current “finished project”
(It was just a fuel refinery as finished project, but then I decided to add the foundry to this thread as well… may add more in the future, or start a new WIP for the units I am about to start on.)
For a game, realtime views, texture is 1024x1024, no overlapping so I can do a normal map later.
Untold hours, prototype structure. But now I think it’s done. 
No crit on the model and the fake depth texures. Looks really good.
The one thing that seems unfinished is the lack of coloured textures.
I don’t think you need normal mapping imho.
anywhwere where you would suggest more color?
I tried to add color, but looking at referene pictures, the color of choice of fuel refineries and all their piping, containers, and smokestacks, is white. They are really drab places.
I gratuitously through in the rusty colors, just to get a little red/brown in there.
I wanted more color too, but in the end, could not figure where to put it. I was thinikning of making all the pipes, trusses and tanks that light surgical green, allthough I think that is usually the color for water pipes and tanks.
looks good man, for more color, you could add some stenciled numbers, or stripes, or rectangles with numbers or letters inside. also, if you made it a shade or two lighter, the rust would stand out more. you could also put the occasional bird poop splat to break it up. nice texturing.
Great texturework you got there! Love it!
I would like to see a render of it though (Just for fun)
the mesh is ok, but the texture lacks resolution, details and contrast. You have to keep in mind that the shadowed parts of your model will be lit in game-engines, so the shadowed parts of your texture should be way darker than for regular renders.
Baking render to texture isn’t sufficient, you have to play with exposure afterwards.
yes, assuming there will be a light that does more than cast shadows.
For normal mapping, there has to ba a light, but then again, normal mapping mixed with shadow I think would give more depth, but not AO, in which case, I’d have to definitely contrast the shadows.
I still have the base texture, which is very dark, for this very reason. There will be alot of tweaking indeed, in fact, I intend to redo the whole bake all over again anyway, because when the base is occupied, lights are supposed to turn on, and for the smoke stacks encased in the steel trusses, baking with anything but the highpoly model would expose them for the simple boxes they are.
eh… I am new to this game making stuff. I always hope I am done, but you are right, I’ll probably need to bake again.
that’s what photoshop adjustement layers are for. Compose your different textures with that and then you can tweak colors/lighting without having to restart from scratch.
you can bake your lights on a 50%gray texture then put it on an overlay-layer, then you can still work on your textures and details without having to bake on each change.
I was thinking of making a “shadowmap” in this fashion.
EDIT: or maybe I’ll layer a radiosity bake on top of a BRayBake… the BRayBake eliminates seams, but a radiosity bake does well in smoothing edges…
…or is there a better way to smooth edges. I really don’t know, I have been doing low-poly since I started using Blender, and have only recently been getting into the high-poly techniques to bake onto the low-polys.
how did you UV map the model?
map as you model?
LCSM?
texture baker auto-unwrap?
I LSCM UV mapped it part by part, and then when I was done I used the Lkey in edit mode to select linked vertices, went into UV face select, and started to do the “patchwork” of moving all the pieces around to make them fit on the UV map, being surre to give more space on the UVmap for parts that had more detail.
I had used the archimapper on alot of the parts, but it did not do the job I needed it too, since some parts were more important, and there fore, were given more space on the UV map. When using macounos BRayBaker, keeping everything the same size is not that imprtant… it is better to make areas of high detail get more of the UV map.
going to expand:
Blocky rusty thing is an “armor foundry”, with 2250 triangles.
The textures are too blurred; maybe try turning down the filter value in the texture buttons.
Otherwise, it looks nice!
-Obiwan
Filter value in the texture buttons? Is that when I am making the UV map, or just when I am applying hte materials to the hi-poly model?