Animation, Texture, Tracking Test

Here is an update of the snake in its current state. I feel this scene is nearing completion now. The end of the video is clearly not complete and the track becomes extremely unusable. These frames were meant to be omitted from the render but as a test I don't feel this is too important. I think the final shot will end with the snake facing/approaching the camera, so I may alter the timing on the animation to better fit within the areas of effective tracking.

Texturing - Diffuse Texture

Using the ambient occlusion as a guide, I painted a diffuse texture in Photoshop. I experimented with different ideas in order to find the look I wanted. Here are some of the different textures I created.

The final texture is the one I have chosen as I feel it is the most effective, it is nice and simple and fairly convincing as a snake texture. Here is the unwrapped texture painted in photoshop:

Texturing - Projecting High poly onto Normal and Ambient Occlusion Maps

After unwrapping the snake model, I used render to texture to project the High Poly detail onto a normal map and also created an ambient occlusion map to add subtle depth to the diffuse texture when it has been created.

This is the low poly geometry with the normal map applied.

There are slight problems where the maps haven't baked properly however these will be painted out and less visible once the diffuse texture is applied.

This is the normal map generated through the render to texture process:

This is the ambient occlusion map created through the projection process, this will be used as a guide to paint the diffuse texture in photoshop.

With the ambient occlusion map applied, the model appears to have a little more depth in the face.