SDK texturing; week 1

We were tasked to decorate a chosen SDK with a hand-painted texture.

Among the models we could use, I chose The Outlander. This model was one of the only realistically proportioned humans of the ones available, and I wanted to try organic texturing.

The model seems to be inspired by characters from such games as Gears of War (and by extension UT3). Here is the model without textures.

The amount of detail varies from part to part, depending on where it is on the model; for example the chest armour is fairly detailed, whilst the hip pouches are not.

When coming up with a general idea for my texture, I considered what kind of environment this character would be in based on their appearance. Considering the armour doesn't have a right arm and his hair is exposed, it's hardly likely that this character lives in anywhere cold (unless he's just hardcore like that).

There's also the original textures to consider. The original textures had a desert aesthetic to them (being made of beige and brown shades) and I wanted to deviate from this to avoid any similarities with the palette.


Instead, I opted for a more urban look, something that is a contrast to the colour scheme the author used, but one that could still make sense.

To start the texture, I used the ambient occlusion render to give me a sense of depth in conjunction with the UV map. Whilst most of this will have to be erased when I start to use other colours, it is a quick way of producing the primer layer. It can also help to distinguish decals which may have been made to work with the mesh but would have increased the amount of tris.

I repeated this for all three and then started experimenting with which colours would look good next to it. I tried various hues and found a shade of orange to work well with the blue.

The general colour scheme is coming together, but there are still two things wrong: The texture is too bland with just two tones, and the details are only there because of the AO map, which I cannot use in the texture.

To fix the two-toned palette, I loaded up Photoshop CS5 and made a camouflage texture using a plugin. The colours I chose would reflect the shade of blue I used for the base coat, but still leave plenty of difference.

As I said above, I think the author may have made these details from what he may have wanted to sculpt, but couldn't because of poly/ tricount issues. Not only that, but the details of what could be reinforced materials makes sense for the armour has made. Because of this, I have made my texture with some of these details in mind. This is the texture after adding gray highlights to some parts of the amour, along with black outlines to give the texture a cel-shaded effect.

Some parts have been drawn in according to the AO map, but are being treated as paint decals applied instead of being seperate faces like they seem to be on the AO map.

Camouflage was then applied along with shading to finish the torso model.