Since I received a couple of requests for a small texturing tutorial and I had a bit of time at my hands, here is a small, hopefully helpful, example...
This is the example of how I textured my TMP-Enterprise, focusing on a part of the top saucer.
First is of course the UV layout. The top saucer including the rim is split in two texture sets, each 4096x4096. The whole ship has about 7 of these sheets, plus all the registry and decals. Of course not every ship needs this large amount of textures, but I love to get pretty close to my ships and hate it when textures get blurry.
You can see that I did not just map the saucer from the top, but rather cylindrical (in fact, it is done with a spherical projection). This way, you get sharper textures, no jaggies on the small panel lines and the aztec pattern.
Also, you get a bit more texture space for the elements. The downside is that itA’s not that easy to get battle damage and such stuff on a specific point on the texture. I usually use transparent extra geometry/textures for that, like the NCC registry.
IA’ve coloured some example areas. The lighter areas are the same as the darker areas, they get reused.
Once this is done and all nicely layed out, the next step prior to actual texturing is baking out an ambient occlusion pass. For one, this provides a nice guideline when texturing - plus I tend to mix the ambient occlusion part to a certain degree (about 30-40%) into the color pass.
EDIT: The uploader swapped the pics, so the first pic is always on the right, the second to the left. Just to avoid confusion when reading the text...
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Below the AO and UV layer, you add a color layer and color the sections of your texture the way needed. I found that subtle colors work a lot better in terms of a realistic appearance then very saturated ones, but that depends on your ship.
The next step are some basic panel lines - in the case of the Enterprise the main paneling. This is a seperate layer as well.
The aztec pattern is the most tedious part in creating Trek ships. I usually make a basic pattern with the main and second pattern, then duplicate that and use it as guide (IAâve included it in a small section). The bigger lines will serve as small panel lines as well as borders or darker plates. The finer lines will serve as borders for the subtle plating applied later.
Once the lines are done, the areas that should get darker are selected and slightly darkened. This will work for most ships already. But if you want to get further, you can add the subtle plating as well...
As you can see, there is not much difference in the actual color sheet, but these plates will come out very nicely in the specular map.
In the final stage, some underlying structure is added (I tend to use some metal plates photograhics that are made tileable and very much toned down) as well as all sorts of small decals (arrows, red rings around position lights, warnings, red stripes, and so on) and some dirt (e.g at exhaust ports) - all again on seperate layers.
For the spec pass, I increase the contrast and saturation on the plate layers with an adjustment layer, add more of the underlying structure and tone down the color map.
Same approach is used for the bumpmap - here, mostly the panel lines are used, with a very subtle amount of plates and even less structure.
ThatAâs how it looks in the final render. I hope this insight was a little helpful.
Ad astra
Tobias
and now... I have to work ...
I so have to try this method now.
Thanks, Tobias!
... could you tell me how you do the occlusion on the lights again?? Please...
Hope that helps...
I noticed that with this and the Kelvin that you break the saucer into several distinct sections. I can see the advantage of this for TMP and TNG ships. But what would you do with a TOS saucer (or secondary hull) where you have a large smooth surface without obvious places to hide texture seams? Thanks in advance.
Various Work: U.S.S. Constellation - Matt Jefferies Concept Shuttle
Regarding your spec maps, if I am understanding your tut correctly, you are using maps for spec intensity but not for spec color. Is that the case? I ask only because the painter of the original model has written that he used pearlescent paints that had about seven different specular colors, ranging from green to blue to pink. Did you do anything with spec color, or just spec level? Or are you duplicating ILM's redone paint scheme?
Thanks in advance.
-JL