0 shows me an even field of granite.
03:47This texture is ready for use.
03:49We can flatten the layers, copy and paste it, and fill in parts of an unwrap,
03:54such as stone blocks on a building, headers or sills above and below windows,
03:59and even use this to look like terrazzo cast in a floor.
04:05Remember, that most of the things we need in a city are things that generally repeat.
04:10It's not a singularity; it's always a pattern.
04:13If we look in our filters and think of making patterns, we can generate most
04:18textures that we need.
04:20I've used this approach to make granite.
04:22With some slight variation in the selection size and number of colors, I'll use
04:26this to make sandstone, marble, limestone, and even travertine.
04:32Often, I'll play with several layers of grain to further enhance the stone,
04:36giving a directionality or strata that's found in natural rock.
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Creating wood texture
00:00Another valuable element in a texture library is wood.
00:04We use wood as a building material around the world in different places
00:08and different ways.
00:09Sometimes it's used as siding.
00:10We can see here on an old barn or outbuilding.
00:13Sometimes it's used as a structural frame, sometimes it's both, and
00:17sometimes it's even a floor.
00:18We need to make wood in various ages, various sizes, and various weather
00:23conditions so we get different looks to it.
00:26What I will show in this example is how to make a large swatch of raw wood that
00:31later we can adjust color and cut planks.
00:34To begin, I'm going to start out with a new document.
00:37I will press Ctrl+N for New Document and make this 500x500.
00:45I'll fill this new document with a 50% gray, pressing Shift+F5, and under
00:50Use choosing 50% Gray.
00:53Then I will put some vertical grain on, choosing Filter > Texture > Grain.
00:59We want to think of it as not wood, but a roughly parallel series of lines with
01:04occasional variation in color and weave.
01:07I will make my Grain Type Vertical and take the Intensity and Contrast down.
01:12These don't need to be too fierce.
01:13We don't want black and white in the wood.
01:15We want gray and slightly different gray to start. I will press OK.
01:20Now I'll take this and choose Filter > Blur > Motion Blur.
01:24I will set the Angle to 90 to match the grain and the Distance to 20.
01:29That way it smoothes out most of the dots, leaving the even grain.
01:33I have a little bit of weave in here. That's just fine.
01:36Now I need to stretch this document.
01:38I will press Ctrl+Alt+I for Image Size and blow this up to 2000 square.
01:46What this does is it spreads out the grain, forcing Photoshop to soften and
01:50interpolate the colors slightly, giving me a more natural appearance.
01:54We will add the color last.
01:56It's really about the pattern first and this is not going to be a tilable texture.
02:00This will be a large chunk of wood, actually something bigger than we could get
02:03from any tree possible, maybe a 4x4 or 6x6 board that later we could cut planks
02:09out of and arrange in the same way we do bricks or stone.
02:12Now I am going to add some weave into the grain. But before I do that, I need a
02:16little bit of color variation.
02:18I will press B for Brush, and using a fairly large brush, maybe a few hundred
02:23wide, and setting it as a Multiply with a very low Opacity, I will brush vertical lines.
02:29It's helpful to do this zoomed out just a little bit, pressing Ctrl+Minus.
02:33That way I can start my brush outside of my document.
02:37Hold Shift and click and drag straight down to match the grain.
02:41I'll add in variation, a little lighter, a little darker in different places.
02:47Occasionally, I'll use the square brackets to up- and downsize the brush giving
02:52me larger and smaller areas of darkness.
02:57As a side note, I do this regularly.
03:00I probably have 30, 40, 50 wood samples like this of different species, just
03:05large planks ready to go in my library.
03:07Then if somebody says we need cherry for all the furniture, I can go to my
03:12cherry samples and cut out the parts I need to paste onto and unwrap.
03:15I will also work in white sometimes for this, taking the color up to white and
03:21setting the brush blending mode here to Soft Light.
03:25As I brush over, I will add light streaks, maybe even smaller across this,
03:30again holding Shift while doing this, making sure I click and drag, hold Shift,
03:35and then release both at the top, so I don't get a diagonal line.
03:38Now I've got variation across this.
03:40We will go to Filter and Liquefy.
03:45In this, I will add the variation in the wood.
03:47I will zoom out so I can see the full document.
03:50The first step is to change the grain width.
03:52I will use the Bloat tool and I will make the Brush Size fairly big, maybe 300 or so,
03:57but a very, very low Density and Rate.
04:00If you are using a tablet, set your pressure very low as well.
04:04For this first one, I'm going to try to keep my hand as steady as possible,
04:08running my Bloat tool down the wood to spread out the grain.
04:12A little weave is okay, but we want to stay away from large zigzags.
04:16I'll come back up and catch the top and go right off the document.
04:20I'll repeat this several more times, maybe changing the Brush Size just a little bit,
04:24looking to add that characteristic variation across wood grain that's there
04:28from different years of drought or fire or otherwise.
04:31I don't want to start from the top like that because it's very easy to
04:34introduce a dip in the wood.
04:35I will make sure I start in the middle, brush down, and come back and catch that top edge.
04:42It's okay to leave these in once in a while because we do see places like that in wood.
04:47Maybe one or two more will do.
04:52Now I need to add the wave in the grain.
04:55Trees are always curved.
04:56So I am going to use the Forward Warp tool with a huge brush, maybe 1000 square,
05:02and a very, very low Density and Pressure.
05:06The idea on this is I'm going to just brush it over and add some weave and variation.
05:12Again, I want to stay away from large zigzags but some gentle curves would help.
05:16That way in case I see my grain, it's not perfect on something.
05:21I tend to do it diagonally, either top -left to bottom-right or top-right to
05:25bottom-left, whatever works.
05:27We are working our way in from the large scale down to the small.
05:32Now I need to add in places for knots.
05:34Depending on the species you are making, you may see more or fewer knots or none at all.
05:38I'm going to work in somewhat of a generic pine or fur like we saw on
05:43those reference photos.
05:45I'll use the Blot tool, taking the Brush Size way down, maybe 100 or so and
05:50again a low Density and Pressure.
05:52I'll zoom-in and find a place with a bit of weave and in my Blot tool,
05:59just gently open up the grain, maybe a little bigger in this case. 150 will work well.
06:06I'll open up a place for a knot.
06:09Zoom out and go catch another area.
06:13You can add in more or less weave if you'd like.
06:17You can do straighter wood if it's quarters-on or if it's flats-on, you may have
06:21a great amount of weave.
06:23It also depends on the species.
06:25As an example, I've had to make curly maple and tiger's eye maple where
06:29basically the whole thing was weave and knots.
06:32That took me a bit but the result was worth it.
06:35Once I have got my knots in, I can use the Twirl tool.
06:38Zooming in on each knot and sizing down this Twirl tool to maybe 60 or 70 and in
06:44the middle of the knot, I will twirl. What we don't want a huge bunch of rings,
06:49but really a somewhat ring like structure that looks kind of like a knot. That will do.
06:55I will zoom in and do another one.
06:59It's really okay if some are dark and some are light.
07:01That's fine and if some aren't really formed at all. Knots show up in a
07:05different places in the wood.
07:11I'll finish these out and show the end result here.
07:15Using the Twirl tool, maybe upsizing and downsizing the brush a little bit, I've
07:19added knots to most of the places I've used the Bloat tool on.
07:22Some of them I left alone, like this one here at the top.
07:25My wood is now ready for color.
07:27I'll hit OK and accept the Liquefy.
07:32This wood is ready as a grain pattern.
07:35Now I need to add color.
07:36I will make my Background layer by double-clicking on it and naming it.
07:40I will call it grain.
07:41I will slip a new layer under it, pressing Ctrl+Shift+N for new layer, calling
07:46this one color, and then Ctrl+ Shift+Left Bracket to move it down.
07:50On this new layer, first I will pick the wood color I want.
07:53I am going to make this kind of a nice warm yellow to start.
07:59I'll fill in my under layer, my color, and change the blending mode of Grain to Color Burn.
08:06It's neat, but it's a little on the bright side.
08:08I will zoom in and using Hue/Saturation on the color layer desaturate and get
08:14the color where I want it.
08:16I press Ctrl+U to get here.
08:18I'll pull the Saturation out, maybe up the Lightness a little bit, and shift the
08:23Hue ever so slightly.
08:25I would like mine a little warmer.
08:28The last step is to add a little more color variation.
08:30I will turn off the grain and eyedropper my under color.
08:35Then on the foreground color, I will change the Brightness of the Saturation
08:38slightly, maybe 4 or 5 points. Using a Paint Brush that's fairly large maybe
08:46several hundred across, but painting in a normal at 80% Opacity, I will add some
08:53streaks along the wood.
08:54A little goes a long way.
08:56We can see just a little bit gets me a bunch of extra darkness.
09:00I may want to rethink this and lower the Opacity.
09:14I'll repeat this process with a lighter color, maybe 5 or 6 points lighter than the original.
09:23It's okay to let your hand weave a little bit here.
09:25It doesn't have to be perfect.
09:27You can always come back and paint it where you'd like it.
09:30My wood texture is ready.
09:32Right now, this is 2000 square.
09:34It's ready for cutting and pasting into a texture sheet and recoloring
09:38or reusing as I need.
09:40It's very easy to do this and now I have a clean raw diffused sample of wood,
09:45meaning there is no lighting or perspective baked in and I can cut as many
09:48planks out of it as I need.
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Creating rough brick texture
00:00As part of our texture library, we need brick.
00:03We use brick all over the world, in every city.
00:06And what we see a lot of times is actually the side and back brick, which is what
00:10we've got here in this reference photo, in a common bond or something similar
00:14where it's not the prettiest brick, but it was cheap to put up.
00:17We also will see a lot of it.
00:19It's very possible to see in any view hundreds of square feet of brick on a
00:24wall in varying degrees of dirt and color variation and such.
00:28So when I make my map, I need to make a large chunk of this that tiles nicely.
00:33I also need to add in this roughness.
00:35It's well placed but the bricks themselves are maybe not as nice-looking as face
00:39brick we see on the front of a building.
00:42I'll start out my new document at 320x120.
00:45A brick is 8 inch wide x 3 inches tall, made to fit in the human hand.
00:51This first document will help me define my pattern to make this wall.
00:56What I'm doing here is I'm assigning myself a working ratio of 20 pixels to
01:01the inch, so a brick at 160 pixels will include a mortar joint on the side and bottom.
01:07This will give me my half overlap or my running bond.
01:12To begin, I'll start with a fixed size marquee and I'll make the Width on
01:16this marquee 150x50.
01:17That gives me a nice wide half-inch mortar joint on the bottom and side of the brick.
01:24Common brick tends to be a little rougher and the mortar is a little bigger.
01:28I'll make a new layer by hitting Ctrl+Shift +N and landing this marquee on that layer.
01:34Then I'll fill this with really any color.
01:37I'll deselect, hold Alt, and the Move tool and I'll clone this layer, snapping
01:44onto the previous and either using the offset or nudge to move it over.
01:48I'll nudge over with the right arrow.
01:53Now in the Layers palette, I'll clone this layer by dragging while holding Alt.
01:57Then I'll use the Offset filter found under Filter > Other > Offset to move this brick over.
02:04I'll move this clone over by 80 and down by 60.
02:09There's the half brick!
02:10Now I'll take the first brick, clone it, and press Ctrl+F to repeat the offset.
02:15I need one more half brick on that side.
02:18I'll just hold Alt and clone this layer over, snap it on the existing one, and
02:23nudge it into place.
02:27There's my nice white mortar joints around my brick.
02:30Now I'm ready to make a pattern and add variety.
02:33I'll take this layer and merge it down.
02:38Press Ctrl+A to select all and choose Edit > Define Pattern.
02:43I'll make a new document, 1920x1920.
02:46That measurement comes from a multiple of 320 and 120.
02:50They both divide evenly into it and it's a square.
02:54Now I'll choose Edit > Fill, and under Contents, Use, a Pattern.
03:00In my patterns, I'll choose my brick.
03:03There is an even pattern of brick in the wall.
03:06What I want to do now is use my Paint Bucket and varying colors to make
03:10selections of the brick, so I can add variety to it.
03:13Before I do that, I need to add in a header course.
03:17The headers will tie the wall together.
03:20The easy way to do this is actually to make the mortar joint.
03:24I'll zoom in, set my marquee to a Height of 50 and a Width of 10.
03:32I'll center it on a brick or roughly so and press Delete, filling in with white.
03:40Alternately, I could make one white mortar joint and clone it over.
03:44I'll repeat this process, taking bricks and dividing them in half with the mortar joint.
03:49In the interest of time, I'll do this and jump forward showing the end result.
03:54I've added in middle mortar joints across the bricks, roughly every sixth course
03:59or horizontal layer of brick.
04:01Down at the bottom, I have an extra course, and it's really okay.
04:04It's fine for the texture to be a little uneven.
04:07That way we get variety on the wall.
04:08What we want to see is the general field of brick and pattern.
04:13Now I'm going to take these sections of half brick or headers and I'm going to
04:18move them slightly using the Offset tool.
04:20I'll put my marquee back to normal and select across them.
04:28I'll choose Filter > Other > Offset and offset this by some random number.
04:34How about 27 pixels to the right, making sure that my Offset wraps around?
04:41Now I'll choose the next one and offset by a different number.
04:45I'll repeat this process all way down the wall making sure that the Offset
04:49varies a little bit each time wrapping the brick around to get a less uniform look.
04:54I've offset the rows of header bricks ever so slightly so that they're broken up;
04:59their joints don't align.
05:01Now I'll go through as I've done in the previous chapter and color random bricks
05:05with varying colors.
05:07So I can use them to drive a selection, filling bricks with slightly different
05:11color to give me the variance in wall I need.
05:13In interest of time, I'll do this and show the result.
