Week 6 - Gas Pump

This week we were tasked with recreating a Gas Pump from a Lynda tutorial - both modeling and texturing it but this time including normal maps. 

I started out very simply and just created the low poly model concentrating on keeping the detail there without using too many polygons to do it. 

After that, instead of using the Lynda tutor's workflow and creating the normal maps in Photoshop, I decided to use the method which we learned in lesson. So I created some high poly details so I could make a normal map from them. 

After I created all the high poly detail, I made the normal map in X-normal like we learned in the lesson.

After that I used the same workflow as in the tutorials and created a PSD network that I could work through then replaced the normal map layer with the one that I created in X-normal. I had some issues with creating the network as it is unable to do it if the 'sourceimages' folder hadn't already been created. Once I figured that out it was fine. 

Even though this method is quicker for going back and forth between programs, it is limited in the fact that you cannot use layer settings/styles to modify the textures the way you may want. In the future I may have my maps all in separate files and manually save and update them each time so I can get a more detailed result in the end.

After I sorted a couple of technical difficulties I then went about creating the textures. I found some nice paint textures and positioned them correctly so the seams would not me visible. I also added some effects like some subtle shadowing to get the final result.