In Progress #14

I've been messing around with the interior textures, adding normal maps for some materials and special properties to others, like gloss and cube maps. I've also been making some props for the lounge, though the textures for those aren't done so I'll reserve posting those until tomorrow.

Kinda wanted to show off the normals on the wallpaper, I'm quite proud of the effect even though it's fairly simple. The basic effect is a sort of rippled wallpaper, like it's soaked up some water. The second effect gives the impression of it "warping" or "bubbling" from the water, something I've seen first hand at home;

In Progress #13

The core of the exterior is now done and in engine, with tiling textures forming the majority of the diffuse maps. While not visible in the playable area, the rear of the ship is present, so that the ship still retains a form when viewed from cinematic angles. 

I've settled on a night-time lighting setup, with man made lights illuminating the vast majority of the ship. The idea here is that, despite being abandoned, the ship still feels "lived in", which hopefully will add a weird vibe. Also, it helps bright the overall lighting level up, as a dark level isn't fun to explore.

The side of the ship is modelled and playable, you can get to the top floor using the staircase here. Strictly speaking most cruise ships don't have a side that works like this, but it was something I wanted from the start.

The interior geometry is all in now, and is unwrapped. Each area will have unique patterns and colours, but currently they all use the same as I unwrapped each section one after the other, and used the lounge set as reference for the unwrap.

The lounge area, the first interior segment.

This corridor simply connects the lounge to the dining hall.

The dining hall, minus the decorative columns (which I forgot to unwrap, dammit)! This area will soon be full of set tables and fabulous decorations.

On the top floor resides the captain's quarters and the bridge. The bridge is only half unwrapped currently, I underestimated how much there is to unwrap there.

In Progress #12

I've been assembling the first two rooms of the interior these past few days, seen above in unlit mode because I'm having a headache trying to get my lightmaps to work correctly. It's seriously causing me some trauma, I've made sure they're unwrapped with no bleed or overlap, and that the density is good.. but still no dice. 

Getting there though. I just need to stop pissing about with stuff that ultimately doesn't get used, such as all the time I wasted today trying to fix lightmaps. I lost a lot of time last week trying out different unwrap methods for the exterior, which is time I could've been using better.

Got the dining hall all setup for unwrap tomorrow, so that's my job for the morning. I'm shattered right now so I'm going to drink some tea and relax!

Edit: Actually, I should point out that I forgot to unwrap the bar in the lounge. Hence why it looks like poop. That's something I'm gonna have to get around to tomorrow too.

In Progress #11

So yeah, it's been a while since I made a post, and there's a reason for that. Progress has been slow, almost painfully so, and it's kinda demoralising. Still, made progress finally.

It's taken me a fair few tries to get my head around how best to unwrap the ship. At first I tried to use Vertex Painting to break up the large spaces, but I felt it lacked specific detailing. Then I tried using unique textures for each segment, which not only required multiple large sheets but gave low texture resolution. Eventually I settled with a reworking of the vertex painting method using a blend of 3 textures instead of 2, which creates a better look. I might go back and compress this back into two, but for now, I like the 3. Most of the ship uses a tiling texture and vertex painting to mix, using a blend texture. The hull uses a tiling texture that tiles only horizontally, and the staircase along the side uses it's own texture.

In Progress #10

It's nearly 4AM so I'll keep it sweet. Texturing is taking agees.

In Progress #9, Exterior (modelling) done

I say done, there are some parts I'm planning to revisit but for now I'm marching on in the hopes of making progress.

So yeah, I've unwrapped the bottom of the hull and slapped a quick placeholder texture on it for now. I'm still undecided about whether to go with the white/red colours or the more rusted orange/blue of the SS America, so that's something to experiment with in the future.

I originally unwrapped the hull in such a way that it would use a tiling texture at a 1x2 ratio, like a 1024x2048 texture. The texture tiled horizontally, not vertically. However this allowed for virtually no unique elements, it had to be uniform to avoid artefacts. So here I tried unwrapping the ship fully onto a 2x1 sheet (it's currently 4096x2048 but it'll probably be knocked down from that). This allows for fully unique detailing, but it's not very efficient and requires it's own, high resolution sheet.

I'm still debating which method (tiling or unique texture sheet) to use for the hull, so I'll carry on experimenting with it.

In Progress #8

Today I worked on the side of the ship. I created the side rail (barely visible here, unfortunately) for the ship,  the staircase and platforms for each deck, and the lifeboat cages. 

What's left? I've just got to work on the top of the ship, and then I'll be done with the front segment. Then I'll start modelling the rear segment, which has far less detail for several reasons; it is not visible from the front deck or any of the playable space, and unlike the front of the ship it's not designed for accessability.

An important thing to note here is that every ship I've looked at is different. Most don't even allow passengers to walk along the side of the ship, however this is something I planned to do from the start, so I kept it in. What I'm going for is a mix of, say, the Duke of Lancaster and the SS America, with hints of the MS Expedition.

Not much further to go now until I can start texturing. That's where this'll all finally come to life! :)