05:17I've gone through and colored this brick with different colors, looking to break
05:22up any large contiguous areas.
05:24Now what I'll do is select those colors and refine the selection a little bit,
05:30and then fill it with a brick color.
05:32I'll use my Magic Wand with Contiguous and Anti-alias off.
05:36First, I'll magic wand my yellow bricks.
05:39And under Refine Edge, I'll add in a Radius and some shifting edge and feathering.
05:44This will give me a variation in the brick. I'll hit OK.
05:50My brick is rounded.
05:51we can see when I zoom in.
05:52This is going to give me when I fill it a slightly different feel to
05:56these particular bricks.
05:58I'll also add in more color variation.
06:00So we look at a wall, especially one that's like this, it's old and it's grungy.
06:05We've got orange, deep red, nearly black. I'll make sure to add that in.
06:11I'll set my Foreground Color to a deep red.
06:19I'll set my Background Color to a variant of it but going fairly dark.
06:24Now with the selection, I'll make a new layer and choose Filter > Render > Clouds.
06:31I'll deselect and repeat this process all the way through.
06:34Along the way as part of it, I may also nudge the selection a pixel or two
06:39in each direction so that the rows are slightly offset from each other
06:42vertically as well.
06:45I've gone through my brick wall, selecting each color on the background layer,
06:49and refining the edge, and then filling that selection with clouds, phasing
06:54between various brick colors from actually fairly dark to fairly light.
06:57So I have some good variation on the wall.
06:59I've also used my arrow keys to nudge the bricks up and down.
07:03That way I get a little bit of odd spacing.
07:05They weren't put in as nicely.
07:07They still work just fine, but they slip a little bit.
07:10Lastly, I'll put in a mortar layer underneath all my other layers, filling this
07:15mortar in probably just a decent concrete gray, fairly warm.
07:20My Hue will swing actually into the red oranges and a very low Saturation.
07:24When I fill that in, I've got my wall.
07:30I'm ready to take this and add dirt overlays or darken it and resize as needed.
07:35This will tile really nicely and I can repeat it across square feet of wall as
07:40I need, several hundred as the case may be on the side or back of the building.
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Creating roads
00:00One of the most important textures we need in our city are the roads we drive on.
00:05We need these in miles and miles of tiles and tiles.
00:09It's very easy to end up with city blocks worth of roads very quickly.
00:13The road then that we drive on is really a mixture of painted pieces and
00:18procedural textures.
00:20In this case, looking at the reference photo, we can see that the asphalt is a
00:23grain structure, dark and light with things overlaid like road lines, gutters,
00:29oil stains, and so forth.
00:31To begin then I'm going to start with a large clean section of asphalt and then
00:35add in my wear and tear, my stains and my lines.
00:38I will begin with a new document.
00:42In this case I will set the document large, 2000 on a side.
00:45I will run this document at the standard resolution of 72.
00:50RGB and White is fine.
00:51I am making it big, 2000 square, so when I downsize to 1024 square I
00:57force Photoshop to blur.
00:59By not making it an even multiple,
01:01it's not a half resolution or twice the size, I force Photoshop to interpolate,
01:07getting me a better look overall.
01:10I'll fill this first with the 50% gray, choosing Edit > Fill or Shift+F5
01:15and under Use 50% Gray.
01:17Then I will make a new layer and fill this as well with 50% Gray.
01:25I use 50% Gray in textures a lot because it gives me a base for filters such
01:30as grain or noise. Rather than having them act on white and maybe missing components,
01:35gray lets me have range up and down or lighter and darker.
01:38I will choose Filter > Noise > Add Noise.
01:43In the Noise, I will try a Gaussian Noise at 11, 10, 12%, whatever works.
01:48Monochromatic is good here as well, keeping it all gray.
01:53Finally, I will set the blending mode of this layer to Multiply.
01:57We have a clean section of asphalt.
01:59However, if we zoom in, we can see it's pixilated.
02:03This might dance a little bit or crawl as part of the texture.
02:08Now we want to reduce this before adding the lines.
02:11I want to choose where I want my lines blurred and not have Photoshop make
02:14them fuzzy on the edge.
02:15I will press Ctrl+Alt+I and downsize this to 1024 square.
02:21For this road, I'm going to do three lanes in each direction plus a center
02:25safety lane, giving me a total of seven lane widths.
02:29Seven doesn't go evenly in the 1024.
02:31We come out with roughly 146 and change.
02:34I will put the extra pixel out on the outside in case I need a little extra on the road.
02:40To start that, I'll choose my Marquee by pressing M and under Style, do a fixed size.
02:46I will make the width here 146 and the Height as well 146.
02:50Although really it doesn't matter.
02:52I just need the Width.
02:53I will land the Marquee and press Ctrl+R for Rulers.
02:57I will drag a ruler from the left side over and snap it to the Marquee.
03:01I am going to repeat this process across, landing guides which will serve as
03:05alignment for my road lines.
03:10I have seven lane widths across, maybe a little more in the right side but that's fine.
03:14Roads can be a little bit uneven.
03:16I will use these guides as placement for my road lines and guidelines to
03:21paint my oil stains.
03:22I will paint those in first.
03:24I will make a new layer.
03:25Press Ctrl+D to deselect and zoom out.
03:29When painting, I find especially for straight lines, it's easier to start
03:32outside of the document, hold Shift, and drag down so that the line is straight.
03:36I will set the blending mode to Multiply and paint in a fairly dark gray to
03:41start with a big soft brush.
03:43Notice my Hardness is at 0, my Size is 300.
03:46I will start outside of one lane, hold Shift, and click and drag down.
03:51I will repeat this process through all the lanes.
03:55Initially, it doesn't look like much.
03:57Then I will downsize the brush and lay another line down.
04:05As we can start to see in this one lane I am building up, we get the wear
04:09down in the middle of the road, along with any oil and drips and exhausts
04:12that have spilled on it.
04:13I will downsize the brush one more time, maybe two or three, and lay a centerline down.
04:21I have even wear on my road starting from top to bottom.
04:24I will go through and repeat this for all six of my lanes, leaving the
04:28center safety lane alone.
04:29I have cloned my oil stains and touched up the painting a bit, finishing all six
04:34outside lanes, but not the center safety lane.
04:37This gets less wear than the main traffic lanes.
04:39If I zoom in, we can see that the staining is gently in the center with
04:44some bleed to the sides.
04:45Now I need to paint my paint my lane lines.
04:48The trick when painting a tilable map with lane lines is to choose a multiple
04:52or an easily divisible part of the overall texture size.
04:56As my texture is 1024 square, I'm going to make my lane lines 128 long and
05:01see how that looks.
05:02I will make a new layer and zoom in so I can test the size of my marquee.
05:06I will press M for Marquee and choose a fixed size.
05:10For the Width, I'll try 5 pixels. That way I can center it evenly on one of my guidelines.
05:16For the Height, I will put in 128.
05:20When I lay down a line, check and zoom out, I'll gauge the proportion.
05:25If I repeat this every so often, do I have too much lane line or not enough?
05:29My guess at the moment is it could be a little shorter.
05:32I am going to make the Height of this 100.
05:35I'll have to remember that when I repeat this.
05:37I will zoom in on one of my guidelines.
05:40Really it doesn't matter which one.
05:42Lay down my Marquee and fill it with white or yellow, depending of your
05:46choice of lane line.
05:47I will deselect, press V for Move and move this line over, centering it on that guideline.
05:55Mine is snapped to the top of the image.
05:57Zooming out, we can see the start of a lane line.
06:00Now I will clone this layer and use my Offset tool to move it down exactly,
06:04choosing Filter > Other > Offset.
06:07For the repeat on this, so it tiles seamlessly, I will move it down 256 pixels
06:13even though the line is 100 long.
06:15That repeat will go evenly down the drawing for ever and ever.
06:18I will repeat this process twice more finishing out the lane lines.
06:25When I press Ctrl+Semicolon,
06:27to turn off the guidelines, we can see my lane lines on the road.
06:31I'll go to the top lane line layer,
06:33press Ctrl+E to merge down, and now all of my lane lines are on one layer.
06:39I'll take this and clone it across to fill in my other lane lines and then
06:43show the end result.
06:44I have cloned my lane lines across.
06:48You may wish to take the ones on one side and move them down to the bottom of
06:51the drawing, so that the dashes don't line up from side to side on the road.
06:55This is an artistic choice.
06:56The last thing to do is use this same method to paint in the yellow lines in the middle.
07:01I'll start this out so we can see how it looks. Pressing Ctrl+Semicolon
07:05turns on my guides again.
07:07I'll zoom in so I can see for placement and I will start out with a fixed size
07:11marquee, a Width of 5 and a Height of 1024.
07:13I will land this marquee on my drawing, centered on that line, and I'll fill this
07:19marquee in, well, road line yellow.
07:21I want to make this on a new layer as this center is a different construction than the dashed lines.
07:33Now I need to move my marquee over.
07:35I can do this by pressing M and then using the arrows to nudge.
07:39I'll fill this next marquee with black or nearly black, and finally I'll use a
07:47fixed size marquee in the same way from the lane lines to make the dash inside
07:51of the center safety lane.
07:52I will use a Height of 100 in my marquee again.
07:57Landing the marquee next to the black and filling in yellow.
08:03I'll repeat the technique of cloning and offsetting this line and show how it
08:07looks when I am done.
08:09There is one side of my center safety lane.
08:12Now I just need to clone this layer and flip it over.
08:15I will clone this layer, holding Alt and dragging, and then choose Edit >
08:20Transform > Flip Horizontal.
08:23Now I will take the clone of the center safety lane lines,
08:26turn on my guides again so I can see, and snap this into place.
08:29We probably need to zoom in, press V and use the arrows to nudge a little bit.
08:36You may wish to flip these back and forth so that the lines alternate, or you
08:39can keep them aligned together.
08:42If you would like to flip them, choose Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical.
08:47Now I have got an offset pattern. My road is ready.
08:51I have got oil stains, lane lines, center safety lane, and the feel of the asphalt.
08:57If you would like, you can add in other texture or other repeating objects such
09:01as manhole covers.
09:02As one final variation, we could put in a gray along the side if your road needs a gutter.
09:08Judging from my reference pictures, the asphalt goes straight to curb so I am
09:11going to leave mine alone.
09:12This is ready to save out and map as a tilable texture onto those miles of road.
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8. Planning and Constructing Texture Sheets
Using the Walkthrough Assistant to assess texture needs
00:00When you're making a game, there is an enormous amount that depends on texture.
00:04In every game we're limited in the amount of geometry or polygons we can have,
00:08and this is further constrained depending on where our platform is.
00:12If we are going out to a console, we may have even more limited resources than a PC.
00:17A small form such as a phone is even more constrained.
00:20We try to do a lot with texture and part of dealing with that is in 3ds Max
00:26before we get to a game engine, testing things out and finding out if you're
00:29truly painting the textures at the right size and if your mesh works for
00:33your game mechanic.
00:35A great tool for this is to use the Walkthrough Assistant.
00:38The idea then is we can simulate gameplay.
00:42We have look around plus the standard game keys of W, A, S, and D for forward
00:46backward and side to side, giving us all the controls and constraints of a
00:51first-person shooter.
00:52We can test out not only the resolution of our textures, but also if our
00:57geometry works for the game mechanic.
00:59In this example, I've put together a warehouse quickly.
01:02It's a brick structure, two stories, with garage doors and windows on three
01:07sides and a large blank wall.
01:09In this case we are looking at the front and one side and around the back we
01:13have three rollup doors.
01:14On the fourth side then it's effectively blank, probably a parking lot
01:18or something similar.
01:21We want to test and see if we duck into a doorway that our texture will be
01:26the right resolution.
01:27And also did we plan enough space and the geometry in, so it feels like we're ducking in.
01:32If we are playing in a game looking over this city, that game mechanic is far
01:36different than, let's say, ducking down an alley looking in trash cans or
01:40ducking into a doorway so somebody doesn't see you.
01:43What I'll do for the Walkthrough Assistant is choose Animation > Walkthrough
01:47Assistant and it pulls up the Main Controls Walkthrough Assistant dialog.
01:52It creates a camera, either Free or Targeted.
01:54We can actually animate this on a path if we'd like, either picking a path or generating one.
01:59For now I just want to be able to use the camera and test it in the view and see
02:02if my geometry works and how close I'll be to things.
02:06I'll hit Create New Camera and it gives me Walkthrough_Cam001.
02:11I'll take this camera and move it down in on my scene.
02:14For this example, I'm going to test if these large doorways are big enough I can
02:18duck in and really not see down the surface of the wall.
02:21I'll make sure my snap is off, pull the camera down and also look at the Lens
02:26Parameters in the camera.
02:28We can decide on the lens for a game, and it really affects the storytelling of it.
02:32Do we see a narrow view or a wide one?
02:34I am going to set mine to 28, which is not far off the human eye.
02:37That way I get a nice wide field of view and what looks like great depth in the scene.
02:42I'll put my camera fairly close to start and aim it over where I want to be.
02:48Let's say I am walking up to the door and need to duck into this doorway.
02:53I'll hit C to go into the camera, so I can see from that perspective.
02:57Now I am ready to test.
02:59In the viewport controls on the lower right in the screen under the track is the
03:03Walkthrough Assistant button.
03:05Once you're in this mode, the cursor changes to a circle with a dot in the center.
03:09This simulates as you click and drag with the left mouse, the look-around of the player.
03:14The W, A, S and D keys simulate moving forward, backward, and side to side.
03:19Here using W and A, I am going into the doorway, aligning with it and seeing
03:24if I can duck behind.
03:25It looks like I could duck into this doorway, out of sight from passersby.
03:29I'll use the D key to come to the side.
03:33The other thing I can tell by doing this is that if I can duck in the doorway
03:37here, I'm right next to this rollup door.
