Its been a slow two weeks sorting out the materials and textures for Big Bertha's bogey. Every time I do this I think I can do better but always revert to a collection of colour blocks with textured effects. I did use an Auran trick of using oily/grease circles to give the effect of leaking grease around bearings. The final material is a tbumpenv with a normal map. Both the diffuse and normal textures have alpha channels. I had wanted to use a reflect for some parts, including the rims, but that gives a peculiar display at night. Given that Big Bertha will come with a spotlight, I expect that users will want the spotlight shining and not the wheels!
Once the materials were sorted, I spent quite a lot of time mirroring the mesh and animation to the right hand side. The meshes are easy but the animation was a bit tricky given that the animation is out of phase from the left by 270 degrees (or minus 90). I only have a drawing of BB's right side so I hope I got the layout and animation correct.
While I was mirroring the meshes and the animation, it occurred that this was yet another subject worthy of a tutorial. When copying these things, the meshes sometimes appear to leap way out of position but I discovered a way of recovering this situation so they jump to their expected mirrored location.
Here is a pic of the final (I hope!) version of BB's bogey as a scenery object and a pic of the bogey with BB's body. The body has been unchanged for weeks so bits still need to be mirrored as well as a decent material applied.
Now I'm going back to work on the main body including texturing. Some parts still have a mirror modifier pending so they need to be textured before that can be applied. I need to make a few backups here as I want to texture Big Bertha in a couple of versions.
Once the materials were sorted, I spent quite a lot of time mirroring the mesh and animation to the right hand side. The meshes are easy but the animation was a bit tricky given that the animation is out of phase from the left by 270 degrees (or minus 90). I only have a drawing of BB's right side so I hope I got the layout and animation correct.
While I was mirroring the meshes and the animation, it occurred that this was yet another subject worthy of a tutorial. When copying these things, the meshes sometimes appear to leap way out of position but I discovered a way of recovering this situation so they jump to their expected mirrored location.
Here is a pic of the final (I hope!) version of BB's bogey as a scenery object and a pic of the bogey with BB's body. The body has been unchanged for weeks so bits still need to be mirrored as well as a decent material applied.
Now I'm going back to work on the main body including texturing. Some parts still have a mirror modifier pending so they need to be textured before that can be applied. I need to make a few backups here as I want to texture Big Bertha in a couple of versions.