This week the task was to learn advanced texturing techniques: - Normal Mapping, Ambient Occlusions and Specular Maps, With this blog entry i will not be going into as much detail, as it was a fairly simple task and there was no element of me having to go to extremes to achieve the final result

We where given the High and Low poly asset to start with and we would have to unwrap the Low poly so that the space for the Normals was defined, as well as for texturing later on.

Below you can see the High poly crate next to the final low poly textured, baked crate. In order to achieve this i had to unwrap the Low poly crate, and then using the transfer maps option in Maya i created the Normals

Creating the normal's was easily done, using the transfer maps option and here is the final result

From here I could then create my Ambient occlusion map, Again this was easily done in Maya, however originally i got 'errors' in the final map, However this was eventually fixed by shrinking the mesh the AO was being projected from. - However there are still a few faults with this AO at this time, in regards to a few errors here and there, But there is not that much affect on the overall model and diffuse sheet so im not bothered by fixing these effects.

I started off with the specular by de saturating my merged diffuse texture. This would then give me a base for my Specular map. From here i was pretty happy with the result. But seeing as i wanted parts to look New/Replaced i and i had also kept the diffuse quite clean, Metaphorically, I decided that i would just spend some time fiddling with the specular,where there would be less light hitting the model aswell as using another layer, I then painted over and used the over lay layer effect to darken

From this i could then start creating my Diffuse/UV texture for the final presentation. For this i was inspired by games with similar 'Baked' Styles such as Halo 4, Dead Space and Mass Effect. From here i knew that i wanted to go with a block colour, and then use a layer mask to create wear and tear on the create, I wanted a distressed/deserted and unused for years look on it.

Here is the final result.

Overall all I have left to do is create the Specular map for this, However at this moment in time I have spent about 8 hours on this model/texture and i need to get on with other Units, This is something i will have to comeback with at a later date as i do mot just want to use a desaturated Diffuse for my Specular, which would be the easy way out