03:39And if I'm right next to this rollup door and seeing this frame straight on,
03:43that texture needs to be pretty good.
03:46I also possibly can be in a position like this, seeing this brick wall fairly close,
03:50maybe even turned over a little bit and to the side more.
03:54So whatever I've got going on down here should look pretty decent as well as these windows.
04:00Coming farther back using S to scroll backwards here, I can see that I get
04:05pretty far away from the building to see the upper stories and brick up above
04:08that first window, so that texture if it's different, may need to be a little
04:12lower res, where I can get away with less texture.
04:15In this case this tells me as well that if I'm standing close to the building,
04:20I'm going to see a good expanse of this brick and this is a good place for a
04:23tileable texture, which we'll get into the next lessons.
04:26The important thing is to test.
04:28We always want to go in and test as much as we can and plan what we're going to do.
04:33Rather than slapping something in and just revising, I'd rather know going in
04:38that well, I need a good rusty texture on this door and I am going to see that
04:41doorframe really close.
04:43That way I can do it right the first time and move on.
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Drawing detail at the right size
00:00Once we've used the walkthrough assistant to figure out really what do we need
00:04to see up close, given our game mechanic and any other constraints on the view,
00:09we need to draw our textures correctly.
00:11This is an example of reference that really fits kind of that warehouse shown in
00:15the previous lesson where we have got a one or two story building, in this case
00:19one story, corrugated metal doors, and deep doorways.
00:23And remember in the planning of buildings that deep doorways like this are great
00:27for games, they are good for a cover mechanic where we can duck in, and also deep
00:31window openings fill the same function.
00:33So for this, I can tell and based on my experience of the Walkthrough Assistant
00:37that this brick needs to be done pretty well.
00:41In drawing a texture, sometimes we'll draw at a different size than our final
00:45texture and we want to plan to be able to reduce these without just mushing
00:49the colors completely.
00:50Here is an example.
00:53This brick is drawn at 1920x1920.
00:54We can see here in the Image Size.
00:59This doesn't reduce evenly down to 1024 square, but we want our game textures to
01:04be a multiple or a power of 2.
01:06If I take this image and reduce it down to 1024 here using the Bicubic
01:11Interpolation, I may get some fuzz on the bricks. Not bad, this is bearable, but
01:17there are places where I may get extra bleed.
01:20If the brick is already irregular like in this brick, where the brick itself is
01:25varied, a little fuzz is kind of nice because it makes it look sort of natural
01:29and like they're slightly irregular like we'd expect them to be.
01:32If I want precise bricks though, reducing that down may get me some odd edges.
01:38A better way to do this is to experiment with the different reductions.
01:42I'm going to pull up the Image Size dialog again, using Ctrl+Alt+I, reduce it
01:47down to 1024 and try it as a nearest neighbor, preserving the hard edges.
01:54Now, I get my crisp edges that I worked so hard to make.
01:57I'm down to 1024 square, and my brick is precise faced brick.
02:02It's important to think of that when you're drawing your texture.
02:05The typical practice is to draw twice as big and reduce down, letting Photoshop
02:11interpolate those colors a little bit.
02:14In game, we're going to reduce these further, possibly specifying a texture to
02:18max out at 512 square and reusing it in different places like that at
02:23different resolutions.
02:26On the garage door, in this case a rust spattered garage door that maybe used to
02:30actually say something on it, this one we'll reduce cleanly using bicubic.
02:35I can paint it at 1024, which I did, so that as I stand next to it, it looks good
02:40and I've got the rust and the detail I'd expect to see.
02:43When I reduce it down using Image Size, if I pull it down to 512x512, a 50%
02:50reduction, a bicubic reduction is going to give me a good result and it looks a
02:55little better. The colors blend a little more.
02:58Nearest neighbor would produce odd edges and hard banding and strange things in
03:02here I don't want on my smoothly rusting door.
03:06The other component of this is identifying any other key details.
03:11In this example, the key details to watch out for are the bricks, the brick
03:17sill, the arches, and the earthquake reinforcing up at the top.
03:21I want to make sure that those pieces stay crisp and are visible when I make
03:26this texture, and I plan that it will be reduced.
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Understanding tiling and non-tiling textures
00:00One of the greatest assets that a game developer or a game designer has is tiling texture.
00:07What that means is that a texture repeats seamlessly. Not just repeats. It's not
00:12a matter simply of cloning one side over to the other and throwing a texture on
00:16an object, but rather carefully crafting a texture so that a repeat is
00:21essentially invisible.
00:22In this building as an example shown with a couple lights over head, a rollup
00:27garage door that's rusty, and a metal frame, we have brick and we have several
00:32hundred square feet of brick viewable.
00:34This brick is constructed as a tiling texture, making sure that from side to
00:38side and top to bottom the brick repeats,
00:41but also that the variation in the brick is randomized enough and seamless
00:45enough that only if we look very hard can we tell that there is a pattern to the brick.
00:51I'll switch over to the Shaded View and get out of the walkthrough camera to
00:54be able to show this.
00:59If I view a large face of the building without lighting, I can pick out some of
01:03the patterning. Some of the dark bricks repeat.
01:05But on the whole, it's not terribly noticeable.
01:08This texture is tiling nicely.
01:10It's only mapped at 8 foot square, and for reference, these windows are 16 feet across.
01:16So this is fairly successful.
01:17It will be even better in light with overlays of dirt and other objects.
01:22We might see dumpsters or other things next to it that will further
01:25camouflage this pattern.
01:27Therefore, this is a successful tiling brick and one which I can use in any
01:32number of places in my environment.
01:34A non-tiling texture or non- repeatable is a texture that's designed to be
01:39thrown on one set of UVs.
01:41Here is an example.
01:43In Photoshop, I have pulled up the cornice color that was used on a previous building.
01:48In this case, this is a non-tilable, although some elements are meant to
01:52repeat, such as the square and this long rectangular relief. Some pieces are clearly not.
01:58A window in the middle of brick.
01:59When it's applied to a building, which I'll go back to 3ds Max and show, we can
02:04see that the texture repeats on the elements, not that the texture is seamless.
02:09Here in 3ds Max, we have the building from previous chapters with upper floor,
02:14cornice, and top floor elements.
02:17This texture is not tiling.
02:19It's not meant to be seamless, evenly meeting from side to side, but rather
02:24have division elements such as these relief panels that break the brick on the upper floor.
02:29Additionally, the cornice has squares and long rectangular elements,
02:33again that break that pattern, so it's non-tiling.
02:37The difference in these is that we maybe able to get more detail, more dirt or
02:42more variation in a non-tiling texture, but we have to be careful how we use it.
02:46In a tiling texture, we can repeat it endlessly, but any flaw or pattern we
02:52introduce will show every time that texture is mapped.
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Deciding when to use tiling and non-tiling textures
00:00In a game, we want to make the difference in our minds and in our game between
00:04tiling and non-tiling textures.
00:06Tiling are repeatable, and non-tiling, as in part of an Unwrap UVW Modifier or
00:12in other coordinates that are meant to span a complete structure.
00:15One of the things I like to do when visualizing maps is in the Configure Rollout
00:20for the Unwrap UVW, turn off the seams so I can see things a little clear.
00:23I'll go down there and uncheck Map Seams and if you've used the Peel function,
00:29uncheck that as well.
00:30This is about as close to in game as we can get. It depends on the graphics card
00:34you have installed and what other features you have on.
00:37But right now this is giving me a pretty good look.
00:40In this case, this brick is tilable.
00:42It's made to repeat every 8 feet or so as how I have it mapped.
00:46So I get large swatches of brick with pretty good detail.
00:50I drew it this way and the difference here is that the tiling texture allows me
00:54in that 1024 square map to draw a pretty good detail on the brick.
00:58A non-tiling texture may give me far less detail because it might be spread over
01:03a larger area such as the whole face of the building.
01:06Here is how this looks, so you can see the maps.
01:12I've pressed M to get into my Material Editor and I have this set up for
01:16testing as a multi sub-object material.
01:18In the Diffuse channel of my brick is this brick image.
01:22Here is how that brick looks.
01:23Right now it's perfectly clean.
01:25There is no dirt, no grunge, no graffiti, no other stuff we'd find in it.
01:29It's great for tiling.
01:31From side-to-side and top to bottom it matches, and in this map I was able to
01:34get lots of brick and lots of detail, even down to right here, the color
01:38variation in a brick.
01:40I'd like to lay some dirt over it and the other place, we'll want to lay multiple
01:45textures on is going to Unity and baking out lighting, where we need a light
01:49map for an entire building or entire object laid over a tiling texture, using
01:54multiple mapping coordinates.
01:57A non-tiling texture looks like this.
02:00This is a dirt map combined with an occlusion map I put together.
02:04As an example then, this shows the entire face of this building, the whole wall
02:09fitted into that same space.
02:11I get far less detail.
02:13I can almost see the pixels in here.
02:15But for things like dirt where it's a soft even coating, I don't need the
02:19precise detail in it. A non- tiling map works very nicely.
02:23The big deal then is differentiating that in your mind and in your texture.
02:28Which one is better?
02:29Often we can get away with a really nicely detailed 256 square map or even 128
02:35that tiles endlessly, such as a floor tile, and then overlay rust and dirt or
02:41something else on it or lighting at a far larger size, but still far smaller
02:45than if we had mapped the entire floor.
02:47In this case, once I get into Unity, this dirt map laying over the entire
02:51building will give me really nice darkness along the bottom.
02:55W can see a little bit of it here and it's going to make this building look
02:58like well, a grungy brick warehouse down the side of an alley.
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Using multiple mapping coordinates
00:00Once we have decided on our design for our game and we have started making
00:03textures, we need to make a decision about tiling and non-tiling textures on an object.
00:09We can also blend these using multiple map channels.
00:13The idea in multiple map channels is I want to unwrap an object in multiple ways
00:17to do different things. Maybe a tiling texture that's small with good detail
00:22drawn in it and then a larger overly texture for things like dirt.
00:26In this example I have a warehouse whose entire side here is covered in brick.
00:31We can see the brick repeating and tell by the map size it's not very big.
00:35This is 8 feet square. It gives me lots of detail in 1024 square map to paint this
00:40brick and if I right-click on it and choose Gizmo, I can move this Gizmo around
00:46and get that brick anywhere I need it to be.
00:49However, I may want a dirt overly and so I need to use multiple map channels on the object.
00:54What I'll do quickly as an example is throw a Poly Select on top of this and
01:01deselect the object using that modifier.
01:03Now I'll take the whole object and unwrap it, again using an Unwrap UVW.
01:12In this Map channel I want to specify under the Channel rollout Map Channel 2.
01:17Max will give me a notice. Would I like to move UVs or just abandon them and
01:21display the existing?
01:22I am going to move.
01:25Now if I open the Editor, I can see my object and this is ready for
01:29unwrapping and flattening.
01:33What I'll do is unwrap this and show the result as this may take a couple of
01:36minutes to get right.
01:37I've unwrapped this object, looking at the large planes on the building.
01:41I took the other things, the sides of the windows, and slid them off to the side
01:44for clarity for now.
01:46Later I'd come back and stack them neatly in the remaining space.
01:50What this will let me do is render out this template under Tools > Render UVW Template,
01:55bring it into Photoshop, and paint dirt or other things along the wall to overlay
02:00onto the clean brick.
02:01Alternately, I can use this to render out ambient occlusion for lighting like we
02:05saw in Chapter 5 on the cornices.
02:09Once I've got this ready, I can apply my texture.
02:12In this case this will apply to the whole building based on that channel, as
02:16long as I set the Map to Map Channel 2.
02:19In the Material Editor the way to do this is to insert it into another channel.
02:23To bring multiple UVs across to Unity, we need to put this map into the self illumination.
02:28I'll click on the None slot, choose Bitmap, and then choose my warehouse
02:34dirt image I painted.
02:37Once this is in, in that Map Channel I'll make sure it says 2.
02:41I'll give the display a minute to update and turn on the scene lights and we
02:46should see dirt along the wall.
02:50This is how we can bring lighting or multiple map channels across into a game.
02:54Under Realistic, I'll choose Lighting and Shadows > Illuminate with Scene Lights.
03:00Now I can see nicely in addition to the large pool of light for my streetlights
03:04dirt along the wall and some coming up this side here, crossed over by the
03:08dynamic light in the scene.
03:10On a final note I'd like to turn off the scenes here in my display to make it easier to see.
03:16I'll scroll down in the Unwrap UVW dialogue and into the Configure Rollout.
03:22I'll uncheck Map Seams.
03:24This is about as close to end game as we can get, barring the other lighting
03:28and other textures needed here. My windows are a little black, but what I can
03:32see nicely is the dirt on the wall and how it works to the lighting and also the
03:37rest of lighting on it and where I need to pay more attention to.
03:40It's important to note that yes, we can use multiple map coordinates here in 3DS Max.
03:45We need to set up right to take them across to game and we need to use them carefully.
03:50They're perfect for things like overlaying dirt or grunge or graffiti onto a
03:55clean wall and allow you to blend skillfully tiling textures with good detail
03:59and non-tiling things like dirt or staining.
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Using multiple unwrap modifiers
00:00In the process of mapping object for a game, we can apply multiple mapping
00:04coordinates to different parts of an object to get the look right.
00:07In this example, I have the warehouse.
00:10I've created a Multi/Sub-Object material with the textures and assign polygon
00:14IDs but I haven't mapped anything yet.
00:16What I will show then is using a combination of UVW map and Poly Select
00:21modifiers to put the mapping in the right place.
00:24I am going to start out with a few pieces of the brick wall then move over to the windows.
00:29First, I will choose Polygon and select the large face of the brick wall shown
00:33here outlined in red.
00:35On top of this I'll add a UVW Map Modifier.
