Texturing Tutorial
Temple of Khonsus
I have been interested in "Classical"
Architecture for many years, particularly Egyptian. In all the text books I
own, the main thrust has been on excavation and showing the artifacts and buildings
as they were discovered or as how they exist at present. Very little has been
done to try and convey any image of how they may have looked in their prime.
This is a major omission as far as I am concerned, and so I thought it might
be fun to try a series of images that aim to recreate some of these great monuments
using what has been excavated as an influence. One of my best references is
a very old book called "A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method".
It contains only plan views and line drawings of most of the Egyptian monuments.
This was my starting point.
The entire temple was created in Autocad (a program I am lucky to use professionally)
and exported as a DXF file. I take great care when modelling to be accurate
and to include as much detail as possible in the initial stages. It is far easier
to include too much detail and then delete it as required in Bryce than trying
to retrace your steps, especially with the rather strange way in which Bryce
seems to import DXF's. This done, I have a rather boring white plastic temple
sitting on the screen in front of me.
Before I start texturing, I look for any elements in the scene which are replicated. I am a lazy person and I don't like texturing twice when I could get away with doing it once. Obviously, in this image, the columns are the major culprits here. I selected the various elements in one column (in this case the base, main column, capital and top block), grouped them and then file/copied them. I then opened a new document and pasted them into it. This allowed me to manipulate the textures more easily and maintain the correct size and mappings when I eventually imported the finished column back into the main scene. The texturing of these columns was my first foray into multi channel textures and consequently took quite some time. I first sat back and considered what these columns might have looked like. The most obvious element would be the Hieroglyphics, which could have been carved or in this case painted, onto the column. I thought this would be far too plain and not show any of the underlying stone.
I decided to use a procedural texture for the stone of the column, and also use this for the bump map. The diffuse surface was created by overlaying the bitmap for the Hieroglyphics (created in photopaint) with an alpha channel created from this bitmap, which allowed the rock texture to show though. A similar technique was used for the capitals, but using an AB combination on the ambient surface. This allowed more of the rock texture through in areas of low light, which helped with the slightly aged appearance of the columns. (The effect of carving on the lintels at the top of the columns was achieved by applying a simple black and white image as a bump map). This done, I copied and pasted the finished column back into the main scene.
To make the image more realistic (and interesting), the column was then copied to the final positions and each was then rotated slightly. With this type of architectural image, it is very difficult to have any preconceived shot or camera angle, since you invariably have a wall or pillar right in the middle of any view that you had in mind. I therefore normally just play around and "walk" through the scene, noting and saving any interesting camera angles that I find. It is a good idea to do this before you finalise any texturing on the finished scene, since you might spend hours texturing an element which you cant see in the final rendering.
I try to keep my lighting as simple as possible. The vast majority of my renderings are done using solely sunlight. I find that this usually produces a more realistic finished image and has the added advantage of keeping rendering time down! For this image, I just added 4 dim orange omni lights (as oil lamps) out of sight behind the columns to contrast them with the back wall and to accentuate the bump mapping on the wall. Again, since I seldom have any preconceived idea of exactly how the finished image will appear, I find it most effective and fun just to muck about until I find something I like. Although one of Bryce's great strengths is its sky generator, I don't like the finished results for recreations like this. The sky is simply a large pict object behind the scene with the ambient value set to maximum. The camera focal length has also been shortened slightly.
Well, That's it! I hope this was of some use or interest to you, if you have any comments or questions, then please don't hesitate to contact me at:
Cheers,
Tony