How to Create a Video Game Dumpster: The Complete Current-Gen Workflow

on Oct 13th 2010 with 202 comments
Tutorial Details

Twice a month we revisit some of our reader’s favorite posts from throughout the history of Cgtuts+, and what better place to start than with a tutorial by ex-site-editor Kaleb Aylsworth. This tutorial was first published in June 2009 and proved immensely popular. Let’s take a look…

As technology evolves, the tools and requirements for creating current-gen game art are constantly changing. In this tutorial we will learn the current game art workflow in its entirety, from the low-poly model all the way to final game-ready asset. We will create a realistic grimy dumpster suitable for any urban setting.

This mammoth video training series features over 194 minutes of video instruction on all aspects of game art creation, including creating the low-poly and high-poly models, the UVW unwrap, baking normal maps from high-poly, and creating diffuse, specular and detail bump textures.

Final Effect Preview

Contents

  • 1. Creating the Low-Poly Model: 3DS Max 2009 (or equivalent).
  • 2. Creating the High-Poly Model: 3DS Max 2009 (or equivalent).
  • 3. UVW Unwrap: 3DS Max 2009 (or equivalent).
  • 4. Baking Normal Maps From High-Poly: 3DS Max 2009 (or equivalent); X-normal; CraziBump.
  • 5. Creating the Diffuse Texture: Photoshop CS2 (or higher); Photo texture source.
  • 6. Creating the Specular Texture & Detail Bump Texture: Photoshop CS2 (or higher); CraziBump

1. Creating the Low-poly Model

Download

Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

2. Creating the High-Poly Model

Download

Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

3. UVW Unwrap

Download

Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

4. Baking Normal Maps From High-Poly

Download

Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

5. Creating the Diffuse Texture

Download

Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

6. Creating the Specular Texture & Detail Bump Texture

Download

Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.

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By

Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Kaleb Aylsworth is the old Cgtuts+ editor. He is also a video game Environment Artist with over 3 years of professional experience. He is currently employed at Digital Extremes in Canada, and working on an un-announced AAA title.  

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  • felipe

    Where is the video download button?

    • Tyler

      I went for the challenge and did this in maya… pretty sweat… (I just learned maya)

      • Tyler

        Opps didn’t mean to reply…. ummm real player has a download button on videos. (except that lynda.com place)

  • felipe

    Where is the download button video?

  • Gage L.

    Hey, everytime I do my normal maps, they are either curved in or curved out when viewed on the model, creating some really nasty graphics issues. If, in crazy bump, I turn the displacement depth to 0 it fixes it, but in your video you have it set to 50. Any idea what is happening here?
    Thanks for the help!

  • aftas

    thanks! just amazing!!
    one thing to note: it seems that in photoshop cs4, the trick of using a 50% grey to host the inner shadow effect and passing as invisible is achieved by setting the layer to pin light. at least thats what worked here…

    anyway, superb tutorial!!

  • http://www.bioh4zard2.com Zac

    Great tutorial, Really enjoyed watching and being part of the “ooh” and “ahh” factor that is watching you work.

    Keep up the great work!

  • Elliot N.

    Awesome tutorial Kaleb, very helpful.

    I traditionally use 3ds Max’s Projection and Render to Texture to generate normal maps but I am now trying xNormal at your recommendation and I seem to be having an edges issue. Whenever I bake out chamfered edges I get the chamfered edges but I also get a very-noticeable line down the middle. I thought I was doing something wrong so I tried max’s Render to Texture and it baked out perfect without said line, so I must be doing something wrong with xNormal’s settings. Any ideas? And no, I did not forget to flip the Y/Green channel.

    Low Poly – a simple cube
    High Poly – a simple cube with all edges chamfered once

    Thanks for taking the time!

  • Jørgen

    Great tutorial! Thanks Kaleb!

  • sukka

    lots of thing aren’t clear, the way you made this tutorial is not as professional as your workflow in 3ds max is.

  • Gordon

    Fantastic Tut! I wish I had this available 2+ years ago. Would have saved a lot of frustration.

    I do have to wonder why you exported all the pieces separately instead of exploding the model, in which case you would have been able to render the normals in one pass.

    • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth
      Author

      If I was baking it entirely in Max I would have exploded it, but I find that I sometimes get some strange results with Xnormal’s auto generated cage when I explode things, and trying to get the right distances by exploding, exporting, testing, and then re-exploding, exporting, and testing again until I get the desired result actually takes more time than to just export the individual pieces. Another thing I discovered since creating this tutorial is that you can export the pieces separately, but bake them all in one pass in Xnormal….and that seems to fix the problem with the auto cage spacing.

  • Fred

    Very nice tutorial Kaleb! I would say this website has some of the best 3d tutorials on the web!

    Now just a random question:
    Could you tell us in short how do you render it? mray? vray? Any special configuration?

    • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth
      Author

      Thanks for the compliments! Regarding rendering, it really depends on what I’m going for. If I want a more photorealistic render (with reflections, refractions, advanced lighting and GI) then I usually use mental ray with mental ray materials.

      For video game assets that are intended for realtime rendering, however, I usually just use the default scanline renderer with default 3ds Max materials….then I do a simple 3 point light rig, turn on raytraced shadows for my key light, use Catmull Rom as my antialiasing filter, and use lighttracer for the lighting plugin. You can find a tutorial on the this type of render setup here: http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d-art/quick-and-effective-game-art-portfolio-presentation-day-1/

      • Fred

        Ah, interesting! And I thought the scanline renderer is nowadays obsolete. :-)

        For some reason I overlooked this tutorial. Thanks for the tip!

  • atul katdare

    @Kaleb Aylsworth,
    thanks a lot for explaining the whole workflow, you really made it too easy to understand your tutorial. thanks, i do appreciate your help very much!

    however, i found the technique of baking normals [after exporting each single obj.] bit difficult. i have never tried it but i am very much comfortable with ‘render to texture’ technique. any ways, thanks, i will surely try this..

    regards~atul k.
    [katdare_atul@yahoo.com]

    p.s.: i generally use nvedia normal map plugin for photoship, can anyone please post links to download crazybump or xnormal…? thanks.

  • atul katdare

    @Kaleb Aylsworth,

    thank you so much for explaining the whole workflow in detail. this tutorial is very helpful and you have made it too easy to understand. thanks.

    however, i found it a bit difficult to bake each part seperately [technique of exporting obj.]because i generally use render to texture to bake normals. i will try this technique.

    regards~atul k.
    katdare_atul@yahoo.com

  • angus

    In vid.3 to ur side of edit uvw’s is a tool bar PLEASE were do i get this!

    • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth
      Author

      It’s a plugin called Unwrap tools. You can download it here: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?t=64206

      • angus

        Awsome :D

      • angus

        Awsome :D
        Thanks

      • angus

        im using 64bit ver of 09
        When i try open edit uvws i get error
        Image I/O Error
        C:\program files\autodesk \3ds max 2009\ui\icons\uvtools_24i.bmp
        Whats this?

      • angus

        (Basicly it cant load em)

  • Evan

    Great tutorial. Your explanations were very helpful during the process. It’s nice to see that instead of watching someone just model without really explaining why they are doing what they are doing. I learned a great deal. I was also wondering if you had your Unwrap_Helper available or if you could tell me the dimensions so I could try and re-create my own.

    Thanks

  • http://www.dietmarhartje.de Webdesigner

    Thanx for those impressive videos! I can use the stuff I’ve learned here for some upcoming 3d work!

  • VitalOverdose

    Nice tutorials but im finding it very hard to follow them step by step because the audio seems to be 10-20 seconds out of sync. im going to have to download the vids , convert them to avi’s and re-sync the audio. This site has loads of great tutorials but it seems that no one bothers much when it comes to getting the audio right.

  • Katelyn

    It looks hard! Was it hard to do?

  • Rob

    Can you explain how your doing this at 12:58 on the first video, I can’t work out how you just scaled the ends of that thing to become paralleled with the the dumpster’s side.

    Also I’m finding it really hard to follow as the video is tiny :p

    Anyway please reply, I’m dying from frustration lol, I’m desperate to learn from this tutorial, I think it would be really helpful.

  • Razer

    Hey think you could add a download to your video’s would love that!

  • http://mitchellford3d.com Mitchell Ford

    Very good sir just one question tho. When you talk about using overlay to but all your normal maps together, don’t you need to go into the layer modes of each normal map and turn off the blue channel for the normal maps to correctly sync with each other? or is that just when you want to overlap normal maps and add detail to your normal surfaces?