00:43Initially, the mapping is all over the place. That's just fine.
00:46What I will do is down in the Length and Width specify an exact size for my map.
00:51I'll make this 96x96,
00:54as I made it that big in Photoshop. By counting the bricks I can get the right size.
00:58As an alternate I could use a real world map size, I will show that one on another piece.
01:03I will rotate this by right clicking and choosing Gizmo and then hitting E for Rotate.
01:08I will rotate it over 90 degrees exactly watching down at the bottom in the X, Y, and Z
01:14fields for the correct rotation.
01:16The important thing when you are mapping is that as you're facing the map and
01:20if the map is facing in the right direction, that the tag is up and the
01:24green side is on the right.
01:25That way things like a bump map or a normal map will face out correctly.
01:29When I zoom in I have my bricks.
01:33And if needed I can align them up and down to match up to a windowsill or
01:36header. Now I am going to look at mapping the sides of the windows.
01:41To do this I will add on a Poly Select modifier.
01:44That way I can switch my polygon selections and apply mapping only to selected
01:48sub-objects of this warehouse.
01:51Under Selection Modifiers is Poly Select.
01:54I will choose it. Right now it shows I have deselected all the polygons.
01:58I will go into the Polygons and select all the right sides of the windows in this view.
02:05I'll pick one, hold Ctrl, and pick the other four.
02:11One of the strengths of 3ds Max is being able to copy and paste modifiers.
02:15I will right-click on my UVW map and choose Copy.
02:19Then I will right-click on the Poly Select and choose Paste.
02:22Now I have that exact same mapping.
02:25It's also with the exact same height, which is important to get the brick to
02:28work around that corner.
02:29I will rotated it 90 degrees, pressing E for Rotate and right clicking and choosing Gizmo.
02:36I'll rotate this mapping 90 degrees, making sure that that green side is on the right.
02:44As we can see in this close-up, I have the brick flowing cleanly around.
02:48I can adjust it if needed.
02:49I will do the other side in the same way and then look at the Windows.
02:55I'll spin around the object and this time I'll copy and paste both Poly
02:59Select and UVW Map.
03:01Selecting both, right-clicking, choosing Copy, back up to pick UVW map, right
03:07clicking and choosing Paste.
03:11This second Poly Select in the Polygon menu will let me choose the other side of the windows.
03:18Picking one, holding Ctrl, and selecting the others.
03:21In the UVW Map, I can flip this around 180 degrees, right-clicking, choosing Gizmo
03:28and rotating around.
03:33Now the window is mapped.
03:34If needed I can repeat the process to form the headers and sills here, but I'll
03:38move on to the windows for this exercise.
03:45In my materials, I've assigned separate textures for the brick and for the windows.
03:49I will press M to show this in the Material Editor.
03:51I have set it up as a Multi/Sub- Object material for now, so I can see all
03:54the different parts.
03:55I will need to rework materials a little bit in Unity to get it optimized.
03:59In the window material, I've drawn a two pane window with some dirt on it.
04:06If needed I can tweak this for better tilability, but I will try it out.
04:10The important thing here is that I'm applying different mapping size, noting
04:14that I only need two panes here and even more, maybe less but I'll try two.
04:18That way I am drawing an entire window worth with fewer pixels per window.
04:22I am adding better detail into a smaller map.
04:24I will copy and paste the Poly Select and UVW Map again.
04:33Selecting both, right- clicking and choosing Copy.
04:37Picking the UVW Map, right- clicking and choosing Paste.
04:41Now in the last Poly Select I will pick the window polygons.
04:45We can either do them altogether or one at a time.
04:48I will try these and see if the spacing works.
04:52In the UVW Map I will set the Length and Width to 24x24.
04:55I will also rotate this mapping by right-clicking and choosing Gizmo
05:04and rotating it back.
05:05There are my windows. Almost nearly aligned, not quite on.
05:17I need to move it back and forth a little bit but I'm starting to get it to
05:19look like a warehouse.
05:20I will right-click and choose Move and then on the Y-axis pull these
05:29windows over slightly.
05:35As an alternate to this, we can use real-world mapping coordinates.
05:39Instead of specing an exact size of length and width, I can check real-world map size.
05:44Notice that my windows completely go gray.
05:47In the Material Editor instead of using a texture with an explicit map channel
05:52I can check Use Real-world Scale and set the Size instead of tiling to that exact size.
05:59Putting in 24x24 gives me that exact map.
06:03Once it resolves here in the view, we will see it.
06:06What this means is that anytime this image appears it will always be this exact size.
06:11We only have to worry about position instead of possibly accidentally
06:15scaling the map out.
06:19I'd repeat this process through this building, mapping the brick on all the
06:23sides, including the sides, adding in the rusted door frame and the door
06:27itself on all the different doors and parts, and finally finishing out the
06:31windows, giving me one simple mesh with multiple materials and multiple UVW Map modifiers.
06:38It's a powerful tool to be able to map parts of an object very selectively,
06:42to get the look exactly as it should be, with the texture placed exactly where you want it.
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Unwrapping objects a second time: Planning an unwrap for a light map
00:00Once we've got the base diffuse texture unwrapped for an object and we want to
00:04start to add on grunge or dirt or light overlays, we need to think carefully
00:09about how we unwrap the objects for that extra mapping.
00:13Part of this is looking at the size of the element and what kind of texture will
00:17be on it and really planning out in that UV space how we'll use it.
00:22For this warehouse, I've applied tiling textures to the walls, the sidewall
00:26elements, the windows, doors, and doorframes.
00:30This is ready for a grunge or dirt overlay.
00:33I'll use an Unwrap UVW modifier using Map Channel 2 and plan out these UVs very carefully.
00:40For something like a grunge or dirt overlay, it's going to span the entire size of the wall.
00:45For this one, I'll have most of my dirt down here at the bottom where rain and
00:50things splashing up are likely to make the wall dirty.
00:53Additionally, I need to plan in some wear around the garage door. Because people
00:57will be touching it, it'll get stained putting a dirt, and possibly some along
01:02the windows, especially on the lower floor where I can really see that texture.
01:06I need dirt on the sill and on the sidewall elements.
01:09I'll add an Unwrap UVW Modifier to this object.
01:14It shows on my map seams quickly.
01:19The first thing I want to do here is change to Map Channel 2 so I don't distort
01:23the existing UVs I have.
01:25I'll do this in the Unwrap UVW modifier.
01:29I'll scroll down to the Channel rollout and change the Map Channel from
01:32the default 1 to 2.
01:35In this case, Max is going to pop up a warning for us about changing channels.
01:39I'm going to abandon the changes and display the existing UVs.
01:45Now when I open up the UV Editor, I'll have my polygons ready for use.
01:49I'll open up the UV Editor and I can see my UVs overlaid.
01:57This is a little awkward at the moment.
01:59Even turning off the checkered background doesn't seem to help.
02:02I really can see that they are all overlaid, which is as they should be.
02:05That's how I did them originally, with a tiling texture.
02:08The first thing then especially in a building is to flatten the mapping out again.
02:13What this involves is right-clicking, choosing Face, and in this case, selecting
02:18all pressing Ctrl+A. Under Mapping, I'll choose Flatten Mapping.
02:23The default settings will work nicely for this.
02:26What this will do is break things apart if they meet at or above 45 degree.
02:32When I do this, I get a whole bunch of pieces.
02:35What I want to look at in laying out this UV is where do I allocate the most
02:39texture size and where can I stack elements even though it is a dirt or overlaid map?
02:46In my view, I'm going to overlay the garage doors, as they are all going to share
02:50pretty much the same kind of dirt and occlusion.
02:53They all have the same condition.
02:55The garage door elements are these slightly taller rectangles.
02:58These can all be stacked.
03:00To start, I'll grab them all and pull them over onto one door.
03:05I can repeat this process with the windows.
03:07The windows are these slightly squashed rectangles.
03:11All of these can be overlaid, because again, the windows are all the same size
03:15and they're all going to share the same condition, basically dirty on the bottom
03:19and up around the edges and not so much at the top.
03:22Therefore, occlusion will look the same on both as will dirt.
03:26I'll stack these and then show how it looks.
03:29What I've done is to stack out the door and window elements.
03:32What I can do in mMapping is also slide things out of the way.
03:36I really have this whole area around it as my playground for scratch space, we can call it.
03:41I'll select everything at the moment and then hold Alt and deselect the
03:45major wall elements, these are clearly visible, and we can see which one they are readily.
03:50I'll take the other pieces and slide them off to the side.
03:53Later after I scale the wall elements out, I'll take these pieces and arrange
03:57them by placement on the model, sides with slides, tops with tops, bottoms with bottoms.
04:02So when I do a bake, they all get the right occlusion.
04:07Now I'll pay attention to the wall elements.
04:09The trick with unwrapping is to make the big pieces as big as possible within
04:14this normal or 0 to 1 space.
04:17I'll select all four of these and press R for scale.
04:21I want to keep my scale uniform.
04:23One of the things I do in architecture, especially flat building elements, is to
04:28flatten the mapping.
04:29This makes sure that the pieces are all the same relative size to each other and
04:33that the UVs are as distortion free as possible.
04:37I'll scale this out and press W for move, fitting it into that space as well as I can.
04:44In the Arrange Elements rollout, I have some options for packing if I want to try it.
04:49Sometimes this works nicely.
04:51I'll try out Pack Custom.
04:53It's okay, but I'd rather have a little more scale.
04:55So it does boil down to a manual process of moving and scaling.
04:59I'll scale these out, move them, and fit them just inside that square.
05:06The important thing when you are laying out UVs is to get it either inside the
05:10square or far outside.
05:12Things on the border is where game engines get finicky sometimes.
05:16Now I'll take these elements and switching my Move tool to Vertical, slide
05:21them down onto each other, keeping space between, but maximizing that space as much as possible.
05:27One of the things I see beginners do and I've seen this quite a lot in teaching
05:32is not using the UV space well enough.
05:35This is one of the first things that employers look for: how well did you
05:38use the texture space.
05:40In this case it looks like I need to scale down just a bit, but this maybe
05:44tempered somewhat by a judgment call. Which am I most likely to see and where
05:49can I get away with a little bit less resolution?
05:51I'm going to take the longest wall here and scale it down.
05:55And the judgment call on that is that the shading along the bottom where I would
06:00get dirt or something splashing up or just general darkness and grit is
06:04constant. That unless I'm going to put something there, I need just basically a
06:10line of dirt across.
06:12So I can make this element relatively smaller next to everything else.
06:17I'll move it down into place.
06:19Later I can slide it over.
06:20And then I'll fit in more and more complex elements, holding Ctrl to select and
06:25pulling them down to fit. That's better.
06:29Now I'll take this wall and make sure it's scaled as large as possible.
06:33Don't be afraid to zoom in.
06:38Finally as part of my layout, I'll make sure that I'm sliding these elements over.
06:43I'll switch over to the Horizontal Move instead and pull this wall just about
06:48even with the others.
06:51This is ready for the inclusion of the other elements or other use of
06:55the texture space here.
06:56We might see a roof or other pieces occupying the rest of that.
07:00As a personal preference, I like to flip my elements around.
07:04This wall is facing upside down. I'm going to use the Rotate 90 degrees and flip
07:09it to orient with the others.
07:11That way when I'm painting, I can paint all the bottoms, all the tops, all the
07:14windows, and not have to worry about rotating around to catch the opposite side.
07:20It's a very big deal to lay out your UVs correctly.
07:23How you do it and how you maximize that texture space affects the performance of your game.
07:28If we're loading in a square texture, we have to load in all the pixels
07:33regardless of they're being used.
07:35So it's better off to use all the space in that texture as thoroughly as
07:40possible with as many pieces spread as big as possible to get the most out
07:44of that memory.
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Unwrapping a building façade using overlapping texture elements
00:00Part of unwrapping an object is actually stitching the object back together.
00:04We are taking an object that is a 3D object and we're flattening it so that a
00:092D texture can wrap around it correctly.
00:11That's the idea of unwrapping.
00:13What I will show here is how to take pieces and stitch them together in an
00:18economical way to best use up the texture space.
00:22I have the warehouse from the previous exercises and as we can see by the map
00:25seams evident, the large faces are mapped on their own and the small sides are
00:31all split apart, as are the window polygons and the doors.
00:35Because this will be used for a dirt map or occlusion map, I would like to have
00:39some continuity in my textures, where the same dirt can be painted on the bottom
00:43or the windowsill, the bottom of the window, and on the side.
00:47I will open up the UV Editor, and in here start to stitch together my elements.
00:54What I had done for convenience and so I could tell where they were, is to start
00:57to stack my window pieces.
00:59I'll pick one and pull it to the side and then zoom in on it.
01:04Whenever we select a face or an edge in the UV Editor, 3ds Max will show us
01:09the adjacent pieces.
01:11This particular window I have has these adjacent faces shown in blue.
01:16What I'll do as an example is take these pieces and pull them into place.
01:21What I can see as I select this bottom is that it's adjacent to that blue edge.
01:26I will pull it over into the right place.
01:29I'll pick the next piece and move it in.
01:31I will get them fairly close, selecting parts here.
01:36Putting them in one place and finding the last one,. There it is, stuck out there.
01:43Once I have the five components of the window and its sides, I can start to
01:47rotate and put these into the right place.
01:49I will select one of the side faces and look at the adjacent edge highlighted in blue.
01:54When I picked the window face, I'll make a mental note of which edge on the side
01:59is highlighted as well.
02:00This tells me which way to rotate it.
02:02It looks like I need to flip a few of these around.
02:04I will start with the side and I'll use the Rotate -90 around the Pivot button,
02:11In flipping this when I toggle back and forth, I can see that the blue edges are
02:16adjacent to each other correctly.
02:18I'll move this into the right place and continue flipping.
02:22Picking the window and it looks like the header needs to flip around as well.
