Adding Lights

I now wanted to add some lights to my scene in preparation for the animation. I needed to add some lights in otherwise at certain angles, my scene would be in darkness.

In order to add lights in, I went to the 'Create' menu option at the top. I then chose 'Standard Lights', and 'Omni' from the list of lights available. I chose Omni because I wanted the first light to be at the top of the sky dome to emit a general light across the whole scene. 

Once I'd chosen the light I wanted to use, I clicked on the screen to place it. I then used the 'Move' tool to position the light in the very top, in the centre of the sky dome. 

Now that my light was in the correct position, I played around with some of the settings to make it how I wanted. At first when I added the light it was so bright that it made my lava look almost yellow, which is not the effect I was after at all. I wanted to change the colour of the light so that it was perhaps a reddish/orangey colour as that was the colour of the sky I had used. I though that by using this colour to light the scene it would add to the volcanic planet feel and create the right mood. 

After I'd played around with the colours, I decided against using a dark or vibrant red as this had too much of an impact and looked dramatically over the top. I played around with the 'Multiplier' option too as this altered the intensity of the light. Eventually, I decided on keeping the 'Multiplier' option at '1.0' and instead went for a light reddy pink colour. This emitted a slightly reddish tint over the scene, which worked well and wasn't too over the top but just right. 

Also, I clicked on 'Exclude' in the panel which opened a new window:

In this new window, I selected my sky dome and clicked 'Exclude'. I had to do this in order to get the light to emit correctly within the sky dome.

Now that I had finished creating the light for the sky dome, I wanted to add another omni light but this time to the lava. I thought I would add an omni light to the lava because lava naturally emits so much light so I felt it would be good to include this.

Like before, I selected an 'Omni' light from the Lights options and placed it on the lava. I made sure to position it roughly in the centre of the lava plane, slightly above the lava. 

After I'd adjusted the settings slightly, I decided on using a pale orange colour and kept the 'Multiplier' at '1.0' intensity. I tried darker shades of orange but I felt that it was too much. The lighter shade gave just enough colour to make the lava look like it was almost glowing.

I was almost tempted to put a light in each of the volcanoes, so it looked like the lava was emitting a certain amount of light. However, when I tried this I didn't think it was necessary because the volcano tops were quite bright now I had added light to the scene anyway. 

Adding More Volcanoes

I decided to add a few more volcanoes into the scene to build up the surroundings a bit. I felt that the sides were looking a bit bare and this wouldn't occur in a real setting as you would be able to see in the distance and so on. Also, there was some empty space around my lava plane, and between my sky dome. I needed to make sure this was filled because I didn't want it to be seen in the final animation. 

I simply cloned one of the volcanoes in the scene and positioned them around the lava plane accordingly. I made sure that they were all different slightly by adjusting their scale, making some slightly taller and others wider.

By the time I'd finished, I had volcanoes going all the way around the plane. However, some of these I used to create more of a mountainous feel instead. For example, some of the volcanoes I made sure were positioned more outside the sky dome so you could only see the side, which made them look more like mountains. This worked well as it built up the scenery more without making the volcanoes look over done.

Importing My Ships

Now that my models were completely textured, I wanted to import them all into one file. I decided to import them into the file I had been using to create my volcanic scenery.

Before I imported both the ships, I wanted to group all the components in each together first. This was to avoid altering the ship in the final file when moving them around for animation. 

To group the objects together I simply made sure all the components were selected. I then went to the menu at the top and clicked on 'Group' then the 'Group' option.

My objects were now all grouped together into one.

I was now ready to import the ships into the Volcano file. To do this, I clicked on the 3ds Max icon in the top left hand corner. I then clicked on 'Import' and then 'Merge', and selected the appropriate file.

I had now imported my ships successfully. 

I did have to resize both ships slightly as they were rather small in comparison to the volcanic scenery I'd made. I simply used the 'Scale' tool at the top to adjust them accordingly. 

