Maya tutorial/Evaluation

Now that the textures has been made in photoshop, I can now look into how to put theses textures object in maya which hopefully should not be too difficult to do but will most likely take a while to do  because I dont work a lot in Maya...I have only done basic modelling and some animation which I will do for this project also.

I have been looking at a few tutorials online and the best one I came across was this one...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQKdfJ1vVnQ

I will learn the basics and use this to texture the structures later in our project once who structures have been modelled. I am very pleased with how this unit has gone, the progression of learning a new subject (metal) in depth is very rewarding as I can confidently painting and soon will be able to texture the material. Learning the basics is really vital then to express myself and explore within that area is my favourite part also the progress or journey that it takes to reach the final outcome, I find more interesting than the final outcome its self. Learning how to paint and texture this metal will be invaluable for me not only for my 2 final projects but also for my future paintings.

Test with colours

Now im experimenting with the colours for the two chosen materials I liked, by changing the contrast, saturation and colour it can create very different looks of the material. The colour and Light book defiantly helped me creating different varied looks...

After creating six variations I decided to narrow it down to three (3, 4 & 7) and see how they will look on an object when texturing in maya...

Photos

I took some photos of metal around the house specifically how the light would reflect the fictional material however the I think the rough rock texture will be interesting how it affects the light reflection.

Combinations with rock materials

I started to experiment with different types of Rock textures with the two cerium type metals.

I mixed the two materials together by changing the layer type to 'Overlay' or 'Vivid light'. The mix of the two blend quite well gives a shiny rock look, I like the reflectional light of the metal and the cracks, scratches from the rock. I like the look of no. 1 and 2 of the first page. I will experiment with those two further.

Textures

I found some texture for the cerium metal and found some other metals that have the same properties and merged the textures together with rock/stone textures

Cerium suitable texture.

Metal with similar properties as Cerium

Properties of The metal Cerium

On deciding on what metal to choose I did not want to use a common metal such as steel or aluminium,  our environment is unique and undiscovered, therefore I decided to choose a rare earth metal that found in the lanthanide series on the periodic table. 

The metal is called 'Cerium' 

Symbol: Ce
Electron configuration: Xe 4f1 5d1 6s2
Atomic number: 58
Melting Point: 795° C
Boiling point: 3,443° C
Atomic mass: 140.116 ± 0.001 u

It is a soft, ductile metal that easily oxidises in air, which gives a hint about our environment, it has no oxygen.

Reason for focusing on metal

The reason why I decided to focus on metal is because for both of my projects metal is involved. 

The texturing in maya for 3D and for the concept art  for 2D.

I would like to try and mix two materials materials one being a rare earth metal and possibly wood or stone which I can already draw and paint comfortably. I think this would be very interesting for my main project (environment one) to create a fictional material using the characteristics of real materials combined.