Week 6 - Texturing the Models

It is time for the final step: texturing the models. I will start with the TIE Phantom. As seen in Fig.1, I have added several new details to the Phantom, as well as some basic Blinn shaders to set its colour scheme. in some cases (such as the cylinders in the wing mounts) I deleted some unnecessary polygons to save geometry.

Fig.1: The TIE Phantom with additional details and basic shaders

More advanced textures are added by applying individual shaders to each object to which I want to apply a texture. To make sure the texture is mapped properly to the object, I use the UV Texture Editor to edit the object's UVs (the vertices that the texture is wrapped around). Fig.2 shows the UV texture map for the main cockpit body (the front of the cockpit has already been mapped).

Fig.2: The UV texture map for the main cockpit, to which its texture will be applied. Note that only the sides are included in the UV map: the front and back (which are not visible) are not part of the map.

The textures themselves, due to my limited skills in Photoshop, are simply created using PowerPoint, with the reference images as a rough guide. Fig.3 shows the texture for the main cockpit (may be subject to change in the final model).

Fig.3

When I apply this texture to the model, what I get is this:

Fig.4: The model immediately after having the cockpit texture applied.

To fix this, I had to open the place2dTexture panel and manually edit the attributes of the shape until I had the desired appearance (as can be seen in Fig.5). I was also forced to rotate the shape itself to align the cockpit texture properly. I could have used the UV Texture Editor to accomplish this, but in all honesty, I forgot it even existed.

Fig.5: The cockpit once the texture has been repositioned.

The TIE Phantom model is now complete. The next model to be textured is the Y-Wing. This is a slightly more tricky model as there are several complex details that need to be added, but eventually, through use of planar mapping, I managed to get that done as well.

Fig.6: The fully-textured Y-Wing.

The TIE Defender is all that is left. However, this only requires two textures. One is the windscreen, for which I can simply use an altered version of the windscreen texture from the TIE Phantom.

Fig.7: The windscreen of the TIE Defender, an altered form of the TIE Phantom's windscreen.

Fig.8: The TIE Defender with the windscreen textured on

The second texture is applied to the base plate of the wing, to match the wings themselves. This texture was taken from the TIE Defender blueprints that I used as reference images, and can be found here: http://unusualsuspex.deviantart.com/art/TIE-D-Defender-ortho-415211443

Fig.9: The finished TIE Defender with textures added to the base plates

All three models are now more or less finished and textured. The final step will be to prepare my moodboard and storyboard, before making my final submission.