02:26Once, twice and the 90 gives me 180 degrees.
02:29I will move it nice and close and look at the last one. It looks like this one
02:33needs to flip 90 degrees.
02:37Now all of my elements are flipped in the right place.
02:39What I would like to do here, is get them as close as possible and then
02:43start sewing edges.
02:49We do have some snap tools available in the Unwrap dialog. Sometimes I use these
02:53and sometimes I like to do it manually.
02:55In this case, I am going to go manual.
02:56I will pull these in as close as possible, then right-click and switch to Edge.
03:04Alternately we can work by face.
03:06It's important to note where that blue edge is.
03:09Working by face I am going to look in the Stitch rollout.
03:12We have some options here in how we are stitching: whether we are working to
03:17the Target, whether we are stitching to a center or Average, or stitching to the Source.
03:21I am going to stitch to the Target in this case.
03:25What that does is stitches the whole piece in.
03:28Sometimes we get a fairly odd result when I have adjacent edges like this.
03:32In this case, this is a place to switch to edge instead of face.
03:36I will right-click and choose Edge.
03:39Now when I select an edge its counterpart is highlighted in blue.
03:42I'll use the Stitch To Target button and stitch them together.
03:47I do have a little bit of weave here but I can fix that.
03:50Really the nice part is that I have an interior scene that if I paint a texture
03:54on the window, it will clearly and cleanly lap onto the sill.
03:59I'll finish this process on the window.
04:01Zooming in and picking an edge, making sure I am being consistent in which way I'm going.
04:06For me in this case, I want to stitch from the side, top and bottom, onto the window face.
04:12I will click on Stitch To Target and proceed around the window.
04:19Now my UV element is stitched together, and I am ready to do some aligning in the vertices.
04:25For these vertices, I'll select them all in a line and then use the Align
04:29Vertical button to get them together.
04:33I'll repeat this all the way around, Aligning these as well as possible.
04:38For the top and sides I will use the Align Horizontal button.
04:43Now my element is continuous.
04:45I'll have to deal with the texture span right here at the corner.
04:48We have to make some allowances in texture for things like that.
04:51But I have the most continuity in this element, from face to side, top, and
04:57bottom across the longest edge.
05:00This is an important principle in Unwrapping.
05:02This way when I paint a texture such as dirt or overlay Ambient Occlusion as a
05:07light map, I can have as much continuity in my pieces as possible.
05:11What I would do on the rest of this building is to finish stitching the windows
05:15and doors and their component sides and tops and bottoms.
05:19That way instead of a spread of elements all through here, I have a stack of
05:24elements, one for the doors and one for the windows.
05:27I can then take those and fill this UV space as big as possible.
05:32Although it may sound odd, my door and window elements will occupy as much
05:37space as the wall, and the reasoning behind that is because I stand to get close to them.
05:42In fact, as we saw in the Walkthrough Assistant video, I could stand right here
05:47in the doorway and peek around the corner, looking right at the dirt and
05:51occlusion I'm going to put over.
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9. Ambient Occlusion and the Render to Texture Dialog
Understanding ambient occlusion
00:00In a game we are telling a story. The difference between a game and film is the
00:05immersion in the narrative of the player.
00:07As with any story there is always a certain mood and look to it.
00:11One of the tools we have to get a certain look across in games is Ambient Occlusion.
00:16The idea in Ambient Occlusion, as you can see here on this model, is that adjacent
00:20objects cast darkness on each other or block bounced light.
00:24This scene doesn't have any lights.
00:26There is actually no lighting going on.
00:28It just looks like this building has well grunge or darkness up the sides and it
00:32really grounds the model.
00:34The idea in Ambient Occlusion is that light bounces and at some point that light
00:39has bounced enough it is ambient.
00:41Ambient Occlusion then is the blocking of general bounce light by adjacent objects.
00:46For comparison I am going to switch this out for a raw diffuse texture.
00:51This is a straight texture on the building.
00:53Notice how everything kind of floats and it's very clean.
00:56We can also use Ambient Occlusion as a terrific foundation for dirt.
01:00Ambient Occlusion and dirt, grunge, darkness, and general brooding mood tend to
01:06cluster in the same places.
01:07It's a fantastic tool for adding both a cinematic mood and realism.
01:12We can even model things in high- resolution and put Ambient Occlusion shaders on
01:16them, such as this one here, and when we render this image we'll see, well,
01:21realism clustering in the corners.
01:23We can then apply textures like this as part of a diffuse map or also as a light
01:28map in an engine, giving us what looks like extra lighting in detail, which
01:32really we're accomplishing with a simple texture.
01:35As part of this we'll use the Render to Texture dialog in 3ds Max, which allows
01:39us to use those UV sets we have so carefully set up and render different
01:43components into them, plus some careful Photoshop work.
01:46We can make Ambient Occlusion enhanced renders.
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Assessing the quality of occlusion as a cinematic mood
00:00Once we've decided to use Ambient Occlusion and we've unwrapped our objects
00:04thoroughly, it's time to actually bake the occlusion and part of that is really
00:08considering the cinematic mood that it provides.
00:12I have two examples here: Warehouse slight and Warehouse moody.
00:16It's the same diffuse texture, the brick and the rusty door, but they have
00:19different qualities to the Ambient Occlusion.
00:22Right now with Warehouse moody applied, I have dark doors, dark corners, and kind
00:27of a spreading grunge in the lower part of the wall.
00:30When I apply Warehouse slight, that occlusion is much lighter.
00:34The scene is brighter and the big deal is that this affects the mood of the
00:38player and the overall feel of the game.
00:40What we need to think of then is not only do we have occlusion but what color is
00:45it and how are we using it?
00:47In this case, I have two very different outcomes, all with the slight change in
00:50Ambient Occlusion parameters.
00:52Again, with Warehouse moody my scene is darker, the brick is muted, the windows
00:57are heavier, the door almost disappears in the darkness.
01:01If the scene is supposed to be dark, such as an alley at night, or the game is
01:05supposed to be dark, we're running around a dark city waiting for a hero to save us,
01:10we may want a darker scene.
01:12If you think in terms of film, we may be looking at film noir or similarly dark genres.
01:18If we are dealing in a lighthearted game or maybe brightly lit and out in a city
01:23where the sunlight really permeates everything, we may want a far lighter
01:27occlusion such as the slight.
01:29In both of these, we can achieve this very easily through the Render to Texture dialog.
01:34The big deal is actually the artistic planning in advance. Where do we want the
01:38occlusion to sit and how deep should it be, because that really affects the
01:42overall mood of the texture.
01:43This scene doesn't have any lights in it.
01:45I'm just switching from texture to texture and that really affects how it
01:50feels as we run around.
01:52Typically, what I'll do is bake the occlusion, temporarily stick it in a texture,
01:57like I've got where right now those textures are basically merged down or all
02:03the layers are combined.
02:05If I view the image, we can actually see the diffuse texture and the
02:10occlusion laid right over.
02:11As an example, this is the garage door and we can see that shadow baked right in.
02:17On the Slight texture I've done the same thing, placing the occlusion into the
02:21diffuse texture. Viewing that image produces a different result.
02:25If we zoom in we can see that the door is much clearer, the rust is much more
02:29colorful, and we can read the brick much better.
02:32As with everything we are doing, this is an artistic choice.
02:36The big deal is to plan it out, and think of really what is the mood in here.
02:40What are we shooting for or what we'd like the game to look like and how do we
02:44want the player to feel when they enter our world.
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Overview of the Ambient Occlusion shader
00:00When we are rendering ambient occlusion, we want to keep several things in mind
00:04so we get a successful bake of our occlusion.
00:06The first part of successful ambient occlusion actually starts with modeling.
00:10Objects need to be in the real size of the real world object. That is, this
00:14door is 10 feet tall.
00:16I model that as 10 feet tall in 3ds Max.
00:19To tune occlusion, I'll take my warehouse and for this example I have generated
00:24some ambient occlusion shaders here in the Material Editor.
00:27For games, we would actually use the Render to Texture dialog, but this allowed
00:30me to render and show this material a little more clearly.
00:33To start, I have an AO moody material I'll assign to this warehouse.
00:39Ambient Occlusion can be placed in a mental ray shell, which is what I've done
00:43here for ease-of-use.
00:44In the Ambient Occlusion shader, there are several main factors we need to adjust.
00:49The first of these is the Max distance.
00:51Max distance in a scene is the distance at which objects cast and then stop
00:56casting occlusion on each other.
00:57I will render this example.
01:00In this rendering, that Max distance of 90 produces deep spreading shadows in
01:05the corners and on the base of the building.
01:08Changing that distance to a Max distance of 24 produces far softer occlusion
01:13over a smaller area.
01:15For comparison, I'll change my Area to Render to a Region and make the region go
01:19over part of the garage door, wall, and window.
01:21When I hit Render again, we will see a dramatic difference.
01:26With the Occlusion Max distance at 24, we get slimmer lines of darkness in the
01:31corners and surfaces that were cloudier, such as the slide of the window here,
01:35are far clearer and brighter.
01:37I will move the region over, just to be able to show this a little closer to the camera.
01:41Once we have decided on a Max distance, which is really affecting how does the
01:45gloom spread on the building, we want to look at Spread.
01:48For this comparison, I'll put my Max distance back up to 60.
01:52For the Spread, the higher that goes, the more the darkness spreads into that
01:57zone of occlusion determined by the Max distance.
01:59When I take the Spread down to say 0.3 and hit Render again, we will see the
02:04darkness really cluster in the corners.
02:07We get deeper, harder lines and not as much darkness spreading on the surface.
02:11If we look closely where the side wall, the ceiling and the window intersect,
02:15you can see this phenomenon.
02:17The darkness is in the corners and curves nicely up to meet versus
02:22spreading across the wall.
02:23In addition to Spread and Max distance, we want to consider the Bright and Dark values.
02:28They don't have to be the black -and-white they start out as.
02:30This is an artistic choice.
02:32I will jump to Photoshop to illustrate this.
02:34In Photoshop, it's very common to take an occlusion map, such as I have several
02:39of here, and layer it over a diffuse map to get the proper darkness.
02:43This is a raw diffuse map where the color showing is really the raw diffuse
02:48channel of that material.
02:50When I lay occlusion over it, I will set the occlusion as a Multiply blending mode.
02:55We can do this either here in the texture or in the game engine occasionally.
02:59Depending on the blending mode we choose and the Opacity, we get different
03:02looks in the occlusion.
03:04Changing that blending mode across to Color Burn produces gloom and
03:08spreading blackness.
03:09We may or may not want this so we need to play with it.
03:12Part of that is determined by what color that dark value is.
03:16In these renderings, my dark value started out as black.
03:20Here's the raw occlusion.
03:22So multiplying the color I have by this gray and black produces that depth in the scene.
03:27I will go back to 3ds Max and make a change to this.
03:31In 3ds Max if I take the dark color from black and boost it up to a sepia tone,
03:37adjusting the Hue and Saturation to give me more of a warm brown.
03:42In this case, this will produce that brown in the corner as the maximum dark value.
03:46I will hit Render to show this.
03:52When this multiplies over a texture, we will get a far different look and a
03:56less heavy rendering than that black.
03:58These are the three main things to keep track of in the occlusion when
04:01tuning the cinematic look.
04:02What does the max distance or how much does the occlusion spread across the objects?
04:07Where does the occlusion go?
04:08Clustered in the corners or spreading into that zone?
04:11And finally, what is the darkest color, because this will lay over another color?
04:15The samples in the ambient occlusion shader determine the quality.
04:19A low sample rate such as 16 produces dots in the occlusion.
04:26We can start to see some dots right below this sill.
04:29We may not want that in our texture.
04:30Increasing the samples produces a better quality occlusion at a higher cost
04:34and rendering time.
04:36Upping the samples to 128 produces very smooth occlusion with an
04:40increase correspondingly.
04:42With samples of 128, the occlusion is nice and smooth.
04:45Ambient occlusion is a terrific tool for us to add more detail.
04:48What we need to do is to craft it.
04:51It's never just set in stone.
04:52We can always change things and what we want to think of as part of our
04:56conception or our thinking about the cinematic mood of our imagery when we are
05:00playing the game is how do we want to tune the occlusion? Were does it go, what
05:05color is it, and how do our corners look?
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Baking maps using the Render To Texture dialog
00:00In 3ds Max the Render to Texture dialog is a powerful tool for rendering
00:05textures out into the UV space of an object. Rather than rendering out an
00:09animation or imagery to be viewed, this instead will produce a rendering late
00:14into those carefully crafted UVs we have.
00:17On this object, if we look in the UV Editor for the warehouse, we can see I have
00:21laid out the walls, doors, and windows to use up this space as much as possible.
00:26The first Unwrap modifier is actually there just to show the tiling maps, which
00:30we can see clearly here in the viewport: the brick, the doors, the windows
00:33etcetera, done with UVW maps and Poly Selects previously.
00:38I'll press 0 to access the Render to Texture dialog.
00:41With an object selected it shows up here in the name field. Multiple
00:44objects will list down.
00:46In that, there are a couple of key things I want to keep track of.
00:49The first in here is what channel am I using.
00:52I'm using Map Channel 2, which we can see here on the Modifier panel and the
00:56Channels rollout for the Unwrap.
00:58That's the Unwrap where I have laid out the whole building.
01:01The second part is, well, what we would like to render.
01:04Right now I have this setup for an Ambient Occlusion Render at 2048 on a side.
01:08If we click on the Add button, we can see that we have lots of options here in
01:13terms of what we can do.
01:14It's very possible to render out everything in a complete map or to just
01:18separate components to put them together later.
01:20It's very common to render out multiple layers and use them in conjunction with
01:24painting to add to a texture.
01:26Using occlusion as a foundation for dirt is a great example of this.
