Texturing and Foliage

I wanted my level to look mostly warm from the outside. With this in mind I chose to have wood as I felt that it was a natural way to achieve this look. From the photos I had gathered I had to tone up the colours as they were very dull in colour. I had manipulated my wooden texture to remove the seams and make it tile able as well as remove any obvious marks that could break the flow of the tiles and then de saturated the image. I continued to alter the colour by overlaying a warm brown. To add more detail to the texture, I had photographed images that had grime and dirt and de saturated and over layed it over the main texture to break up the look of it being clean.

With the coral textures initially had the idea of using either a brown, pinkish or grayish blue. , I didn’t want the colours to clash too much with the wood. After some testing I decided to use a blue tinted grey. The method is largely similar to that of what I did with the wood. I had photographed various natural objects and stone like objects and de saturated them, overlaying the colours and adding more textures for extra detail.

I held back on making it too blue prominent as I wanted the blue to shine in and nearer to the water rather than all over. I achieved this by making use of tinted blue lighting near the water surface so that it could affect all other colours around it.

Because the level is populated by many wooden objects, I didn’t want to have the wood looking too similar to each other. Adding in the palm tree texture helped to show more variety within many brown parts of the level. I alternated the use of palm true and wooden planks textures within small assets to show that the same kind of wood is being used to make other objects, making use of the resources near to them.

I didn’t want to make most objects very shiny as a lot of assets were dry wood. I held back with the specular levels with the wooden objects.

With some more unique textures overlayed colours with the brush to make it look painted and customised by the villagers. For the curtains I photographed towels and clothes for the fabric texture to help the player distinguish what kind of material it would be made from.

To help save texture space, I shared a few assets on one texture sheet is they did not have a need for one on their own. The texture space I allocated is mostly around 512 x 512, with a few exceptions being smaller or higher.

For the hay, I originally wanted to have many alphas to place around the level.

However it didn’t turn out the way I particularly wanted it and decided to change the approach. Using the bump maps, I was able to save myself from creating assets such as the ropes on the planks to save space.

I did however use alphas for the foliage populating the level. I chose to make a few types of plants and leaves so that I could mould them in engine to create plant life in that way.

Here are a few examples of  how I made use of my alpha plants: