Intro
UV unwrapping refers to representing the 3D mesh on a 2D plane in order to make it easier to apply textures to the model. It is necessary for high quality assets to ensure any texturing done will wrap around the object in a realistic and seamless manner. I had no experience with any kind of UV work prior to this assignment so initially I found it quite hard to understand and in my opinion the maya interface proved to be quite unintuitive when it came to trying to figure out where certain uv tools were and which of them I needed to use.
UV Unwrapping
For this reason I stuck to mostly using the preset uv unwrap options for some of the more complex meshes in my asset. These options are provided by maya as a quick fix or base templates off of which modifications are later made to better suit the mesh. For the simpler shapes I used the ‘Automatic’ unwrap followed by sewing the edges together in a way which would ensure any texture I placed on it would correctly wrap around the mesh.
Despite struggling with the more complex shapes I still ensured there would be no obvious seams in the meshes, no overlap between different textures, as little deformation as possible and I checked that my texel density was consistent across all of the uvs.
Texturing
For the texturing process I used Substance 3D Painter which let me apply materials and textures to my object. To do this I used multiple folders with black masks each covering one segment of my asset. This let me assign a material or texture to a specific part of the asset without it affecting the whole thing. For the materials themselves I ended up using a few combinations of metals, for the base of the helmet I used 30% titanium for the base, 50% silver to better match the colour that I had in mind and then a few subtle bits of texturing to emphasise the metallic qualities of the materials.
The stone was made partially off of a glass material along with aluminium anodized red, the trim was made with bronze colour as well as a bit of leather texturing. The rest of the ornaments were made with the gold armour material and undertones of copper.