Texturing My headhunter Part 7 - Wing Guns

When creating my UV map for the final part of my ship, the Wing Guns, I looked through some of the different settings that were available when creating the map. I came across a different way of mapping out the UV map so it was more logical to see the different parts of the section. I went to the top menu option called 'Mapping' and selected 'Flatten mapping' option available.

This displayed the different faces of the shape so it was clear which part was what. This would probably have been a better way to map out all of my objects when creating textures for them as it was more clear. However, I had no time to go back and re do all the textures I had created so that they followed this style of mapping instead. Besides, I'd already textured the different sections of the models how i'd wanted them anyway so it was not necessary to re do all my work. 

For the final section of my ship, I decided to use this different style of mapping. Here is what the UV map looked like this time:

Once I'd Imported the texture into Photoshop, I loaded up the metal texture I had been using in a different Photoshop Window. 

To begin with, I got the 'Pen' tool and carefully drew round the first (top) map face of the cylinder. As soon as I had done this I copied it and pasted it into the window with the metal texture in it. I made sure the texture image was selected and copied it so that it would only select the texture within the area I had pasted in. I then pasted the cut out of the texture onto the UV map. It didn't matter that some of the texture spread outside of the green lines as these bits would not be shown anyway. 

As soon as I had the first texture positioned in the correct place, I copied it and pasted it onto the map below as it had the same shape. I then followed the same technique to fill the two remaining faces. 

Now that they all had the basic metal texture on them, I wanted to add some more detail in to make then stand out. For the back half of the cylinder, I got the 'Box' tool and created a reasonably thick long horizontal box in the top texture. I then created a thick vertical box that was positioned going through the middle of the previous box. This created a cross shape. I merged these two boxes together and duplicated the layer three times and positioned them on the other three faces. I thought this would be enough detail for the back as I didn't want to go too overboard. 

After I had completed the texture for the back half of the cylinder, it was now time to create the front half. On the first face, I got the 'Box' tool again and drew three black vertical boxes which I made sure were evenly spaced out.  I then got the 'Line' tool and drew two thin horizontal lines going down the middle, through the vertical lines. I merged these layers and then, like before, I duplicated it three times and positioned them on the remaining faces. This gave a kind of mesh effect going round the cylinder, which I thought looked quite appropriate considering it was a weapon.

On the pointed front part of the cylinder I simply drew a thin black line going along the middle, using the 'Line' tool. I copied and pasted this on all the other faces too. I felt this was just enough detail for such a small part. The line almost created an indent feel on the texture, which added to the weapon style I was going for.

The only parts of the cylinder that remained to be textured was the two ends. For these, I got the 'Brush' tool and selected a vibrant red colour. I then drew around and filled the two end circles. I chose this colour because I wanted to add a slight bit of colour to the texture just to make it stand out. It worked especially well for the front point of the cylinder as the red made it look deadly. For the back larger circle, I got the 'Ellipse' tool and drew a small black circle within the area, and then with the brush tool I made a small red dot in the middle. I did this because I felt leaving this part completely red would be too bland. 

Here is what the final texture looks like:

Here is what the texture looks like on the ship:

Texturing My Headhunter Part 6 - WindShield

Once I'd imported the Wind shield cylinder UV into Photoshop, I imported the metal texture too.

I then just created one large black box across the image, on the top half. This bit was to create the windshield. I left a slight bit of space either side of the box so that there was a line down the middle of the window, to create a split screen. I didn't want to add any detail to this section of the ship as it wasn't necessary as all I wanted was to show the window.

Here is what the final texture looks like:

Here is what the texture looks like on the model:

Texturing My Headhunter Part 5 - Smaller Engine Cylinders

Once I'd imported the engine cylinder UV into Photoshop, I then added the metal texture to it so that it matched the rest of the ship.

I then drew a very thin black box that stretched across the very top of the image. This made the front tip of the cylinder black as I didn't want to use the metal texture here, and thought the black would distinguish it more and draw more emphasis to the hole I'd created at the front of the cylinder.

