Project 1

                                      Material Creation

This project is about creating our own textures and understanding the process of creating them and how they can be used in games. We will also be looking at how to create materials from our own source of images, hand painting textures and PBR materials.


Firstly I will be researching about Materials and Textures to then further take into development of ideas.

Project Proposal

Within this project we will be creating three different materials and texture maps within our time of 9 weeks.  I will be aiming to create one photorealistic material, an animated material and a hand painted one. However the animated one looks pretty tricky, so if I will be creating 2 or more photorealistic materials and hand painted ones. I will create the animated one last since it can be tricky and if not done correct it can be an experiment.

I will first start with the photorealistic materials and I have decided to create a metal based texture. The photo will determine what type of metal texture they will have. To create this material I will have to generate a normal map and create the colour, normal and specular map. I have estimated that should take me a full day to do, with some spare time to put it up on the blog and edit the video of me completing the material. The process will start with uploading the photo to Photoshop and then compiling the components on unreal.

Secondly I will start creating the second one hand painted material. I will create a floor tiled based texture on Photoshop and I also may consider drawing out a texture and scanning it into Photoshop for the second one hand painted material. The maps will also be created in Photoshop and that shouldn’t take too long. Finally then finished up on unreal, this again should take a day to complete.

The animated material I will choose to create last and it may be the most trickiest to create. I will be using the same programmes as the others which is unreal and Photoshop. This this may take more than a day to complete since it’s tricky, so in my spare time when its free to use the computers I can use that time to catch up and finish it off if needed.

Time Plan

Week 1-Initial Research

Week 2-Secondary Research

Week 3-Experimintaion (hand painted textures)

Week 4-Experimentaion (photorealistic textures)

Week 5-Experimentaion (methods of tiling textures and putting in unreal)

Week 6- First photorealistic material

(Throughout this week the aim is to complete two photorealistic materials and update annotation to blog)

Week 7-One hand painted material

(Throughout this week the aim will be to create 1 one handed painted material and update blog with annotation/video of creation)

Week 8-The animated material

(This week will be the hardest and I’m planning to attempt to create one but I should be able to complete it by the end of the week)

Week 9-Conclusion

(I should be able to complete the conclusion easily and going back and checking if everything is jotted down onto the blog to make sure I maximise my marks.) 

Game Textures

Game textures are very important for a game, they bring the game to life bringing different colours and detail into the environment of the game. A texture is created to look like a specific surface e.g a marble floor, the texture is then applied to the floor in the game and repeated to bring the floor to life. 

Within the game industry textures are used all the time to make their games look better. Their are people in the industry which specialise in texture creation and development, this involves a lot of computer work, art work and taking pictures of real life textures to then bring into the game world. Textures are used in the two-dimensional and three-dimensional art visual art. In two-dimensional art their is more artistic techniques applied to it such as the line, shape and colour. Shading and colour is often used to create the illusion of water. Most importantly light is created using different techniques, all of this comes together to create a specific texture.

There are thousands of textures but they are all categorised for different reasons, such as rough and smooth textures. Rough textures are more varied and include bumpy, scaly, sharp, sandy and rocky.

Smooth textures are usually used to represent floors or metallic objects or even slimy objects. 

Different textures are created for different reasons depending on the atmosphere ow which they will be used in. Rough textures are used in darker, broken game scenes , smoother ones are often used for objects in various ways such as a smooth gun or smooth furniture to create a cleaner look for the game. Colours play a big roll for different type of textures like furry or dirty textures, the colour can bring the texture to life and match more what its based off. 

Here is an image of different types of textures.

They can all be used for different objects/clothing inside a game. 

                                               Materials

Materials Are used in the game industry to bring different objects to life, such as wood or metal objects. Their are different material types such as Lambert, phong, phongE, blinn anistropic. Those are the basic material types.

Lambert is a flat material type that smooths the look without highlights, this then gives a matte, chalk-looking appearance.

Phong is excellent for creating shiny, polished surfaces, it leaves the object with a plastic, porcelain and glazed ceramic look.

PhongE PhongE is a faster rendering version of Phong that yields somewhat softer highlights than Phong.

