3D I, Week 4

Hello again. This is my blog report for last week, week 39, or week 4 of the 3D course. Apologies for the delay in getting this post up, I’ve been busy with work for the Game Design class, and have fallen behind a bit with my 3D.

In any case, in this post I will detail the texture progress of my crate for Assignment 1.

My crate model in 3DS Max, with a UV checker laid over it.

I chose to texture my sci-fi crate for this assignment. Initially, I was going to texture my cartoony crate, but after a bit of consideration I thought it would be too simple. I’m very comfortable with cartoony styles, and my cartoony crate had an incredibly basic design. I thought it would be a bit more of a challenge to go with any of my other two crates, and since I was so displeased with my post-apocalyptic crate, I decided to go with my sci-fi crate.

An angled view of my crate, rendered in UDK.

I mainly chose cold, blue colors in the diffuse texture of my crate. I imagined my crate would fit into an optimistic, clean and technologically advanced sci-fi setting, so I made all my color choices with this in mind. Going with the futuristic theme, I thought blue would be the most fitting color to give a feeling of stability and sophistication. The colors I’ve used are quite saturated, even in the brightest, nearly white parts of the crate. This was to make the crate look more lively and welcoming.

A front view of my crate. All sides other than the top and bottom of the crate share this texture. Rendered in UDK.

The variety in color brightness across the crate was mainly to make it easier to differentiate between the planes and the edges of the crate. Still, I tried not to make my darkest blues too dark, as going too close to black would make the texture seem less colorful. Instead, I varied the hues on my crate, going from a more green-ish cyan hue in the brightest parts of the crate to a more deep blue in the darker parts. This makes the different parts of my crate contrast each other more without having to adjust their brightness, and also gives some variety in color across the texture, even if I’m still just using blues.

An angled, top view of my crate. Rendered in UDK.

The edges of my crate are decorated with bright lights. I primarily put this detail in the texture simply because I thought the edges looked too boring otherwise. A bright streak along the outermost edge of the sides makes for more contrast against the darker blues, making for a more interesting design. At first, I made the light yellow, thinking I wanted to vary the crate’s color scheme a bit. However, after experimenting a bit with yellow-orangeish hues, I found I didn’t like the feeling those colors gave my crate.

A yellow variant of my diffuse texture, viewed in 3DS Max.

Contrasting the blue of my crate with a strong yellow immediately made my crate seem more dangerous, even though it’s such a small detail. Making the lights yellow contrasted with the rest of the edges both color-wise and brightness-wise. It disrupted the stability of my otherwise very unified color scheme, and made the crate feel more dynamic. I could’ve kept the lights yellow if that was what I was going for, but I was specifically looking for a calmer, more stable feeling in my crate. Thus, I decided to change the light streaks to, again, a cyan shade of blue that leans a bit more towards green. This color feels much more unified with the rest of the color scheme, but still makes for a bit of contrast since its next to one of the darkest, least green surface on the crate.

With a yellow light, the clashing colors made me feel like I’d want to shoot at the crate to destroy it if I found it in a game. With a blue light, the crate pops much less, and it feels more fitting as something that could be used as simple background decoration. Which colors you use, and the way they contrast or complement each other, can change a lot.

The most recent version of my diffuse texture for this crate.

I don’t feel 100% pleased with this texture yet, and plan on working a bit more on it before I hand in my finished model on Sunday. I’m mainly unsure about the big corner parts. While this is the very first model we’re handing in, I’m displeased with how basic and amateurish the corner parts in particular look. Admittedly, I’m not too happy about how they look on the model in the first place, with or without diffuse texture. I’m going to see if I can adjust their shape a bit before I hand in my crate. Otherwise, I’ll have to make do.