Yr3 Week 2: WoW Diorama - I hate mud

This week I have spent finalising the concepts and model, unwrapping the model and beginning to texture. I was on track with my time schedules but unfortunately I've been having problems with textures and them just not coming out how I'd like as discussed later in this post, so I think I need to pick up the pace a little to make sure all of my textures are done in time!

I started off the week by doing a basic paint over of the design I had already modelled. Moving on to colour I decided to experiment with some brighter more colourful colours, as even though the area I was replicating is very neutral coloured, I was worried that this might make my diorama look a little boring, so tried my best to use striking colours whilst still using the vast majority of the colour scheme of the area in WoW.

After I had found a colour scheme I liked, I went on to create my final concept. I tweaked a few things in the concept, such as added a new tree to balance out the scene better, and also added a path to the stairs which is how I had originally intended the design to be. I think these two small changes helped to balance out the design well, and definitely improved the atmosphere of the scene.

I made some changes to my scene based on my modified concepts, creating a new larger tree which roots spread onto the island and add more character to the scene. Things such as the mud patch and the pathway will be added via texturing which is why they are not yet visible on the models. Once I was happy with the final model I unwrapped everything as efficiently as possible and tried to add similar things to the same texture sheets to save some space.

Texturing! This is where the fun begins...

As someone who usually quite enjoys texturing, I thought that a week and a half would be plenty to texture my model, as I have reused assets quite efficiently. However after spending the last two days trying to make a ground/mud texture, I have decided that texturing is awful and I am slightly concerned about how much time I have left.

As you can see, my first mud texture was awful and more resembled pieces of metal rather than mud. I was debating adding these images to my blog as they are so utterly bad, but I think it might be useful to show the development process I went through and hopefully I'll end up with something nice! But most likely my next iterations wont be any better and I'll just look silly.

After spending who knows how many hours on my first attempt, I decided to scrap it and started again. Although I am definitely happier with this version, I think it looks too chunky, the rocks are too apparent and I am not sure it works very well. It is definitely a step in the right direction but as it takes up such a large amount of my scene, this is something I want to get right along with the house and tree; making up the three main features.

I think for now as I am struggling so much with the texture, I am going to take a step back and move on to something else and come back to this later, as maybe once the rest of the scene is more complete it will give me a better feel for the texture. It is never good to keep doing something over and over when you are becoming increasingly more frustrated. I have a feedback session with my tutors this afternoon so I am hoping they can give me some advice on how to improve.