Blinn creates surfaces similar to phong but blinn reflects light more accurately.

Anistropic This stretches highlights and rotates them based on the viewers relative position. This material is ideal for hair, feathers, brushed satin and metal.

Different types of maps

Diffuse map: This is the most popular/frequently used texture mapping method. It wraps up the bitmap image onto the 3D geometry surface while displaying the original colour. Any bitmap image be used as a diffuse map to create the photo realistic quality. You can also use image software to make pre-rendered texture effects such as bump, lighting, shadow, bevel or weathering effects

Opacity map: Make transparency and cut-out effects of grayscale images.The black part gets cut of and thw white part is fully displayed.

Bump map: Bump mapping uses thew grey scale values of an image map to then add shading the surface of the object and also adds tone. It also adds more detail to the 3D image without adding polygons.

Normal map: Normal mapping is used to re-detail simplified meshes. The polygons are used to re-build and detail it.

Specular map: This texture map adds an specular effect to the object.

Glow map: This texture mapping technique allows the person to change the colour the glow of the shape,colour and strength. Glow maps blend in well for with the diffuse map so the lighter the diffuse the stronger the glow effect. However a bright glow map with a bright diffuse map may cause overexposure.

Reflection map: This is also known as an environment map, it is projected onto a 3D surface to reflect the enviroment around it.

Quixel Research

Quixel offers a suite of three tools, NDo painter, DDO painter, 3DO painter.

NBO painter is a normal mapping tool that lets you paint normal maps with 3DO. It also allows you to convert paint strokes, shapes and the softness.

DDO painter is the texturing side. It has a few powerful features such as the smart materials, which allows you to store definitions of different surfaces for use later on in different projects. The dynamask editor allows you to be much more precise control over how all the masks are created. It also allows you to mask different details such as scratches or grime.

3DO is a powerful viewer with built GPU baker. It offers all features up to date with the current generation of real-time PBR.

Quixel SUITE is used in the texturing process and allows you to define, design and generate all of these textures at the same time. 3DO real-time previewer shows you the results while painting them and allows you to create an accurate representation of your material. It also has a plethora of export presets to make sure all of the maps are with the correct software you choose to use them in.

This brilliant image was created with mega scans, mega scans is pretty much a drag and drop system by applying and laying textures and materials into a scene to create a realistic environment. It is a great feature and has been used to create brilliant images and used in short animation films using engines.

Albedo Map

Albedo is the base colour input, also known as a diffuse map. However the albedo map defines the colour of diffused light. A big difference between an albedo map in a PBR system and a traditional diffuse map is the lack of light directed or ambient conclusion.

Main Material Editor Breakdown in Unreal

The material editor is a node based system were you can connect and freely experiment joining up different materials to textures. This allows you to place different types of values to different nodes.  Such as if you was applying an image or bitmap to the normal map so then you can apply it to the material you are creating. It allows you to create a large family of different nodes with multiple textures this freedom to test and find ways of creating a detailed material is brilliant

Material Parameter Collection

A material parameter collection is an asset that stores a set of scalar and vector parameters which can be referenced in any material. It is a powerful tool that artists can use to globally get data into many materials at once. It can also be used to create effects over a range of materials adding effect such as snow amount, destruction amount and wetness. 

Scene breakdown experiment
This is an image which we are breaking down and pointing them out into the categories of duplicate(red), trim(Yellow), modular(green), unique(purple), tileable.
This helped me with understanding the materials more and how they can be categorised. It helps me with spotting different textures and materials in pictures.
This is useful for the future of the project so we can understand and how to space out and use the pixels correctly so that it looks nicer inside unreal.

This is the second one which I broke down and this also helped me recognise the different aspects of the image.

Creating A Texture

Firstly I found the texture and selected to edit it. I use the shortcut of left-click and T to bring them in. I connected this to the base colour node, allowing this to be the vase of the material.

I swapped it from the rocky texture preset to a wooden one and added it to base colour and also added in a vector-colour which allows me to change the colour.