01:30With the occlusion set to render I want to put in the right size.
01:34Right now I've got this specified at 2048 on a side.
01:37This will give me a very high- quality render with lots of depth or data
01:41available around each window so that I see a smooth shade in the Ambient Occlusion.
01:46Finally, third element I have Unique Settings.
01:49These settings Max Distance, Spread, and Falloff along with Samples
01:53concern Ambient Occlusion.
01:54I want to tune these to think of the cinematic mood we discussed previously.
01:59I also have options as to where to put this file.
02:02Am I outputting it into a source, meaning am I putting it into the base
02:05material, or simply rendering out a file for later use, which is the option I have checked?
02:10Right now, if I press M for the Material Editor, you can see that on this object
02:14I have a Multi/Sub Object material.
02:16The Multi/Sub has four sub-materials, each one handling a different part of the
02:19building: brick walls, dirty windows, rusty doors, and so forth.
02:23What I will do is render out both the diffuse texture and an Ambient Occlusion
02:27texture, and I will pull those up in Photoshop to show some possible ways to put them together.
02:32This is how the occlusion looks once it's baked with the Render to Texture dialog.
02:37We can see that the Ambient Occlusion, with its darkness and mood, has baked
02:41into the UVs I've laid out.
02:43The gloom spreads cleanly up to the side of the building.
02:46This is an example of a diffuse texture.
02:49With the scene lighting, of which there wasn't any, plus the diffuse texture
02:53showing the brick, the rust, and the windows baked into those UVs,
02:57this also provides a great opportunity to use a procedural texture such as a
03:01generated noise and bake it into a set of UVs for later use.
03:06When we combine these, we can produce one texture that has multiple attributes
03:11apparently, along with the cinematic mood we want in our game.
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Using occlusion as a foundation for dirt
00:00One of the biggest uses for Ambient Occlusion in a game aside from gloom and
00:04spreading darkness is as a foundation for dirt.
00:07In this video, I'll show how to take a simple wall module and bake out a lower
00:12size occlusion, or rather an occlusion that doesn't spread as much.
00:16This will be a foundation for dirt in places like window openings.
00:20As we can see in this example, the window openings tend to be dark and grungy
00:24with occasional grunge below on the sill and on the wall around.
00:28I'll paint a diffuse texture and then lay the occlusion over it.
00:31Here in 3ds Max I have a basic wall section.
00:34It's got a large window opening that's recess by 8 inches and at least the start
00:39of a diffuse map unwrapped and placed on.
00:41The windows will later go in this large gray polygon. Now I'm ready to bake the occlusion.
00:46Just to make sure the occlusion goes smoothly, sometimes I'll put just a straight
00:50standard gray material on.
00:52Now I'm ready to bake.
00:53I'll press 0 and pull up the Render To Texture dialog.
00:57With my objects selected, it shows up here in the first field.
01:00I'll scroll down, making sure to Use the Existing Channel 1 for unwrapping, and in
01:05the Output I'll Add an Occlusion element.
01:08So I can find it later I'll name this element wall section001dirt.
01:14This will be a temporary working file, so I want to make sure I can find it,
01:18grab it, use it, and later delete it.
01:20I'll make this occlusion 1024 square to match the size of my texture.
01:24When you're baking occlusion for dirt the big deal aside from getting the
01:27Samples nice and high, say 128, is to make sure that the Max Distance is lower
01:32than you'd use for an overall cinematic mood.
01:35I'm going to try an occlusion distance of 16.
01:37I'll also pull the Spread back a little bit reducing it down to 0.7 so the
01:42darkness clusters more in the corners.
01:44If you'd like you can tune the Dark color to be more reflective of your dirt, or
01:48you can leave it black and adjust it later in Photoshop.
01:51Finally, in the Baked Material rollout I'll make sure I check Render to Files Only.
01:55I don't need this to go into a shell material; I'm going to use it in my diffuse
01:58texture after I put in Photoshop.
02:01I'll hit Render and pull up that file.
02:04With my occlusion baked I'll show the image, so we can see what it's doing clearly.
02:08The occlusion with that Max Distance being low leaves my sill and my header as
02:13well as the side of the windows dark in the corners but light at the edge where
02:17it's on the face of the wall.
02:19Additionally on the window I've got a good spreading dirt in here.
02:22This maybe less spread than I might want in a more moody or darker rendering.
02:28A higher occlusion setting would gray all the way across the windows. I really
02:31want the corner darkest most of all.
02:33I'll pull into Photoshop and layer it over my diffuse texture.
02:38In Photoshop, I've opened up that dirt image. I'll select all by pressing
02:42Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C for Copy.
02:44Then I've got my PSD which has my diffuse texture and I'll paste that image in.
02:49I'm going to drop mine in the Color group by dragging it onto it. Then I'll open up the group.
02:54I'll make sure that the occlusion or the dirt image is up above the
02:57brick diffuse texture.
02:58Finally, I'll switch the blending mode of the occlusion to Multiply.
03:03I get dirt across my texture, in the windows, on the sill, and generally grunging the wall.
03:09As a possibility you can erase pieces of this to make it less uniform.
03:13Sometimes I'll use my eraser and set the eraser to a large sponge brush.
03:18I'll click on the Eraser button and then right-click to choose a brush.
03:22I'll pick one of the sponges and use the square bracket keys to upsize
03:26and downsize the brush.
03:28With my Brush Opacity fairly low, 28, I can start to take out pieces, dotting
03:33out pieces, making sure I don't leave too many streaks and making it spotted and, well, messy.
03:39That's okay. We can even erase parts of it completely.
03:43In this case, I'm taking out some of the top, but leaving occlusion and
03:46grunge and general wear and tear down in the lower corners, especially here on
03:51the bottom by the sill.
03:52I might remove some of the top parts entirely.
03:55This may have a chance of staying the cleanest.
03:57I'll also do this on the sill and the header, just taking out little bits.
04:02I don't mind if these are fairly dirty.
04:04I remember that I've put the bottom vertices of the side elements on the left
04:09and on the left side of my header and sill, the vertices correspond to the
04:13left side of the image.
04:14I'll take out some of the dirt there as well.
04:16You can have some fun with this and brush as you need it. Maybe trying it a
04:19couple of times and experiment.
04:21Finally, I'll save this image out and load it back in 3ds Max.
04:26Here in 3ds Max, I've put my new diffuse image with the dirt into a blend
04:31material. It's called wall sectionC.
04:33This image once I've saved it out has my occlusion and the dirt and the brick together.
04:39I haven't added a dirt layer to the brick, it's still fairly clean, but I want to do that later.
04:45I'll put this material on my model and we can see in this in no light, or rather
04:49just the default lights in the scene, without occlusion on in the Realistic
04:54shading, checking under Lighting and Shadows, that my scene is grounded.
04:58I've got dirt and splash stuff around the windows.
05:02It's ready for more painting, diffuse texture on the window, dirt on the brick
05:05wall, and my wall looks, well, grungy and old.
05:09Ambient occlusion is a great foundation for things like dirt and rust.
05:12A lot of times I'll model a high-res piece, bake an occlusion on it, and
05:16throw it on a low-res.
05:18That will help me get detail on the windows, which I'll show in the next video.
05:22It's also a great way to gently ground things and add in a realism that would
05:26be difficult to paint.
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Using occlusion from detailed models for texture
00:00In addition to baking ambient occlusion on our basic polygons, we can also model
00:05higher res objects, bake occlusion from them, and then use that as part of the
00:09texture on the lower res or low polygon pieces.
00:13This'll help add additional detail and proper shading.
00:16In this example, I've modeled these windows to fit in this opening, making sure
00:20that I've deleted the back faces.
00:22I've also mapped them straight on.
00:24If we open their UV Editor, we can see that they're basically straight on in the
00:29windows. That is I've used a planar projection.
00:32I've made sure that these are scaled as close as possible to the original, that
00:36they are at the correct proportion.
00:37What we will do in here is add in the natural dirt we see in all the corners and
00:42crevices in the windows.
00:43Here is some reference in Photoshop as an example.
00:46In this reference of the building we modeled in previous chapters, we can see
00:50that there is lots of detail in the windows and that in the corner of the
00:53window, we tend to get, well, a lot of dirt.
00:56It also shows up as darkness underneath the top window.
00:59This is from years of sitting out here in the city and also being touched by
01:02people opening and closing it.
01:04We want this realism in our model for a game, but we don't want to model every window.
01:08That would blow our polygon count.
01:10Back here in 3ds Max, I am set up to bake an occlusion.
01:14I will bake these high-res windows and then use that in the low res.
01:18I will press 0 for Render to Texture.
01:20For an object like this, making sure it's selected in the Name field, I'll
01:23add in an Ambient Occlusion element, clicking on Add and then choosing Ambient Occlusion.
01:29In the Ambient Occlusion, I'll make this size 1024.
01:32I would rather render bigger and then scale down.
01:35I will put the Samples up at 128 so my gradients are nice and smooth.
01:39Finally, I'll reduce the Max distance.
01:41Remember, 0 is a special case, meaning everybody participates no matter how far apart.
01:46I'll make my Max distance 5.
01:49That way the darkness really clusters in the corners nicely and doesn't spread
01:52across the whole window.
01:54I can adjust the Spread and Dark color if needed.
01:56For this example, I will leave them alone.
01:58I will make sure that Render to Files Only is checked and I also make sure I
02:02name this file so I can find it when I go hunting in Photoshop.
02:06I am ready to hit Render.
02:15This will take a minute, return the diffuse color and bake an occlusion.
02:22My occlusion is rendered.
02:23I don't care really about the diffuse render.
02:25What I want is the occlusion image.
02:27I'll click on the three dots for browse to file and view this.
02:31I will select the file and check View here in the Finder.
02:36There is the occlusion for the windows.
02:38It's got good darkness around the corners and the outside and also really
02:42highlights the detail, giving depth to the window.
02:45I can do some cleanup in Photoshop and also I will make it less consistent.
02:49I'll open up that image in Photoshop and bring it onto my diffuse map.
02:54Here in Photoshop I've opened up my window ambient occlusion bake.
02:58I will Select All by pressing Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C for Copy.
03:01Then I can close this image.
03:03Here is the PSD with my color and bump ready for windows.
03:07I'll paste it into the color group.
03:09Then I will scale it down, but first I'll change the blending mode to Multiply.
03:13That way I can see how I'm scaling.
03:15You have got some options for scaling.
03:17You can use the Scale tool or the Transform.
03:19I will press Ctrl+T for Transform.
03:21I will scale this down from the corner, holding Shift to maintain proportion.
03:25This will let me move and scale this image to fit into those windows.
03:28I will get this fitted as well as possible.
03:31Occasionally, due to the irregularities or the eyeballing of unwrapping, we need
03:37to stretch it a little bit.
03:38I will stretch mine horizontally, just so it fits over that window polygon.
03:42That looks pretty good.
03:44I'll hit Enter to accept the transformation.
03:46I'll zoom in and check.
03:47Now I haven't added a diffuse color to the windows, but this'll really add some
03:51punch to them anyway.
03:52I can nudge this back-and-forth if needed and also I may stretch it out again.
03:56Now I have got two parts to the occlusion.
03:58I have the original dirt from the bake of the low res, plus the high res model
04:03forming an occlusion texture, giving me what looks like extra depth.
04:06When I combine this with a diffused map and a bump, these windows will really pop.
04:10I'll save this map out and put it back on in 3ds Max to see how it looks.
04:20I'll just update the map in the diffuse channel of the material on this wall.
04:23I will press M for the Material Editor and there is my material, wall and windows.
04:28Here's a large sample.
04:29I will click on the diffuse map I have in already and just swap it for the new one.
04:33Alternately, I could've just saved over this and 3ds Max would load it up automatically.
04:37I'll pick wall section windows and hit Open.
04:41As we can see, I have got what looks like great depth in the windows.
04:44I did make one minor goof.
04:46My polygon was upside down.
04:48This is an easy fix in Photoshop.
04:50I'll do this, fix it, and reload.
04:52We want to make sure that the darkness is in the right direction.
04:55Here in Photoshop, I can mirror this over, because it's on its own layer.
04:59Remember when you're working in textures, always use another layer.
05:03It's a better practice to do that than to have a fix that is difficult because
05:07you're trying to paint out little parts.
05:10I'll choose Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical.
05:14Now my occlusion is laid over correctly.
05:16I can save this out again and if needed, I can erode this occlusion so it's not
05:21quite as consistent.
05:22I may also want to erode it especially along the glass so the glass doesn't read as dark.
05:27I will save this and see how it looks.
05:34Back here in 3ds Max, I've reloaded the occlusion simply by refreshing the
05:38screen once I have saved over the file.
05:40My windows look like they have a lot of extra depth. Maybe not as much as the
05:44true geometry, but definitely good for game.
05:47After all, it's the illusion of being where we are and we need the details and
05:51the dirt in the details to make that really pop.
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Baking lighting
00:00In a game, dynamic lighting is difficult.
00:03Dynamic lighting is the act of having real geometry cast real shadows,
00:07occasionally in motion and on static objects.
00:10We try to reserve this for things that are important, like the player or moving cars.
00:15In our city there is going to be lots of stuff that needs to look like it's shadowing.
00:19That can be fairly static, hence we can bake our shadows.
00:22Additionally, we may want to model high detailed stuff, like these windows you
00:26can see on screen, and bake complex shadows from them to put into our texture.
00:31On the left side with the brick wall I have an ambient occlusion bake, plus a
00:35diffused map adding what looks like great depth in that window.
00:38When I had the shadow detail in, those will really pop.
00:42By doing this then I can put one large light in my game that has dynamic shadows
00:47only on select objects and impersonates my sun. Everything else will look like
00:52it's lit by it, as long as the angle matches.
