Application of Materials

Throughout the Guildhall, several different materials were required. Altogether, I used 12 single material slots and then 4 more for multi/sub-object materials which I'll talk about in the next post.

The 12 single slot materials used were as follows:
- Front/Rear/Left/Right Elevation reference planes
- Ground/Upper Floor reference planes
- White masonry
- Dark grey stone
- Clear glass
- Dark brown unfinished wood
- Translucent glass
- Lighter grey stone
- Roof tiles masonry
- Brickwork masonry
- Lighter unfinished wood
- Standard grass bitmap

The reference planes materials were created in Adobe Photoshop CS5 and set up as standard materials with a bitmap diffuse setting. This setting can be found under the Blinn Basic Parameters menu, by clicking the square box next to the Diffuse option and selecting Bitmap. This technique was also used for the grass material.

The white masonry material was created by navigating to the Architectural menu and selecting the masonry option from the drop-down option box. Then, I simply set the diffuse colour to white under the Physical Qualities section. I used this approach for creating several of the other materials too. The roof tiles and brickwork masonry were created in the same way, but instead of setting a diffuse colour, I applied diffuse maps that I had created in Photoshop. The dark brown and lighter brown wood materials were created in the same way, selecting the unfinished wood option from the drop-down option box and then applying diffuse maps created in Photoshop.

The dark grey and lighter grey stone materials were also created from the Architectural menu too, only this time selecting the stone setting from the drop-down option box. The clear and translucent glass materials were pre-set options on the drop-down option box.

The various materials were used for many different areas throughout the scene. The walls, floors and ceilings of the building used the white masonry material. The beams, window and door frames, stairs and even the handrails leading up the staircase all used the dark brown unfinished wood material. This was also used in the landscape for the fences. The lighter brown unfinished wood material was used for the doors, however this was too far away in shade from the frames at first so I had to edit the colour balance and contrast of this material in Photoshop. The majority of the windows in the building used the clear glass material. However, I noticed that some of the windows are in rooms that will be used as bathrooms. For these windows I chose the translucent glass option.

The roof of the building used the roof tile masonry material, whilst the brickwork masonry material was used for the chimney. Around the landscape, the grass material was clearly used for the grassy areas, whilst the dark stone material was used for the road. The lighter stone material was used for the pavements.