I then added a linearinterpolate, that allowed me to connect it to A and the colour vector to B, merging them, then connected this to the base colour.

I then added in the 3 new textutes which were made for us and connected them to a mask and "-1", this all lead to the normal map node and completed the material.

Although this is wood i wanted to experiment and I connected the texture to specular and roughness, to give it a shiny, smooth metal look, which looked rather nice on a prop.

I then added these so i can tile it with the scale, so it gives the illusion of smaller spots.

I then put in some props into unreal and textured them just to see how they would look and it looks rather bizarre. 

I changed the colour to red and grey colour and mixed them to see how it would look, looks like a molten lava rock which is pretty cool. I find making textures pretty fascinating , the way you can edit them and once applied to objects they look really good.

Creating a texture on Photoshop

We began to create our own experimental tilled texture of Photoshop, i created a sandy bricked one and a black brick that was gave to us to us to use if we wanted to, to create a pattern.

 I created this one first, i thought of a sandy tiled texture and decided to see if i can make it, it turned out rather well for my first one. This a link to the speed art creation of tile above.

This is the second one i created using the brick file gave to us, i created a pattern and gave it a muddy background.
I then loaded up unreal and started to create a material to add to a prop and to see how it turns out. This was helpful so we got an idea how to adjust and change texture and make it glow, make it metallic or displaced. I used the texture above to turn into a material, i also have a video of the process.

This is the normal map.

 

This is the specular map.

I gave it a glowy green background and experimented several times in unreal making them glow. To see the full process of the experiments i have a linked sped up video of how it all went.

This is the diffuse map for my bricked tile texture.

This is the way i connected all my links to create the material. Its helpful to do this so I know how to do this in the future for our final images.

This is what my texture turned out like, however i had a slight problem as it went metallic even though i had the metallic off.
This is a quick video of me adding and changing slight differences with the material.
Creating a tile from a photograph. we had this photograph and we had to turn into tillable to then make a texture out of it.

So i have a video of how the process went. It was pretty tricky at first but i got the hang of it, making it tillable was the hard part and you had to move and copy the tiles from the image into different sections. The clone stamp tool was very helpful since i could use the same colour of the other garden tiles to get rid of the moss and cracks in other tiles.
In this video the first attempt i tried to create the pattern with one tile and turn the others the same colour, however it didn't end well, so we got some help and i found a new way of doing it and choose an area of the image that i could tile and go from there.

 This is what i ended up with and i used the cloning tool a lot to fill in gaps of the tiles.

This is the other maps that i created for it.
I then put it into unreal and started to link together the maps and create my material.

This a screenshot of putting connecting them

This is a screenshot of ow it turned out on an object.

First Material: Photo-Realistic

The first one I decided to texture was an image of some holes in a computer. It took awhile to make tillable. This was the picture I used.

I have a video of how I tiled it and I created the base, normal, opacity and a specular map.

This is the opacity map, I highlighted the tile and everything else black. This will make whatever's white come out more making it look more realistic.

In unreal I added a opacity mask so that I could make it translucent, which gives it much more of a realistic feel.

This is the specular map. I highlighted the little scratches and details white and the rest is a very light grey.

This is the base map.

This is the normal map, i tried to get as much detail in it but also making it look smooth on the sides so it will generate well looking like actual metal.

This is a high resolution screenshot and Im pleased that the transparent effect works really well with it and it looks better like that.

I have a video of how I tiled it and putting it into unreal.

Second Material: Hand-Painted

For the hand painted one I originally was going to do a metallic plate texture but since i had already done a metallic one I chose to do a wooden polished floor. I created a tillable floorboard on Photoshop. However the VLC media recording had corrupted and only saved 5 minutes of my work. So I recorded the process by going backwards on Photoshop document to show how it looked originally. But it was pretty simple as i created one and then made others of different sizes to create a pattern. I then recorded how it looked on unreal and after connecting all the maps together.

These are the maps i created for it.

The normal map

The specular map that I created to give it more of a polished shine to it.

The base map. As you can see they all look very similar which was the idea of it, i created a pattern going side-wards and it tiled nicely.