00:54To start, I'll take my high detail windows, which I have already unwrapped, and
00:58press 0 to go to the Render to Texture dialog.
01:01Windows are selected up here in the top field.
01:04I'll scroll down to the output and add elements.
01:07I'll add in a ShadowsMap.
01:09We can also add other maps in, depending on what we need.
01:12As an example, we could bake about a NormalsMap, differentiating the height in the windows.
01:17This could be handy.
01:18We can output a LightingMap, where are things bright and dark.
01:22We can output SpecularMaps, where are things shiny or dull.
01:26And finally, we can output a CompleteMap.
01:29A CompleteMap has everything altogether.
01:32Essentially the whole look of the game is baked into one texture.
01:36I'll light in the ShadowsMap for now.
01:38In this element, I'll run it at 1024. Later I'll size it down to match over my
01:43windows, in my diffuse texture in Photoshop.
01:46I'll make sure in my source that Rendered to Files Only is checked.
01:51When I hit Render, this will take a sec, render out a diffuse map, as well as the shadows.
01:57My shadows are baked. I can see on screen in the diffuse map what look like good shadows.
02:02However, this isn't the true map.
02:04This is a true shadow.
02:06In a shadow map, things that are not shadowed are white.
02:10That way when I lay this over an image in Photoshop, switching the blending mode
02:13to Multiply, white is invisible, essentially multiplying by 1.
02:18I'll bring that image into Photoshop and lay it over my existing diffused map.
02:22Here in Photoshop, I've opened up my shadows map, as well as my diffuse texture.
02:27I'll select the shadow map.
02:28In this case I'll use the Magic Wand to select the black around my actual
02:32object, then invert the selection by pressing Ctrl+Shift+I. Finally, I'll copy
02:37and paste over to my PSD.
02:40I'll press Ctrl+C and now I can close this image.
02:43In this diffuse texture then, I'll paste that into a new layer.
02:46I need to downsize this to match my windows.
02:49I'll press Ctrl+T to access the Transform tool.
02:53Hold Shift and scale from one corner.
02:56This will be a combination of moving and scaling, to see if this really works.
03:00However, I do have my occlusion render already in to size to. I'll scale it in
03:04as well as possible, and then see if I need to widen it just a little bit to
03:09match. Looks like it snaps right on.
03:11I'll make sure that this snaps on all the sides.
03:14Finally, I'll hit Enter to accept the transformation.
03:17The shadows look pretty good.
03:19I'll change this layer's blending mode to Multiply.
03:22My shadows lay over my windows.
03:24I may want to think about the order of the shadows in the occlusion in here.
03:28In this case I have my occlusion over my shadows, giving me really nice darkness
03:32up here at the top of the window and the window looks like it's lit.
03:35I'll zoom in and check and make sure that my shadows are lined up correctly.
03:39Looks like I'm in pretty good.
03:41I may use the Nudge tool just a couple of pixels to get that right on.
03:45That looks pretty good there.
03:47The neat part with crafting that high- detailed geometry is that it shadows
03:51onto the windows and the windows self shadow, and they really look like they have some depth.
03:55When I combine this with a normal map, I'll get tremendous depth in the windows
04:00on a single polygon all done with texture.
04:02I'll save this out, bring it back into 3ds Max, and show how it looks.
04:06Back here in 3ds Max, I've saved this ShadowMap out as a separate image.
04:11I'll press M for my Material Editor and in the Diffuse Color of the material
04:15applied to that wall, I'll choose the new one.
04:18Once that updates, I can see my shadows.
04:21We can see that my free direct light is casting shadows on my object.
04:25Additionally, the windows have shadows.
04:27It looks like I forgot to turn these over.
04:29That's a quick fix in Photoshop.
04:31I'll go back and do this and then import it again.
04:35The important thing to remember here as well, as you can see, is that it doesn't
04:38work the first time, and that's really okay.
04:41It's perfectly fine to try something, say it didn't work, come back, and try it again.
04:46Even 3, 4, 5 times, until you get it right.
04:49I need to flip my shadows around, both horizontally and vertically, to get
04:53them in the right place.
04:54As my window polygon is upside down. I'll choose Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal.
05:00Then I'll choose Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical, and now they are in the right direction.
05:06Alternately we can make sure that everything in this UVW map is facing the right way.
05:11I'll save this image out, bring back into 3ds Max, and see how it looks.
05:15Here in 3ds Max, we can see that fix in action.
05:18My shadows are in the right direction and using the realistic shading, really
05:22simulates how it will look in game.
05:24I have some minor inconsistency, where the real shadow from the polygon
05:28laps over the windows.
05:29But in general, the windows look like they have a tremendous amount of detail
05:32and depth, all done with texture.
05:35It's important to consider the Render to Texture dialog and baking parts of the
05:39texture in your arsenal of tools for texturing in games.
05:43We shouldn't just have to hand-paint everything.
05:45There is a lot we can do with rendering elements and using them, including
05:49adding dirt, shadow, and high detail pieces into our renders, getting the best
05:54of both worlds, high detail, high resolution renderings, and texture painting,
05:59to add realism in our game.
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10. Preparing to Export
Preparing for Unity as a world builder
00:00When we are finally ready to bring our objects across into Unity we need to
00:04consider exactly what we will be taking with us.
00:07It's uncommon to take an entire world out of 3ds Max and into Unity.
00:13Much more commonly, we will take pieces out, separate scenes, single objects,
00:17single textures, and bring them in and place them in Unity.
00:21This will also allow us to take things that maybe replicated many, many times
00:26and package them in Unity.
00:28A prefab then will allow us to take one object and clone it and reference it,
00:33thereby saving memory and overhead.
00:36Additionally, with textures we want to think about the size we drew them, the
00:40size we mapped them, and how large the resolution will be in game.
00:45We have greater control over this in the game engine than we do here in 3ds Max.
00:50This is an example of a prototype or a design model.
00:54I laid out the streets here using my various intersections and short and long
00:59and wide narrow streets to make the chunk of a city I needed, complete with
01:03super blocks seen on the right and bottom here. Where a block comes to a T it's
01:07be blocked by a building.
01:08I wouldn't bring this across into Unity, and the reason is I can put this at
01:13exact coordinates and space.
01:15I also have repetitive elements such as the small and large intersections, which
01:20as long as I know a coordinate in space,e I'd be better off cloning it there.
01:26It's perfectly okay to make a model here in 3ds Max.
01:30Select elements singly and choose under File > Save As and save the selected
01:36object out as a separate scene.
01:38That way we can bring one scene with one object in Unity and have a cleaner project.
01:44The same thing applies in Photoshop for textures.
01:46This is an example.
01:48This street is drawn at 1024 square.
01:50I like to draw things big so I can put in the detail I need with the knowledge
01:55that going into game I may reduce this.
01:58I can specify in Unity that this texture may max out at 512x512.
02:03This won't affect things like the lines too badly as Unity does a great job on compression.
02:08We can also bring in layered PSDs if we really need.
02:11So we have some flexibility.
02:13The important thing is to stay organized and plan out exactly what will be and
02:18won't be exported, and to make the difference in your mind between a prototype
02:22or design model and the final piece to bring into the game.
Collapse this transcript
Importing into Unity and recognizing limitations
00:00As part of our process of importing into our game engine we need to consider
00:04what will and won't come across.
00:06Materials as an example are barely there when they come in, allowing some
00:11customization in the game engine for better gameplay and a better look with a
00:15graphics engine supported.
00:16In 3ds Max if you have noticed I haven't done much with materials.
00:20As an example pressing M for the Material Editor shows us basic Standard
00:25materials with Blinn Shaders.
00:27I haven't adjusted the Specular Level or Glossiness.
00:30Really, all I have done for these roads is put the diffuse texture in.
00:34The reason for this is that Unity is going to bring this in as a basic diffuse material.
00:39It has its own definitions for materials and shaders and where the maps go.
00:43I am using 3ds Max and the materials here really to place the maps, figuring I
00:48am going to tune the look, the shine, and other things in the game.
00:53I'll bring this file into Unity and show how it comes across.
00:56I will right-click in the Project window and import a new asset.
01:01I'll select the whole scene in this case, which has all of my roads.
01:04I would assume that I break out other pieces in separate scenes for easier import.
01:09This way I can select unique objects easily.
01:14When my scene comes in, I have an overall prefab or package here with all of the objects in it.
01:20All of the objects have actually two nodes: how they're brought in and they mesh itself.
01:28Additionally, my materials came in from 3ds Max.
01:32Here is my square intersection, but it doesn't show anything on it yet.
01:35It simply regarded this as a Diffuse Shader with one map for the Main Color and
01:41no other properties.
01:43When I pick my mesh and drag it into the Project window I can see it doesn't
01:47have its textures associated either.
01:49What I will do is bring in the texture separately.
01:52It's better to do that and let Unity optimize them.
01:55I will right-click and choose Import New Asset.
01:59I will go find those textures, browsing to the sceneassets images folder.
02:07I'll bring in my textures, noting that I can bring in a PSD if needed.
02:12Here is my rectangular intersection.
02:14I will right-click and choose Import New Asset and bring in the square one and
02:25finally I'll bring in the street.
02:30Note in here in the Project window that naming is very important.
02:33Right now things are stacking up alphabetically and if my names are all over the
02:37place I may not be able to find my assets.
02:40Always plan for several thousand assets in a game, between textures, meshes, and
02:46other objects, plus scripts and Unity elements.
02:49Now I will select my square intersection material.
02:52And in the Texture selection I will click on Select and scroll down and
02:57pick that intersection.
02:58I will pick the intersection color.
03:04Notice here that Unity regards the size and compresses it and note what it's doing.
03:10Taking a texture which as a TIFF is 3 MB and reducing it down to .7.
03:15This is pretty good and we can go further with it.
03:19Now with this material as part of this object I can scroll back and find any of
03:23those intersections and we'll see where that texture apply.
03:29It looks like things came across nicely, although I am missing some other pieces.
03:34I'll repeat the process, choosing the rectangular intersections and their
03:37textures as well as the streets.
03:39Eventually, I'll have my whole street grid showing.
03:43The lesson to learn here is to be organized when you're ready to export.
03:47We are going to deal in thousands of assets, possibly hundreds of textures, and
03:52having each one named in a way that we can find it easily and know what we are
03:56getting when it comes in is a big deal.
03:59We have to recognize that some things don't always transfer.
04:02Meshes and UVs come across; materials maybe not so much.
04:06With a full expectation we are going to customize them in Unity so it
04:10looks right in the game.
Collapse this transcript
Importing elements with detailed materials
00:01One of the neat things about working in unity is we can take 3ds Max
00:05scenes straight in.
00:07However, that's a double-edged sword,
00:09as occasionally we forget to clean up a scene and we get things we don't
00:13want coming into game.
00:14In this example, I have a high res window that I used to bake out ambient
00:18occlusion and shadows.
00:20I have a low res piece of a scene, a wall with those windows in it that's
00:24textured and ready to go.
00:26I've also got a light and I was using this to test out the shine in normal maps.
00:31I've been playing with this material a little bit too.
00:34Pressing M for the Material Editor shows that I have a Bump of Normal and in
00:39that Normal, I've opted strength to 12.
00:41When we are going into game, we want to make sure that our materials work as
00:47they're supposed to at a strength of 1.
00:49That's very important as there is not really a way to adjust the strength.
00:53It's either there or not.
00:54Additionally, we need to do some cleanup.
00:57Just because we can bring an entire scene in doesn't mean we should.
01:00What I will start out with is making sure I have the scene saved as a
01:04working version with all its components, in case I need to go back and revise
01:08the bake or the shadows.
01:10Then I will save a copy or do a Save As, saving a selected object for export.
01:15I'm going to start by deleting things I don't need then I will save a copy of the scene.
01:20The high res model will get deleted.
01:23I'll take the light out as well.
01:24I have lighting in Unity I can use.
01:27I'll check my layers, looking on the Layer menu and noting I have an extra layer in here.
01:33This layer has nothing on it, but I can't delete it because it's the active layer.
01:37I will make the default layer the active one, and now I can pick this layer
01:41called high detail and delete it.
01:43I will right-click and choose Unhide All, making sure that there're no extra objects.
01:49I will make sure I don't have any cameras in the scene. That really all I've got
01:53is what we can see right here.
01:55One simple wall with its texture.
01:58In the Material Editor, only materials applied to objects come across.
02:03I need to note which pieces to bring in.
02:05The material will come in and I will have to go get these maps and apply them.
02:11Now I'm ready to save this scene and bring it in.
02:14I may want to move the pivot as well.
02:15I'll go to the Pivots and IK tab and Affect Pivot Only.
02:21I may want to use the Align tool or the Snap Settings and align the pivot down
02:25to one of the corners for easy use.
02:27I'll change my snap, pressing Shift and right-click and choosing Pivot points.
02:33Now with the 3D Snap on, I can select the pivot and move the pivot down to snap
02:38on a corner of the object.
02:40Now when I rotate this, it will spin cleanly and if I need to align the pivot
02:44on a precise coordinate to match up with something else, I can. I will turn
02:49off Affect Pivot Only.
02:51I'm ready to export this object out.
02:55I'll choose File > Save As and save the selected just to make sure.
03:00When I save the selected object, I will call this brick wall.
03:07Now in unity, I can bring this in.
03:10Here in Unity, under Project, I can right-click and import a new asset.
03:15I'll pick that 3ds Max scene.
03:20Selecting my brick wall Max file allows me to bring that in with its materials.
03:28When this comes in, I have one scene with one mesh and one material for it.
03:33This is as clean as I can get it.
03:35I will drag that brick wall into the scene.
03:38Press F to focus or zoom in and make sure I can see my object.
03:43Notice I've also optimized it, that I've made sure that the normals are facing in
03:47the right direction.
03:49Right now we're seeing the wall from the back, where it's invisible.
