Texturing sci-fi crate

After having my three crates optimized, the next step was to pick one of them to later texturize. I originally had planned to texturize my cartoony crate, which I’ve actually done a whole new version of, but because it came out fairly complex I decided that for starters try to texturize my sci-fi crate instead. Below is my sci-fi crate with a UV checker on.

Since I mentioned in one of my earlier blogposts that I wanted to take inspiration for my sci-fi crate from the game Mirror’s edge, I decided to first do a white texture with a strong primary color to contrast to its overall whiteness. Because the texture was so light I found it hard to hide the texture seams and make it look believable. It came out looking more like a kid’s toy than an actual crate found in a sci-fi game or a game like Mirror’s edge. It didn’t look sci-fi enough so I scrapped that version and started painting a new one with sci-fi as my biggest focus.

When you look at most sci-fi models you’ll see that a lot of them are created in such a way that it looks man-made and mass-produced meaning that it’s nowhere near organic. You’ll often see metals, a specific contrasting color, sharp lines and patterns as well as a lot of symmetry. I decided to incorporate all of this into my crate.

Here is the sci-fi crate in UDK with the texture I created.

I chose to work with black as my more prominent color because it was much more forgiving in hiding my texture seams. By having a lighter gray as the undertone I believe I managed to achieve a metallic look that I was going for. On the top and bottom I added a grey metallic detail to emphasize the mass-produced and man-made feeling to the crate. I decided to hand paint the black and gray texture instead of just adding one found on the internet because I wasn’t striving to achieve realism. I wanted this version to look a little stylized and it felt like by hand painting it I had more control of the end result.

As I finished painting the foundation of my crate I didn’t have any idea on how I wanted to further develop it. I knew I had to add a clear sci-fi element to it because at that stage it only looked like a black metallic box with an unusual shape. It I felt like it didn’t look sci-fi enough and that it didn’t have any personality. Then I remembered one of my favorite games called “The legend of Zelda – Twilight princess”.

I’ve always liked the way that the twilight realm and its monsters looked. They were mostly black incorporated with a bright and saturated color in an interesting pattern as for contrast. Since my crate was already stylized to some extent that reminded me of twilight princess I decided that the same contrasting pattern would go along well with my crate.

I chose blue for my contrasting color because most man-made things have a cold undertone, for example, metal. The mass-produced things are not organic nor living so it made sense to me to use a color that isn’t often found within nature. Blue doesn’t really make a statement either so this could be a crate that could be found almost anywhere in a game.

The color is very saturated and bright to really contrast against the overall blackness of the crate. I added some bigger patches of blue on the sides as to indicate that the power source of this blue energy is within it. So it looks like it’s alive, but in a mechanical way which is very sci-fi to me. Below is my final texture.