This is a high resolution screenshot of my wood material and Im happy with the finished product.

Here is the video that I recorded after the recording corrupted.

Animated Material

I had fun creating this one and it might be my favourite one so far. I decided to go with a mossy stone type rock texture, with water surrounding them. I started by creating one rock and then copying and using a tool called the puppet warp on Photoshop to move around my rocks and make them look different and more rock-like. This helped me create more random rocks quicker. However the recording once again failed in between so it missed out the way I made it tillable, by offsetting and correcting the the parts of the image that made it non-tillable. I then created the normal, specular and emissive map to go with it. 

This is the process of what i went through and all the images of the maps.

These are also the images of the maps and final image of it.

This the colour map and I wanted this specific colour if i take the glow off.

This is the emissive map and I feathered the sides and made them white to show some light on water surrounding the edges of the rock.

This is the specular map and it came out the way i wanted it so it gets more detail in the ridges and scratches on the rocks.

I inverted the height and used the settings to get as much detail as possible while making it look clean.

 I used a panner and a parameter to make it glow to a certain amount or move at a certain speed.

This is what it looks like when it doesn't have the emissive map activated.

2 different images of the glow and scale parameter being different.

This is a video of the animated texture moving and also two other experimental ones that I played around with. 

This the displacement map which i created for my animated material.

I also added a displacement map to see what it would look like and it turned out pretty cool.

 I used this system to get the displacement map working and I can change the values of how much it is displaced. I left it on 10.

An important thing to do is go on tessellation and select flat tessellation and tick "crack free", this stops any cracks in the mesh and makes it look better.

This is what it looks displaced.

Experimenting with Materials

I was playing around with a few of my materials on record and again the vlc didn't save all of the recording so i have some minutes of creating a scaled texture and then using an emissive map to see what it would look like on it and on my previous metallic one.

I have took some screenshots to show how it looked like.

This is what the emissive map looked like with the metallic one and it turned out  like this.

This is also a short clip of how it looked like with the scale texture i created quickly and the emissive map at a different glow.

This is what it looks when i have changed the scaler-parameter and added a brighter glow to it.

This is the remains of the video and shows me creating the maps and using the emissive map.

This is also another experiment that I created for my hand-painted texture

The normal map

The base colour

Specular map

Emissive map

The material with a high resolution screenshot. I attempted to make it look sci-fi themed.

Second Photo-realistic

I took a picture of a my bathroom floor and I decided with my spare time in class to create another photo-realistic one. I did not record this one but i took screenshots of my process. Firstly I cut out a nice square part out of the bathroom tilled pattern.

I then took that one tile and made created copy's to create a simple pattern to make it tillable.

I used thew offset option later to check if it was tillable and it worked very well.

I then started to create the maps, I decided to create a Normal, and a specular map.

Normal map

Specular map

The finished texture

I then brought it into unreal and connected up all the maps to the right nodes.

I used a scalar parameter which connects to all the maps and this allows me to repatriate the pattern depending on the values i put in. This can change and make the material look better.

Below is what the material looks like finished. I took a high resolution image.

Final images
These are some high resolution images of my textures aliened together.

Evaluation

Project 1 Evaluation

This first project was about creating textures and making materials. It also was about learning the different types of maps that come together to create a material. I found this project interesting to do because I was fairly knew to it and being taught ways to create a texture on Photoshop, rather it being a photo-realistic one or a handed painted one was incredible helpful. The reason for that is because I know how to create them easier and quicker, so I can now apply the knowledge I have learnt throughout the project for my futures ones.

We started with the research phase of the project and that was defiantly helpful. I had researched the meaning behind a material and texture and how they were created. I looked up all the different types of maps and how they can be applied to change the way a material looks. For example for a metallic texture I would use a specular map to bring out and shine the little scratches and smudges the metallic texture has.

I then went into more depth of how materials were created, so I did some research into Quixel and Unreal and how the material could be edited/created in that programme. I was glad I researched into Unreal since that was the programme I was using to create my materials, so by researching it earlier on I had a grasp of what it would be like creating them. This early knowledge was very useful.

We then slowly started getting into Unreal and experimenting with textures, we did some activities were we had to notice and pick out parts of a scene and note down if they were tillable, duplicated, trimmed or unique. Those sorts of activities are very helpful as we can use this knowledge of how certain parts in a scene look to then do it ourselves to other images in the future. It helps breakdown a scene easier to understand what the artist had used.

We started to create our own texture as practise to experiment with. I created a sand brick tilled as my first one and it was good to get used to creating them before starting our actual textures to be marked on. After completing my first one I realized this is what texture designers go through but in a more detailed way. That helped me understand the way the industry’s work with creating textures and for different specific models/environments.

First Photo-Realistic Material

As to plan I started my first photo-realistic material on the week 6. I had collected photos the day before and I wanted to go for a metallic type of texture. However I took a picture of the small holes in the back of the computers which are a metal. I didn’t intend to go for a texture like this but I thought I would have a try. The big problem with the texture was when I was trying to make it tillable; I used Photoshop for this stage of the process. I went over and over trying to crop a nice squared tillable segment of the picture. Eventually I found a rather nice one and tilled it. I then created opacity, specular and normal maps to go with it.  With the help of VLC media player I got to record most of my process. I turned the maps and my texture into jpegs and uploaded them into unreal.

The second stage was connecting the maps with the correct nodes. I had a bit of confusion with the process but I eventually got my head around it. I used a scalar parameter to make the pattern smaller and more repetitive; this gave it a nicer look when I had finished putting it all together. I then added an opacity mask so that my material would become transparent when on a prop and that gave it the final effect it needed to look realistic. Overall I was pleased with my first finished material.

Second Photo-Realistic Material

Near the end of the project I had spare time to create a second photo-realistic material, so I used a picture of my bathroom floor tiles. This one was fun to create but I found it easy. After the knowledge I had learnt from creating the others this one didn’t take long to finish but it looks pretty good compared to my other ones. I used Photoshop and Unreal for this one. I cropped out one section of my floor and created a simple tilled texture from there. Afterwards I created the maps for it. I put the normal and specular map into Unreal along with the base map. I also used a scalar parameter to make it look better as the tilled texture was rather large. So I shrunk it down to make it look nicer. The only issue I had was that it didn’t look exactly like the image of my bathroom floor. But it still looked good.

First Hand-Painted Material

I had intended to make a wooden or brick texture, I eventually made up my mind and created a wooden one. Creating my hand-painted material was fairly easy and I didn’t expect it to come out as well as it did. I used Photoshop a lot for this texture. I created a rectangle and used the brush and low opacity tool to create a light brown polished wooden plank. This process took rather long because I wanted to create highlights in the wood of scratches and marks. I had most of it on record but I eventually had an issue with VLC media player as it corrupted most of the recording. So from there I took screenshots. I then created multiple copies of the one finished plank and made a nice pattern out of it. The maps stage came next. I only created a normal and specular map. The specular map left a nice effect on my material in Unreal and made it look really realistic on a prop. It gave the wood a shine of life and my highlights that I had did on Photoshop for the wooden plank came out really well giving it more detail. To get a nice image of my material I took a high resolution screenshot which I was informed about by Chris, which was very helpful because I could get a nice clean image of it for the blog.

I also used a scalar parameter to change the pattern size, I cranked it up a bit and I prefer it smaller and more repetitive. Overall I was happy the way it looked.

Second Hand-Painted Material

My second hand painted material was pretty weird. I wanted to do a metallic brick type pattern, but I wanted it to look sci-fi. I looked some images of sci-fi type textures so I tried to create my own. It turned out pretty weird on Photoshop but I decided to go along with it. Then I created the emissive, normal and specular map. It was new for me using an emissive map. I played around with the nodes until I figured it out. I added a parameter to change the values of the glow and a multiply to connect it all together. It ended up looking pretty cool and the new knowledge of the emissive map helped me later on with my animated texture.