After this, I drew another thin box across the bottom of the image and filled it a bright red colour. I created a slightly thicker line directly above it and made it black. This made the very back tip of the cylinder bright red, which I thought was appropriate as they should have some kind of flame coming out of them to make that would cause them to become hot and burn red slightly. I made the next line black too simulate a kind of blackened ash effect on the metal.

On my cylinder there is a part which is indented slightly which I wanted to draw attention to and make it different to the rest of the cylinder. Because of this, I decided to draw a thick black box across the lower top half of the image, where the indent was. I made sure it was wide enough to fully cover the area of the indent. I then wanted to add a little more detail to draw even more attention and to get more of a mechanical feel again. I did this by creating reasonably thin grey boxes within the black box, that were positioned vertically. I made sure they were positioned equally apart too. 

Now that I had textured the indented part of the cylinder completely, I wanted to texture the remaining front half of it as I didn't want to leave it empty with just the metal texture. Because of this, I went on to create six quite thick, vertical black boxes along the very top half of the image that was empty. I made sure they were positioned fairly evenly. I then went on to use the 'Box' tool again to create various lines  and small boxes in the spaces between the large black boxes I'd made. I made this detail random as I didn't want it to look too structured. 

On the remaining bottom half of the image, for the back half of the cylinder, I wanted to add some different detail of some kind so that it wasn't similar to the detail at the front. I eventually decided that I would completely fill the area with varying vertical lines. I still decided to keep using the 'Box' tool to do this as it gave me more freedom as to the width I wanted the lines, rather than having to keep adjusting the width at the top with the 'Line' tool. I went on to draw vertical lines across the image, making sure the lines were different from each other by making some thinner than others and longer etc. 

Firstly, I drew a thin black box at the very top of the image. 

Here is what the texture looks like on the ship:

Texturing My Headhunter Part 4 - Engine

Once I'd imported the Engine UV into Photoshop, I added the metal texture on to it. 

Firstly, I selected the 'Box' tool and created a thin black box at the very top, that stretched across the image. This would be the part of the engine that connects onto the body of the ship so I wanted to make the join stand out slightly to emphasise the different parts.

Just underneath I drew another thin box, only this time I filled it with a light grey colour to show some contrast. I then created another box underneath, but made it slightly thicker this time and filled it with a bright red. This created a vibrant strip round the engine and really highlighted this part of the ship to make it stand out. 

On the bottom of the image, I created another box that stretched across the image which I made a dark grey colour. I then made another box that was thinner and black. This made a strip at the back of the engine. I wanted to add more detail to this so it looked like it had strips of metal and detail going around it. I simply did this by getting the 'Line' tool, making sure it was quite thin, and then drawing small lines vertically within the black line. I did this a couple of times before merging the layers and then copying and pasting them and so on, several times until the entire black box was filled evenly. 

After this, I went on to create two thin boxes across the image horizontally, that were above the two bottom boxes. I made one line black and the one above a brightish red colour, just to add a little more detail. 

The last thing I went on to create was some vertical boxes either side of the image, that would stretch along the cylinder to add to the mechanical feel. I did this by getting the 'Box' tool and selecting a dark grey colour.  I then positioned the box evenly in the middle of the open space, on the left hand side. I copied and pasted this two times so that I had three boxes spaces evenly on the left side. 

I went on to add some detail to the boxes. On the one closest to the edge, I created four thin, light grey lines using the 'Line' tool; two at the top and two at the bottom. For the other two boxes, I drew A smaller, light grey box within them. I then merged all the layers together into one and copied and pasted it in order to create the right hand side. Once pasted, I rotated the layer using the option 'Transform - Rotate' from the top menu, and rotated it 180 degrees. I made sure to position the layer as far right as possible so that it matched and was aligned to the other side. 

Here is what the final texture looks like:

Here is what the texture looks like on the model: