Iterations & Textures...... Oh how its changed!!

So this week was a tough, hard-working one! One in which I re-modelled, unwrapped and started to texture my shop front!

Progressing from last week, I decided to work up the front of the shop. This included creating the doors and windows to fit the style, something I found rather difficult. I found it tricky due to the fact that my idea was influenced by everyone else’s ideas and it morphed into something else, I couldn’t see what my final idea would look like and this made it hard to create.

So the most logical answer to this was to go backwards and redo the shop front again, however this also would set me back a day or two... so I did!

I started off by looking at the shape of my shop, looking for a way to integrate the shop front. I was informed that it looked quite grungy, un-sturdy yet balanced. This made me realise where it would be located. I always assumed it would be in a place where blue collar workers would work, something like miners or junkyard workers.

It hit me! The front of my shop was too clean and looked out of place and made the shape seem unstable due to the fact that the shop front was small compared to the wooden base, making it seem like a 5-story high building. To fix this I decided to take the barrel drum shape and re-use it to make the shop front. This made it look more fluid and impactful.

This also played on the grungy theme as it seems rusty and chaotic.

After playing around with some door styles beforehand, I realised that it could be broken or assorted metal panels that hold it together, similar to the wooden base. This got me thinking of can-openers and how some are clean cut yet others are give serrated and jagged edges, what if my door was jagged like that of a can opener?

From here I decided to work up the door idea and place it on the building.

The changes made it clearer and made the overall more iconic, before it seemed chaotic and obscure and did not fit well. The design seems more composed and structured and fits a theme and narrative.

Moving on I decided to create seams and corrugated metal boards that hold the front and back end of the shop together as well as a pair of wrecked, wonky, wooden ladders, this adds to the grungy style and follows the theme.

Moving on I decided to unwrap the whole thing onto two separate 1024 texture sheets, this allows me to have some space for smaller assets as well as leaving space for some interior assets I m yet to make.

I decided to keep the wood and pie on one texture sheets whilst having the metal on another texture sheet. I started with the later.

Hand painting metal textures was tedious! At first I was having a hard time creating good quality, rough yet impactful metal textures, for this I decided to go back to my mood boards and studied Ian Mcque’s ships and how he painted rough metal.

I embraced his ideas and themes and started to move forward with the style, creating dents, leaks and subtle changes in the metal and pipes.

At the end of this week I feel I am in a good spot, (knock wood!) I have textured half of my scene and got it in engine with a week to spare, this gives me the weekend and the Monday to finish of the exterior and move onto the stretch goals of the interior as well as some smaller assets for the outside.

Until then!

Thanks for reading

Haz