Applying Textures

After experimenting with wooden textures made up of a lot of pixels (to make a simple plank of wood) and experimenting with the lighting, I then applied what I had learnt to make my previous model of the Empire State Building (from the first tutorial) to make it look more realistic.

By searching on google images for a repetitive brick pattern, I could then make a 3D looking texture for the majority of my building. Using the material editor to apply the texture and edit the specular level and the glossiness, I managed to turn a flat looking image of some bricks into an adequate 3D texture for my building. I then searched for a material to resemble the shiny, blue tinted appearance of the windows and went through the exact same process for the windows.

 

The pointy metal part at the top of the building required a more shiny, metallic texture. This was then emphasised in the material editor by using the anisotropic shader: to give it a more textured, metallic appearance.

From a more birds eye view of the building, the top parts of the bricks didn't give a very realistic appearance - the pattern did not fit in well with the rest of the bricks and at the tops of bricks, there is sometimes a more smooth appearance rather than simply just leaving the bricks bare. To change this, each section of the building that had the brick texture applied was converted into an editable poly, a polygon was selected and UVW Mapping was applied, with the mapping XYZ to UVW.

As can be seen in the screenshot, this gave the top part of each of the bricks an almost pebbled effect - like the brick work had been smoothed over as it is on the top of many buildings. UVW Mapping was also used to adjust the size of the texture used for the pointy part at the top of the building. Overall, it helped the different textures of the building appear much more realistic.