Animated Material

I left this material last. I thought that it would be a lot harder than it was. I had a lot of fun creating this one; it might be my favourite one. I decided to create some mossy type rocks and water flowing with them. I started on Photoshop and used the pen tool to start off by creating a weird shape. I then used various tools to get a nice mossy rock with some detail on it. The tool “puppet warp” was very helpful because I could hand move the rocks in different positions making them look more realistic.

I later on realised that it looked more like the earth than my intentions of rocks. I created the normal map on the 3D filter options and I wanted as much detail as possible with the normal map to get all the little bumps and edges. I also created a specular and emissive map. For the emissive map I feathered the edges and put a white outline around each rock to create the light illusion around them, I finished it off with a glowing blue background the water. However it looked good without the new glowing water since I had an original nice dark water background. So I took two final screenshots with and without the emissive map.

After the Photoshop phase I brought all the maps into Unreal and connected it all up. I was surprised that it didn’t look as bad as I thought. I lastly added a panner which had a coordinate and time option. This allowed my texture to move and a certain speed and direction. It started to look more like planet earth now. After I added it the emissive map and added a value of about 15 to make a nice glow effect. So it was now moving and glowing. I used VLC media player to capture the movement and glow.

Later on I created a displacement map to test it out on. I created the displacement map on Photoshop.

When I put it Unreal I went to the tessellation options and selected flat tessellation and ticked “crack free”, this stops the mesh from cracking. I took two high resolution screenshots of what it looked with the displacement map on. Overall I am happy with the animated one, even though it didn’t turn out how I wanted it to,  it still looked good.

Experiments

I had two experiments and one was when I created a scales type texture and made it glow and move, this was when I was testing out the emissive maps and panning options on Unreal. I have a video of experimenting, I used VLC player. I liked experimenting and playing around with the node options because it could change things that I might like and I can use that new knowledge for future projects.

Conclusion

This project I learnt a lot, considering that it was my first time creating textures I think I did pretty well. The researching phase was the great for me because I needed to know this new knowledge to grasp the whole project better. Learning all the different maps was defiantly helpful because I applied this knowledge to my own work by knowing what each map does to and the changes that can be made. I’m also glad that I finished earlier than planned so that gave me more time to create experiments and play around with more features I didn’t know about such as the emissive map.

My targets for this project were to complete 3 materials and finish my evaluation and research on time. However I exceeded those expectations of myself and made 6 materials and completed research. I finished a week earlier than my plan which I didn’t expect. My work from this project can influence my future ones in many ways, such as using new tools I didn’t know about until this project and the if I end to use Unreal I will feel a lot more comfortable with using it. When modelling I might need to texture certain things in my future projects, so I can use the knowledge I have learnt from this project to create even better textures or even re-use these ones and improve them. I feel as though I have met all the targets on the brief but I tried putting a lot more detail in my work.

The only major problem was the VLC media corruptions, I had recorded a lot of work over this project but most of it wasn’t saved or most of the recording got corrupted so I missed out key parts and I was too far in to go back and start again. So I took a few screenshots every now and then to make sure but I have a decent amount of footage to prove the ways I did things. Every sped up video should be on my blog. The adobe premiere programme was very useful as I could speed up my videos and that made things a lot easier as I could also edit out unnecessary parts.

Looking back at my materials I have seen things I might want to change but I wouldn’t want to ruin them in case it didn’t look as good. The one texture I really wanted to create was a tree bark texture but from a photo they wouldn’t be tillable. I could have done one as experimentation but I didn’t think it would be necessary near the end of the project. Another texture I would have liked to attempt was a pure water texture but I looked up some videos on YouTube on how to create one and it looked very long winded and I wouldn’t have had enough time. I hope to maybe do one in a future project.

Overall this project was fun to do and it was very interesting since it was new to me. Although I found it tough and confusing at the start I finally got my head around it and used the research to my advantage to teach myself a bit more of how maps are made or how they’re used.

Hand Painted texture Assessment

textures I created was wood, rocks, water and hair

Peer Assessment comments-

- Really good texture design. Good blending, good use of opacity and others.

- Good use of brushes, use more variants of blue for sea.

- Rocks need a bit more detail.

- Wood texture is good but quite smooth, maybe add a little more detail with more grain.