03:52It's important to check this.
03:54Unity renders single-sided pieces as I've got.
03:57I want the brick wall to face out.
04:01Here is my material.
04:02I may want to rename this or be careful with it as I bring it in.
04:06Alternately, I can skip the materials and make Unity materials with correct names.
04:11I'm going to change this shader over to a Bumped Diffuse. That allows me to bring
04:16in my normal map as well as my Base Color.
04:19I'll import those in and then show the selection of them.
04:22I will right-click, choose Import New Asset, and go pick those textures.
04:31I've imported my images into Unity.
04:34Notice that down here in the bottom of the Preview, it's showing me how big that
04:38texture is and also the size and how it compresses.
04:42The normals do the same.
04:43But what we want to do is make sure we test things out in 3ds Max, getting it
04:48as close as possible.
04:50We can see that Unity, in this material I have very, very few properties to adjust.
04:54I will choose Select in the Texture for the Base Color and pick wall section.
05:01There's my diffuse map.
05:02I'll select now the normal map and put it on.
05:05I need a light to be able to show this better.
05:09Although it's not bad, I can see when it comes in, my textures read nicely on
05:14the wall. My object is clean.
05:16I am going to mark this as a Normal map, choosing Fix Now, and I should see
05:22that lighting change.
05:28We can just see a little bit of change on the windows and also on the brick.
05:31One of the things this tells me is that I need to adjust this map and make it a
05:36little stronger so it comes across.
05:39Planning is very important. So is having a clean scene.
05:42It's very easy to have extra objects and spend more time culling through rubbish
05:47you thought you had left behind than it is actually to make the game.
05:51A little planning goes a long way and a little scene cleanup and proper naming
05:56will go very, very far.
Collapse this transcript
Setting optimal texture sizes and resizing in Unity
00:00When we are importing objects into Unity, once you have cleaned up the scenes and
00:04named everything properly there are a couple of key things to consider.
00:08One is how does the mesh come across?
00:11You can see in this that this mesh is composed of tris.
00:14I didn't intend for it to be that way out of 3ds Max.
00:17If I look at the original in 3ds Max it looks far different.
00:21This is the original mesh.
00:22I constructed this out of rectangles, converting one to a spline attaching
00:26together making it into an editable poly and then extruding the edges.
00:30Finally, capping a border to get the recessed window.
00:33This could be done in any number of ways, but how that edge flow works
00:37depends on how it's made.
00:39In this case, I haven't used the Cut tool in the poly to put in any edge lines.
00:44What Unity did for me is it triangulated it.
00:47Those edge lines were already here, but it turned them on and it may have
00:51flipped one or two if I didn't define them.
00:53The structure of the editable poly has no interior edge lines until we need them.
00:58Therefore, it's a good practice to make sure that things are modeled in quads or
01:02tris, four or three sided pieces, so you have control over those interior mesh
01:07lines when they come in.
01:07I'll go back to Unity.
01:10I will put a light in and look at optimizing the texture size.
01:13Here in Unity to put a light in, I can choose GameObject > Create Other and
01:19I'll put a Point Light in for show to be able to see my material.
01:22I will do this quite often.
01:25When I bring in an object, rather than bring it in light up everything, I will
01:29put in one light that really shows off the properties of that object.
01:32In this case pulling this light back and forth shows me pretty nicely that
01:36my texture is working and my normal maps are decent, although a little bit understrength.
01:41Now I want to look at the maximum texture size.
01:45In a game, if I'm going to get this close to this mesh, I'll be fine.
01:49As an example I might stand up on that windowsill and try to grab some
01:53cover behind that ledge.
01:56If I'm going to stand back from it-- and this will always be a background object.
02:00Let's say things up on a ceiling on a warehouse where I need them to be there,
02:04but I can't really make out the detail. Then I may want to optimize the texture.
02:08Unity does a great job of this.
02:10I will select my diffuse texture, wall sectionC shadows.
02:15Notice down at the bottom of the previews it records the size, that it is an RGB
02:19image versus a grayscale, and that it is compressed down to 0.7 MB.
02:23What Unity lets me do, if needed, is put in a maximum size.
02:29Therefore, I can use this many times and expect different Maximum Sizes.
02:33I will degrade this down to 512.
02:36When I check Apply, it will reduce this and my wall still looks pretty good.
02:42Unity does a terrific job downraising things, taking textures and reducing them
02:48in size while preserving quality.
02:50Therefore, when you're painting textures, paint big.
02:53I regularly plan to pay my textures twice as big as the final.
02:57In this case, my texture was painted at 1024 for final use at 512, introducing a
03:03little bit of blur and softening the look, giving me a nice overall look on the
03:08wall while reducing the memory footprint even further.
Collapse this transcript
Setting up a naming convention and scene management
00:00When you're working on a project and especially in a game, proper naming
00:04conventions are absolutely essential.
00:06You may think it's not such a big deal, it's only a few objects and we were just
00:10dealing in a small scene.
00:11But when you start work in thousands of unique named assets in the game it's a big deal.
00:17We might have hundreds of meshes, hundreds of lights, animation clips, scripts,
00:23and other in-game pieces like skyboxes, all of which need a proper naming
00:27convention so we can find them.
00:29Remember also, we're going to use things like scripts that look for either
00:34variables or unique names.
00:36So we need to have a naming convention we can read easily.
00:39And more importantly, we need to have a naming convention we can share.
00:43You might be in a studio interfacing with the wetware as we call it.
00:46You know what that is?
00:48The other people. Who will be very mad at you if your objects are not named well.
00:52To start, I'm going to get this building ready for bringing into Unity.
00:56Right now it's a design model.
00:58I've got it unwrapped, I've got my textures on, there are two materials, a
01:02Cornice and an Upper Floor, and a bunch of objects.
01:05I'll pick really any one of them, right- click, and convert it to an editable poly.
01:10This makes it no longer an instance and bakes the UVs in.
01:14Then I'll attach it to all the other objects, right-clicking and choosing the
01:18dialog next to Attach.
01:21In the Attach dialog I'm going to filter, turning off lights and cameras to make
01:26sure I just have geometry.
01:28I'll do a quick scroll down the list and check as well.
01:31Looks like its all geometry, so I can pick the Select All button and attach
01:36all the objects in.
01:38Yes, in this case I'd like to match the material IDs to the material.
01:42Everything is in. I need to fix some smoothing issues down there it looks like.
01:46I know that part of the building is flat, so I can pick all of its polygons and
01:51just clear off the smoothing.
01:52It looks like the problem is fixed.
02:02Now for the Material IDs, because keeping it clean is essential there too. In the Polygon:
02:08Material IDs when I select Polygons I can see I have 1, 1, 2 and 3, okay. That's little odd.
02:17I should just have two materials.
02:19I'm going to right-click and choose Top Level and look at the naming in the
02:22material first as part of sorting out the IDs.
02:26In my Materials right now I have a material called Cornice and one called Upper Floors.
02:31That could be for any building.
02:33I'm going to assign a naming convention and make my Multi/Sub-Object material clean.
02:38I've already started to do a name here.
02:43In this case I've attached the letters BLD or Building and then _Building01.
02:52This would be building one of however many I do.
02:54I've put in some shorthand that I think I'm going to use repetitively. Upper Floor is UF.
03:00I'll also see a CN for Cornice.
03:02Lastly at the end of the name, I put a single letter designation for the place of this map.
03:07In this case C is a Color or DiffuseMap, N is for Normal, S would be for Shine
03:13or glossiness, and so forth.
03:15This makes it easy to look down a list and see where a map goes and also
03:18what it's attached to.
03:20I may have other prefixes in there, such as STR for street, TRE for tree and
03:26planter, all kinds of things that are necessary in my city.
03:33I'll make a Multi/Sub-Object material and clean this up,
03:36choosing of an empty slot and clicking on Standard.
03:39In the Standard Materials I'll pick a Multi/Sub-Object.
03:43I'll discard this one. That's okay.
03:47And first I'll set the number.
03:48I'll put the Number of Materials at 2.
03:52I only need 2 in this building.
03:54I'll name the first material as I create it, clicking on the None slot in number
03:581 and picking a standard material.
04:04I'll name this standard material per its maps.
04:08This again will be BLD so I know it's a building material, _Building01_UF for Upper Floor.
04:17That way the Upper Floor material gets the upper floor maps and everything
04:21works together. Into the Diffuse channel so I can verify it works I'll put in the Upper Floor.
04:28Going in my Maps I can see here in my Scene Materials I have that map already.
04:33I'll select it and in this case an Instance or Copy doesn't really matter.
04:38I'll choose Instance.
04:40Now I need to add the normal map in, just to check and make sure it also works.
04:44I'll go into Maps, into the Bump slot, and add a Normal Bump.
04:49Here it is again in the Scene Materials, Normal: Map #5 (BLG_Building01_UF_N).
04:56I'll instance this and put the strength up to 100.
05:03I'll repeat this process with the other material, making the same choices in
05:08naming and placement.
05:10When it's done I'll show how to get the Material IDs straight.
05:13Now that I've got my materials made, with both standard materials having the
05:18correct name, Building01_CN for Cornice in this case, and the correct maps
05:23with their designation.
05:24I've named the Master Material BLD_Building01.
05:28As the names get higher or more towards the root object, they will get
05:32shorter and shorter.
05:33This is a root object, a root material here, the Multi/Sub.
05:36So Building01 is all I need.
05:38Now I'll check the Material IDs.
05:40I'll select my object and assign this material to it.
05:44I'll make sure that my materials in the Material Editor are set to show in the view.
05:48Clicking on the Material and turning on the Show Shaded Material in Viewport button.
05:59Looks like I'm in pretty good shape.
06:01I need to fix a few material IDs.
06:03It's important to streamline these, so we don't see extra materials coming cross into Unity.
06:08I'll work by polygon or by element and select the middle elements on the top floor.
06:16These will all get ID 2.
06:18I'll scroll down in Material IDs and change that. In the Polygon:
06:23Material IDs I'll set their ID at 2.
06:27And we can see a change, as the Cornice material with the relief panels is applied.
06:34The building is ready.
06:36I'll name this object BLD_Building01, and I'm ready to set the pivot and
06:45bring it into Unity.
06:47This is what I want to stress over- and-over, and I tell my students this.
06:51Proper naming is essential.
06:53Searching through box 1 through box of thousand for an object is a drag.
06:58Trying to find something uniquely in a script with the game engine, searching
07:01through box 1 through 1000 is a nonstarter.
07:05Your game is not going to work.
07:07Everything needs a unique name and everything needs to follow a naming
07:11convention to the later. Even if you pressed on time, follow the convention you set.
07:17I personally like an Excel spreadsheet.
07:19I'm going to list out all the possible objects, their prefixes, and examples of the names.
07:24That way if there's any question or if I'm bringing somebody new on to the
07:27project I can hand them a naming guideline.
07:30Even if you're working in a solo project, a naming convention is important.
07:35Finding objects is what you want to do, not hunting through a mass scene.
Collapse this transcript
Renaming tools in 3ds Max
00:00As we've discussed previously, naming is absolutely vital when making a game.
00:05We have a handy tool, the Rename Objects tool, to be able let us rename mass
00:09quantities of objects.
00:11Picking an object and renaming it is not a big deal. Picking dozens of objects
00:16and renaming them is an enormous drag on time.
00:19What I will do is select both objects and choose Tools > Rename Objects.
00:25This dialog lets me put in all kinds of naming conventions, from a Base Name to
00:30Prefixes and Suffixes and appending numbering.
00:33I can either work from Selected Objects or pick them in the scene.
00:38I'll start out with a Base Name, Building01. Ntice I am going put in just
00:43Building, even though it's Building01, because I want to use the numbering
00:46system to get these right.
00:48I'll put in a Prefix BLD_.
00:53That's my general designation for building objects in my scene.
00:56Now I'll check numbering and I'm going in a start the numbers at 1 and stepping
01:01by 1, this will give me 1 and 2.
01:04When I hit Rename the objects are renamed and I can close the dialog.
01:08It stays open, so in case you want to pick other objects and prefix them or
01:13append to the name or whatever you need, it's easy to do that.
01:18Here's the name of my objects, BLD_ Building02 and this one is BLD_Building01.
01:27I can further customize this using prefixes, suffixes or additional pieces in the
01:32names to delineate what I need.
01:34The important thing is I'm following a naming convention and I shouldn't be
01:38afraid of renaming mass objects as an excuse for not naming things.
01:42We have a tool for that and it makes it very fast and easy to make
01:46everything properly named.
Collapse this transcript
Conclusion
What's next
00:00I have finished the building, I have added more detail to the relief panels and
00:03the cornices, and I've included these texture files for you to look at.
00:07Along the way, we have looked at techniques for low polygon modeling, so we can
00:12model our buildings with a minimum of geometry but still have them feel as if
00:16they were crafted to be there.
00:17We've also looked at ways to design the city, exploring methods of making
00:22streets, intersections, blocks and sidewalks.
00:26We've looked at texturing techniques. Ways to add realism in detail into a
00:30texture without increasing polygon count.
00:34We've looked at ways to bake shadows and lighting, to get the most bang for our
00:38buck, and not stress our game engine.
00:41I've added a camera into the scene so we can start to fly in our city.
00:45We can see that the city still needs some work.
00:47I've got one building in and a bunch of empty blocks.
00:50I need to continue developing buildings and along the way add in the other parts of the city.
00:55I need to streetlights, newspaper stands, fire hydrants, cars, and people, all
01:00the things that make a city, well, feel like a city.
01:03So go out, get some reference, use street view and explore a city, then start
01:08modeling, make the buildings, make parts, make modules, and clone them. You would
01:12be surprise to how fast the blocks fill up and then think about the other
01:16pieces, the everyday details that make a city, well, a city.
Collapse this transcript


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