Originally posted by TheEngineer:
Well, my problem with most of the CG models is texturing. They mostly look clean, perfect, polished but as such totally unrealistic. Just like a colorful illustration...
Right then, first of all,
Saturation. Desaturate all colours by about 60%. All colours should be washed-out and greyed. Take for example, the black and yellow stripes on the model. The yellow is too acidic. It looks like a plastic toy. What you are replicating here is the decolourisation that dense air will give to larger objects. Granted, your brain knows that there is no air in space but your eye doesn't care.
Scale. Regardless of what measurement unit you are using, remember that you are
NOT making a life-sized model, you are making a scale model, with details eschewed wherever possible - unless, of course you plan on modelling every single nut, bolt, rivet and switch. In which case you'll be there for the rest of your days. Treat your models like actual scale models, calculating pixels-per-inch. Many people use tiny tiny bump maps for their models which give horrible, plasticky-looking blurred panel lines, several inches wide. The larger the bitmap, the finer the panel line. I use enormous bump maps for panel lines. Several thousand pixels square - and that's just for parts of the model, not the whole thing. Even then, you still can't get too close to it without giving the game away.
Subtlety. On a ship the size of this, viewed in it's entirety, hull plating should have no discernable depth whatsoever. Only major structural elements should have any kind of depth to them. Hull plating should be a subtle surface effect and nothing more. Make each panel very
very slightly different grades of colour, hue, specularity and glossiness, so that on the whole, they look pretty much the same, but very occaisionally, when a light moves over the surface, it is possible to see that there are subtle variations.
Intent. Panel lines have no reason to be random. Look at the Enterprise A and D hulls. The panels are arranged in a sort of aztec pattern. The effect is barely noticeable but it's there. The panels look like they are placed for a reason. It shows intent on the part of the shipyard architect. This said, randomness can give a nice suggestion of battered age and useage on older vessels - ala Millenium Falcon.
Real World Behaviour. There's more to materials than just slapping on bitmaps and bump maps. Too many 3D spaceships have hulls that look like plastic, because the artist hasn't gone anywhere near the other surface settings. Specularity, Falloff, Glossiness, Ambient, Diffuse etc etc etc. Play with settings and find something that looks like rusty metal, or painted metal, or chrome, or rubber, or dirty matt etc etc etc... Sometimes you can get away with asigning, 'noise' proceedures - I often find that using bitmaps of natural surfaces such as dirt and rust will give more convincing, eye-fooling results.
And finally,
Lighting. I'm going to say this until I'm blue in the face. You can have the most fantastic surface materials outside of ILM but if it lookslike it's lit by a desklamp, who's ever goign to be able to tell.
...and I'm spent. Any questions?
