Honours Blog - Buildings - Week 2

31/10/2022 - 6/11/2022

via BlackCountryMetalWorks I want to be able to showcase the style and feeling I am going for within this project pretty early on, so I thought that texturing a small prop such as a post box would be a perfect way to show my approach.

Above, I made 40 alpha images that I can use in Substance Painter of my favourite brush I use in my painting program. I've used this brush for years and I really adore it for adding texture. I'm really looking forward to using it in my texturing because I think it will add a unique geometric effect, and some of the alphas have a watercolour border to them as well. I think it will create a good contrasting feeling with the square brushes and the wonky models I plan to make. Since these alphas have varying levels of opacity as well, I plan to have the different tones be differing values, tones, and colour which I think will end up creating a nice variation that'll look like 2D watercolour.

Firstly, I made a simple post box model in Maya and kept it relatively low poly, only adding bevels along edges that I need to create a nice silhouette. Since I am inspired by Overwatch for this project, all of their smaller props like these are also relatively low-poly for optimisation so I didn't want to go too overboard too. I made sure to make multiple saves/duplicates of this model along the way, such as a bevelled and non-bevelled version, and a straight and wonky model. Above I have also shown the wireframe and the UV.

Here is the finished post box textures, with 2 red and blue colour variants as well. Above is a gif showcasing how lighting reacts too.

I am hoping that, because I have now made this small prop to demonstrate the style I want to achieve, it will be a lot easier in the future for myself because I have something to refer to. The brush alphas I made should also make this workflow a lot easier.