Creating a Giant Robot Walking in a Live Action Scene: Part 2

If you have not already done so, you can read the first part of this tutorial series.

1. Creating the Main Body

Step 1

Open 3ds Max. With the head of the robot selected, secondary-click the mouse and select Hide Unselected. The other parts of the robot will be hidden except the head.

Step 2

Being in the face selection mode, select the outer faces as shown in the following image.

Step 3

With the faces selected, go to Polygon: Material IDs option and set the Set ID value as 1. 

Step 4

Go to Edit > Select Invert. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl-I keys.

Step 5

With the inverted faces selected, set the Set ID value as 2.

2. Unwrapping

Step 1

Press M to open the Material Editor. Click on Standard and choose Multi/ Sub-Object option from the menu.

Step 2

Click on the Set Number and set the Number of Materials as 2. Click on OK.

Step 3

Click on the None option of ID 1 and select Standard from the menu.

Step 4

Click on the Diffuse channel and select Bitmap. I have a metal texture which will be used as the bitmap.

Step 5

Click on the None option of ID 2 and select Autodesk Solid Glass from the menu.

Step 6

Apply UVW Map modifier with Spherical mapping.

Step 7

Apply Turbo Smooth modifier with Iteration value as 2.

Step 8

Render the frame and it will look something like this.

Step 9

With the hand joint mesh of the robot selected, do right click with the mouse and select Hide Unselected. The other parts of the robot get hidden except the hand joint mesh.

Step 10

Apply an Unwrap UVW modifier onto the hand joint mesh.

Step 11

Turn off Map Seams option. It will turn off the default map seams. 

Step 12

Turn on Point-To-Point Seams option and make a fine seam as shown in the following image.

Step 13

Click Open UV Editor button. You'll see the unwrapped mesh in the Edit UVWs window.

Step 14

Following the same way, unwrap the UVs of hand mesh.

Step 15

Following the same way, unwrap the UVs of foot mesh.

3. Applying Textures

Step 1

Open Photoshop. Import the saved unwrapped UVW image. 

Step 2

With the help of various metallic textures, I have made the UVW texture as shown in the following image.

Step 3

After saving this texture file in Photoshop, go to 3ds Max and press M to open the Material Editor. With an empty slot selected, click on Diffuse channel. Apply the same texture file which was saved in Photoshop.

Step 4

Apply the texture to the hand joint mesh. Render the frame and you will see something like this.

Step 5

Following the same way, create and apply the various textures to the various parts of the robot. The rendered frame will look like this.

Conclusion

Texturing is an important part of CG. Only a realistic texturing can make the 3d object as original as the live action scene is, and this is very essential part of VFX especially when you want to merge the 3d object into a live action scene seamlessly. 

In the next part of the tutorial series, I'll show how rig, skin and animate the robot.