470 Sprint 5 Blog Post

     This sprint, I was assigned another set of objects to texture. First I worked on the chicken coop model, which was very enjoyable. I began by finding an appropriate wood texture for the main walls and roof. Next, I added  red and white fill layers to it, masking the white onto the trim by hand. This proved to be a bit time-consuming, but I'm happy with the results because the edges have very little texture bleeding. Finally, I was asked to add some dirt around the model,  and initially I attempted to use the dirt masks in painter to achieve this. However, with how small and low-poly the model is, I quickly realized manual dirt placement would be more effective. I created a brown fill layer, masked it, then drew the mask with a dirt grunge brush. I added less dirt the higher on the model you look, and I'm happy with how the final result turned out.

    Next I worked on the props and deactivated checkpoint textures. Our designer asked me to create a separate checkpoint texture for when it is deactivated, and this was a relatively simple task. As much as I wish we had a separate model for the sunflower to droop down, I understand that within our scope that isn't possible. For this reason, I determined it would be most effective to simply turn off the emissive layer on the sunflower, and make the colors of the model more pastel. This way, when the player activates it, the flower becomes much more vibrant, and the emissive activates, illuminating the area. The props I textured were the hay bale and the rock props. The hay bale was relatively simple, since I found a solid hay texture and drew a red nylon mesh texture over where the straps would be on the hay bale. For the rock I was initially satisfied with just a stone texture since players would not see it much, but I realized the texture needed some cartoon element to not stand out and break immersion. Thus, I added the cartoon filter effect on painter, and adjusted the setting to give the rock a much more cartoony look.

    After the sunflower and props, I worked on the remaining modular pieces for the sprint. First, I was tasked with creating new door textures with different emissive layer to indicate the necessary key. This seemed simple enough, but was a bit more complicated than I originally expected. Ordinarily, my workflow for a task like this is a bit slow, mostly because I have to upload three sets of textures to a few different places. When they are exported from painter I name them individually, and make sure they are on both Jira and our shared google drive. I did do this for the doors, but was met with an unexpected surprise: our designer had decided that instead of red, green, and blue we would use red, yellow, and orange for the doors/keys. I had not expected this, mainly because I have not been given a task to make the corresponding keys yet. I learned this after creating some door textures, so I had to re-export and rename the texture files. It took quite some time, but we were able to accomplish it in the end. 

The last thing I worked on in this sprint was the floor texture for the hedge maze. I was asked to make it look like dried leaves, so I added a grass texture with a brown, dirt-like fill layer painter over in certain spots. I wanted to have the floor texture to fit the modular scheme somewhat, so I made the dried leaves form a vague cross, meaning they would all connect together loosely to form "paths" if you will.