Wood Pallet Model

Decided to try out some wood texturing.  So I made a low-poly model, a high-poly model and baked the normal maps.  I also found that modeling the nails separately and baking it onto a plane to get the normal (which I then overlayed onto the normals of the pallet in photoshop) was a far more efficient method than actually modeling the nails on each plank of wood.

Finished Dumpster?

I think it's done.  I might tweak a thing or two for portfolio use.  I included the diffuse/spec/normal maps.  All photo source textures were taken from cgtextures.

More Dumpster Normals

The past few days have been filled with normal map issues and research and successes followed by more problems.  I understand them a lot better now, but it doesn't excuse my lack of experience with them.  I need more practice.  I finally managed to get some decent bakes out of XNormal using custom cages imported out of 3dsmax (mainly because making them in XNormal was kind of a pain for anything involving more than just a cage push.)  I ran into issues regarding exporting custom cages out of 3ds max, but I finally managed to figure it out.  Anyways I'm getting pretty excited about texturing, I've spent this entire week teaching myself about normal maps... I need an artistic break from all that theory.

My First Victory against Normal Maps!!!

I finally got a result that did not display those horrible black edges!!!  It was a combination of setting up a cage in XNormal, finding out that max uses X+Y-Z+ swizzle in the tangent space (although I was fixing the green channel in PS anyways before I knew this), and that the low-poly cage had to be pushed to the point where the high-poly is covered.

This is the result I baked straight out of XNormal, I didn't edit anything in PS.

Dumpster High-Poly Sculpt Test

Did a quick little test of the dumpster again in mudbox (just to get a better idea of the final result, I plan on resculpting most of the parts and spend more time on them).  I will probably have to alter the low-poly to include some of the dent geometry from the high-poly.  I overdid the wear and tear on the side attachment pieces, so I'll probably hold back a bit when I work on the next version (though I'd imagine that those pieces would contain the most wear and tear based on their outer location and the fact that those pieces are what the trucks grab onto).

Dumpster High-Poly

Working on the high-poly version of the dumpster.  I had a few problems with the side attachments (where the truck grabs the dumpster to lift it up), in that I had to separate the triangle supports from the main side piece.  It look weird, I may have to go back and fix it if the baking doesn't work out too well.

Dumpster Low-Poly Practice

I wanted to try making an entire video game asset from low-poly to high-poly, to baking and texturing.  Dumpsters seem to be the typical beginner exercise for these sorts of things.  Here's a low-poly.  I think I might be able to optimize it more as I think the tri count is a little high right now.