More 3D Cellar Doors

I've been trying to be consistant in my 3D work and created these cellar doors. It's designed to be a sectional piece that you can put on the of a building I also set it up so that you could add a staircase beneath it so that you could open the doors to enter a basement.

To create the normal map I did a quick model of the doors panels and the bolted plates on top of them. I then Projected them onto the low poly model to create a normal map and ambient occlusion. I created the wood grain normal map in Crazybump and used it's mixer  to merge the projected normal map from 3DS max with the one made in crazybump.

The texture maps is a combination of a trim sheet and a unique unwrap. I used the trim sheet to make the door frame. While the door itself was a unique unwrap. I can also use the trim sheet side of  texture for other simpler props later like the wood can be used for wooden columns or wooden ladders. And the stone can be used for rocks and such. This can save time in a pinch when you need something textured for a level quickly.

3D Work: Fire Hydrant

So I finished this project this weekend. A simple fire hydrant I projected the normal map from a high poly model in photoshop as well as an ambient occlusion map to help start my base texture. Once my base texture was complete I did quick lighting setup in Max and projected the lighting to the texture. 

On the normal map I painted surface detail in photoshop and then used Crazybump to make the surface detail and then used the mixer tool in Crazybump to combine the projected normal map from max with the normal map of the surface detail I had painted in Photoshop. I imported the finished product into the Unreal engine for the final lighting.

Alien Paintings

Well I had the day off from work today which means I actually get to paint! I've been playing Mass Effect recently and I've been inspired to some space sci-fi stuff also I thought I would show a little bit of my process.





The first thing I like to do is start out with a drawing. I love to draw and that's usually where I come up with a lot of my better ideas. 

I like to do a rough paintover on the creature without any armor on so that I can start getting a grasp on what colors I'm going to use. This species evolved on a dark planet without much natural sunlight and thus has a dark blue skin tone. I put a splash of violet on the blue skin as that makes it look a little more alive. When painting human skin adding red to the skin makes it look more alive and healthy because there is blood flowing under there. With my alien I used that same logic, only there blood is purple rather than red.

After I do a rough paintover on the naked body I then design my armor. I try to make the armor colors unify with the creatures skin and I feel that was fairly successful.

 Once I have my base tones down I usually do light  Gaussian blur and throw a quick gradient on a separate layer with a layer effect In this design I used soft light. This gives me a rough starting point on where to take my lighting. 

With my lighting roughly started I collapse everything down and then begin painting in highlights and shadow and start painting the image with the lighting in mind. While it's not quite done yet, it's close.  theres still work to be done on the feet and hands. and then just some polish on the background.