Hi, everyone. I recently came across an old model that I had been working on this time last year, but thought I'd lost to a hard drive failure. Well, I found a very early stage of the model on one of my flash drives, and thought it would be perfect to work on, and possibly release to the community, in time for the Halloween season. So I finished up the modeling and unwrapping of all the objects (this will actually consist of many objects, and become a fully immersive 3D environment), and moved on to texture painting and baking. Initially, I thought about using a lot of high detail sculpting, and baking out micro-displacement maps, to create a very detailed set. Of course, displacement can be very CPU and GPU intensive when rendering; in some cases, even more taxing than actual geometry. So I started playing with the idea of using all Normal maps instead. I took the models into 3D Coat, and started creating the maps. There will still be plenty of geometry used to complete this set, but so far, I've been very satisfied with the results that painted normal maps, all by themselves, have provided in conveying realistic detail.

Here's a few real-time screen shots of just a few of the objects in this set, with normal maps applied. You can see the underlying polygonal geometry in the wireframes.

Hope you like it so far. I'll post more of the models as I paint them. Once everything is done, I'll package and release the entire set for use in various rendering applications, including Daz Studio, Blender, Poser, etc.

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about this. Are we going to get some texturing vids?

Looking excellent so far. Is this acheavable only in 3D Coat??

Thanks, guys! Really making progress here. I think the hardest part will be packaging this whole set for redistribution in a timely fashion. This will probably be the single largest product I've ever put out to the community to date, so there's going to be a lot to consider here.

@ airflamesred: That's an interesting idea, Mark. I was thinking maybe a workflow video?

@ ldgilman: Normal maps can be created in almost any 3d software these days. Zbrush really pioneered the workflow I'm using here, and made it industry standard, but the technology to bake normal maps exists in most 3d software. I use 3d Coat primarily for its superior UV unwrapping algorithm (Global Uniform Unfolding), which works incredibly well for me on most models.

The textures on that first image look incredible, mate. Especially the stone wall. I'm assuming the other two objects will become part of that skull arch scene?

LuxXeon posted at 6:27PM Fri, 02 October 2015 - #4231964

@ airflamesred: That's an interesting idea, Mark. I was thinking maybe a workflow video?

I think that would be very usefull to all. Back in the day, one could cut, quite the dashing artist with your bump and specular maps. Of course, theses days you need normal, displacement and all kinds of things so perhaps an overview and 'when and why' to use.

I'm with airflamesred. I'd like to see your pipeline workflow at some point. In particular, how you use 3dcoat in your process. I've downloaded the 3dcoat demo, but I can pretty much do everything I need right in Blender at this point, so I'm not so sure 3dcoat would be worth it for me.

I know you like the modelling tools in 3dsmax most of all, John, but have you tried the uv tools in Blender lately? I found them even easier and much faster than 3dsmax, and Blender also has the same projection painting features as 3dcoat. Without sounding like a Blender fanboy, I'm just curious what keeps you from going all-in with Blender?

Here's a gate I modeled for the entranceway. This is a screen capture, with no maps applied, so the normals aren't visible here. I have the gate unwrapped, but I'm going to add some damage to the left side, and break some of the parts to create a worn look at the geometry level, then I'll do the rest of the detailing with normal maps and textures. You might be able to see a few gravestones I made back there in the distance as well. Polycount is still relatively low for a scene like this. I'm expecting it will not stay that way, however, once I begin adding smaller geometry details, like some blades of grass, and ivy branches.

I shall lookforward to the texturing on those gates.

Thanks, Mark! Here's the current texture. This screen capture has albedo, normal, and glossy maps.

Wow! The gate is looking awesome.

This is the stone threshold illustrated in the entrance wireframe a few posts above. It will be positioned in the mouth of the skull, as the support structure for the gates. I may add a few more details to the color layer, but otherwise, it's completed.

Very happy with the normal maps for that part. I was worried it wouldn't hold up to closeup scrutiny, but as long as the camera isn't directly on top of it, it's quite convincing.

Here's a close-up from the opposite side, near the top.

Daaannng. That's killer, Lux! Great details.

Here's some screencaps of the gravestones that will be included in this environment set:

And these:

More progress to come...

Last post for tonight. This is the "revised" version of the gates, after some tweaking to add bends and broken parts. I wanted them not only to look old, but damaged and weathered as well. These are just the screen captures, of course, showing the color (albedo) map, glossiness, and normal map, as well as the wireframe with normal map.

Things are coming together now. Once all these parts are complete, I'll put them together in the same scene, and make any adjustments to the maps, if necessary. Then, the final steps, once that part is done, will be to add the finishing details, like loose stones, debris, and ivy vines.

Sorry I had to abandon this thread for a while. Situations in life sometimes get in the way of progress. Anyway, I managed to model and texture a few more random objects for this scene. Here's just a few of them:

These objects will simply get instanced throughout the scene, placed here and there, to create the overall ambiance I'm looking for in this set. A few more objects I've created for this scene include various stones, rocks, and a spooky tree. I may post those here as well, but I'm trying to get this set complete for a release sometime this month, before Halloween.

I've gone back and re-painted the textures on a few of the gravestones, adding more detail, and creating details that will help blend the objects with the main set more fluidly. Here's an example:

I began piecing all the elements back together into one unified scene tonight. This is the most difficult and time consuming part, as everything will need to be exported and packaged for redistribution in a logical and easy to use way. I don't believe I'll be able to offer this set as a standalone OBJ. There's just going to be too many maps and objects to consider. OBJ will only allow you to define the import of color, bump, and specular maps. This set will contain color, normal, specular, and glossy maps for each object. There would be at least 3 maps per object that the user would need to add manually to the associated OBJ, and materials would need to be adjusted, in order to render as intended. This doesn't seem very realistic to expect of users. So, once this set is finished, I think the only way I'll be able to offer it is native .max and .blend file formats. I'm looking into supporting Daz Studio with Iray materials as well, but I have no idea how to redistribute native files in that package.

Amazing models and textures, Luxxeon! Very impressive. As far as the obj thing is concerned, I'm sure most people wouldn't mind adding the maps themselves if they had this great model to play with, but yes, there are a lot of folks who wouldn't bother I'm sure. I'd LOVE to see you release this as a native .blend file, with Cycles for the textures and materials! Now that would be exciting.