Post Review Thoughts

So we finally assembled our respective pieces into a single unit for our building, and now there are some thoughts about stuff & things that need to be added/changed/fixed, etc. Here's the list from top to bottom that we saw. 2nd floor/Roof Bar (AJ's Level):

1. Fixes
   1. The floor is crashing through the walls.
   2. The floor needs a texture.
   3. The brick on the exterior walls needs to mesh up with the brick on John's walls (increase the density of brick to make them smaller/more of them)
2. Additions
   1. Bridge to connect the landing pad to the roof bar
   2. The bar ...
      1. Bar
      2. Stools
      3. Beer cans
      4. Beer bottles
      5. Ash trays
      6. Cigarettes
      7. Tables
      8. Chairs
      9. Christmas lights
      10. Awning/cover
3. Suggestions
   1. The vigas are fairly large in diameter compared to real world, consider possibly scaling them down by about 20% - 40%

1st floor/General Store/SVC Bay (John's Level):

1. Fixes
   1. Textures added/fixed/cleaned up
      1. Interior is missing some textures & the textures seen need an increase in detail density (scale up)
      2. Doors
      3. Service Bay
         1. Floor texture needs to be the same as what's used in the basement for efficiency sake
         2. Collin wants utilized space reduced
   2. Windows need to be "bridged" to close off the holes
   3. Doors on the open spots
   4. Windows in the open spots
2. Additions
   1. {None @ this time}
3. Suggestions
   1. {None @ this time}

Basement/Store Room:

1. Fixes
   1. Back windows need alpha map to be translucent
   2. Basement window wells need to be completed
   3. Gratings need to be completed
2. Additions
   1. {None @ this time}
3. Suggestions
   1. {None @ this time}

Finishing Our Building

The ceiling of the basement & the floor of the main level are a series of 6 planes (5m x 5m). Each of those 6 planes consists of 4 separate planes (2 normals firing up & 2 down) to make a complete floor/ceiling for our building.

I found a wood floor texture on Mayang that I liked that had gaps between the planks, so I took it into Photoshop and selected all the space between the planks and rendered them black, then I got some help in making an alpha map to make the gaps transparent and loaded all that into 3D Studio Max, and since the texture was a 512 x 512 and the plane was a 5m x 5m square, the UVs didn't really need to be messed with ... just assemble, attach & group together. The render seen here is the resulting view from the basement looking toward the front door/window that you can somewhat see.

If I feel nutty I may use the Shift + Click & Drag to to add geometry to the planes and give the planks more depth, but for now ... done & done, moving on.

Introduction to UVMapping by Ben Tate

One of my classmates (also named Kyle) in VGA1 sent me the following eMail

This website has some excellent video tutorials for 3DsMax.

I found the Introduction to UVMapping by Ben Tate to be extremely helpful. Part 1 has three videos that takes every simple primitive and shows techniques to keep your textures distortion free.

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/an-introduction-to-uvmapping-in-3d-studio-max-using-the-unwrap-uvw-modifier/

Part 2 takes these concepts and applies them to a simple scene. It is six parts long.

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/an-introduction-to-uvmapping-in-3d-studio-max-using-the-unwrap-uvw-modifier-part-2/

This third tutorial shows how to bake a Normal Map using some new techniques.

http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-3d-studio-max/how-to-bake-a-flawless-normal-map-in-3ds-max/

...thanks "other" Kyle, these videos were definitely helpful.