Evaluation

Throughout this project I have learnt a lot of things, I now understand more about textures as well as the design process in general, I did my first proper mood board and I have learnt many new photoshop techniques. It also taught me how important research is and how you shouldn't be discouraged when an idea falls through as it usually leads to an even better idea. I also learnt to not decide on your final piece at the very beginning as you never really get to develop it properly from the initial thought and reach the idea's full potential.

All in all I am rather proud of my final textures, I think they show my skills with Photoshop and I believe they will fit into a 3D environment really well. I feel my textures have quite a stylised simplified look, which is what I was looking for. My favourite is my wood texture as it is a good combination of the simplified look but with a Photoshop filter incorporated.

If I did this project again I would defiantly choose something more challenging and with less rock-y textures as they were my least favourite to do as they didn’t tile well. I think I’d do an Elvan city o I have the chance to do a lot more natural textures but still incorporate the glowing aspects from my last street.

Final textures

1. Night sky

2. Cobbles

3. Gravel

4. Patio

5. Wood and Plaster

6. Roof tiles.

7. Brushed steel

8. Wood

9. Smaller bricks

10. Water

Game texture reaserch

Looking through games it becomes apparent that textures are very important to a game, by far my favourite example of textures I've seen through my research are from a game called Alice Madness Returns. The games designs are amazing, ranging from colourful woods to steam-punk to Gothic, and their slightly grungy textures they use fit perfectly with the game's style, weather saturated or dark.

There are bad textures too but they are a lot less common nowadays, the only problems you see with them is a textured wall meeting a flatter wall and the part where they join is a straight line, not shaped where the bricks on the texture would protrude, other problems include pixelated textures, textures of say long grass or rocks where the actual model is flat and blobs with a texture of rubble or rubbish thrown on.

Initial Textures

These are the first few textures I made, I used the techniques I learnt form out experimentations. 

This was my initial floor texture, I decided to make it very small so I can tile it in photoshop then add general shadows as when tiled in 3ds Max it looks horrible. I also did a less saturated version but I ended up preferring this.

This is my first floor texture, I tiled it in photoshop and marked on where my buildings would be, then added shadows and highlight's. 

For my houses I decided the best thing to do is to have a simple model and a complicated model so I made this texture map for my house.

I also made this brushed steel texture for my metal add ons. 

This is my final house, I used the texture map on the basic house shape then added add on's with the steel texture and a glass texture I made on Max. 

Mind map

After I decided what I wanted to do I started to plan the buildings on my street. After a bit of researching I decided the type of houses I wanted to use were 16th century timber-framed houses. I also wanted to do a church based on Notre Dame so I started to sketch out my ideas using references from the internet.

Finally I started to design my buildings, for the house first I draw the original building, then copied it and added in the ‘sci-fi’ aspects on top. While drawing I decided I wanted to slightly change my idea, I didn’t really like the sci-fi aspect, it was too clean and futuristic, I wanted to grunge it up so I decided to add more mechanical/grungy take, I also decided I wanted the light sources of the street to be glowing crystals.


Statement of intent


I intend my street to an abandoned 16th centenary town which has been build upon by a modern group of people. I want the street to have metal plates and wires added on by these people as well as having glowing crystals as a light source. I plan to have the scene set a night to the glows will be more intense. For my street I hope to have these three main buildings, a house, a church and a fountain.

http://gallery.nen.gov.uk/asset60055_218-e2bn.html
http://www.peartree-miniatures.co.uk/tours/stfagans2.html
http://www.scrapbookpages.com/gardelegen/Town/Gardelegen02.html
http://teenyblessings.wordpress.com/2009/12/18/15th-16th-century-houses/
http://www.grimshaworigin.org/Webpages2/GrimshawHallKnowle.htm
http://www.stmgrts.org.uk/directory/historic_house
http://www.eppingforestdc.gov.uk/Council_Services/planning/conservation/MORETON.asp
http://halmapr.com/news/apollo/2008/12/
http://www.3drt.com/3dm/sf-constructions/sci-fi-constructions_shots.html
http://www.sgnonline.com/2009/01/10/the-future-is-now-ish/
http://www.tuvie.com/search/Futuristic+city+building+design
http://planetoddity.com/the-existing-cities-of-the-future/
http://www.buildingdesignideas.com/2011/08/07/futuristic-building-designs/
http://www.smashinglists.com/top-10-futuristic-concept-hotels/
http://www.trendhome.info/2011/06/futuristic-modern-architecture-buildings/
http://www.cityphoto.tk/city-photos/notre-dame-cathedral-photos-and-notre-dame-cathedral-pictures.html

Fire textures

Today we made a fire texture in photoshop from simply using render clouds and render difference clouds then adding a gradient map ranging from black > red > orange > yellow > white. I think this looked more like lava though.

 After this I looked at another tutorial for a fire creature that got a really good effect by using the smudge tool http://blackravensong.deviantart.com/art/Fire-Creature-Tutorial-84060887