  • http://mitchellford3d.com Mitchell Ford

    Also for those of you who do not want to pay to use crazy bump to preview your model real time you can use the Xoliul shader to view your model in 3ds max real time. But there has already been a tutorial on CG tuts about how to use it. If you want to download it here is the link. its free http://www.laurenscorijn.com/viewportshader

  • Didier Vanassche

    Hi, I really love the tutorial. I’m at the 3th video now and when I open the unwrap uvw and then Edit it seems a lot different than on the video, i see some strange lines across eachother and it dont looks like in the video at all, if some one can help me I would be really happy cause I really want to have my final result of this dumpster. I can send printscreens of my problems if you want.

    Hope someone can help me!

  • ASHISH

    can anybody please make a tutorial for the same in blender 2.5?please

  • ASHISH

    NICE tutorial but can u please tell me from where u got those references plz
    thanks in advance

  • carlos ruz

    Great tutorial.
    I did it all, and it help me so much to understand a lot about texturing.
    I have a question. I make the tutorial wihout the lateral menu that apear next to the edit uvw`s window, how can i get that window menu or what is the name of the software?

  • Robby

    These sweet tuts are a total waste without proper sync

    fix it

  • rage

    show me the button to download

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Staff

      You can download each video by clicking on the title!

  • Nawaz

    @Kaleb Aylsworth :
    ur tut is so informative despite of d unsynced sound…thanx for dat current gen information…

    i’ve a doubt though…
    i can not find the texture reference dat u use in photoshop for texturing d diffuse map and all d others…u have not included any link for dat in ur tut too,it would have been great if the texture and references were there available to be downloaded…plz look into it…

  • Travis

    The second video appears to not work, It worked yesterday when I was workin on it. The download doesn’t work aswell.

    • http://www.bentateonline.com Ben Tate
      Staff

      Hey Travis,

      This appears to be some sort of problem with the actual video on Blip. I tried to play the file directly from our Blip account, but it’s not working at all. When I attempted to download the video, the file size was 0 kb’s, so obviously a major error has occurred on their end. I’m not sure if this is something that is a temporary problem, or if the video has somehow been corrupted on their servers! I’ll keep working on it and hopefully we can get this fixed asap!

      Cheers!

      • Travis

        Works now, that’s a big help,Thanks

  • Kim

    Hi,
    A really helpful tutorial and easy to follow, thanks for the effort.
    BTW I am not able to download the 5th video which is annoying since I can’t understand the rest of the tutorial.

  • http://www.articles-sea.com MAYA

    good tutorial

  • http://boba-fett.co.cc Boba Fett

    Quite good tutorial was searching for a baking tut and found this though I’ve got some comments on the part of merging the normal maps.

    You say if you just overlay the normal maps it won’t effect the other normal maps – though here you are wrong on the second layer you overlay you can clearly see you are loosing colors and sadly enough you did not fix this by using the xnormal or nvidia normal map plugin “normalize normal map” function.

    There is also an other way that I explain here in a tutorial I’ve made: http://www.boba-fett.co.cc/tuts/normalmap-extra.html

    Where you instead just overlay the normal map you first going to make the normal map the gray tone you also talked about that won’t effect any lightning or darkness “50% gray” so it can be overlayed without losing or changing any color.

    So yea was just pointing that out that in fact you are loosing some color information when you normal overlay normal maps.

    Other than that great job :)

  • Remo

    I hate to be a whiner but I find this SO hard to follow due to the bad audio/video sync. Is there any way that I can fix it ? tried it in VLC but it doesnt work >_<

  • Ervin

    Tutorial is crap. You keep doing things that simply don’t make any sense, and then there are other things you do in the video that you never explain in the audio. There are far better tutorials out there, this one is a waste of time.

  • RIcardo

    Video 2 is missing

  • Diego

    Is there a chance someone can upload the 2nd part of the tutorial? seems to be offline

    • http://www.christateonline.com Chris Tate
      Staff

      Hey Diego,

      Sorry for the delay, just noticed your comment!

      Thanks for letting us know the video is down, we’ve been having a lot of issues with Blip lately (which hosts our videos.) Not sure what’s going on, but I’ll try to get it sorted out immediately!

      Thanks for your patience,
      Chris

      • Diego

        No problem, been learning a lot with this tutorial, and answering a lot of the questions I had on my head.

        Good to hear from someone after 2 years of the tutorial being released, kudos

  • Kento

    Thanks for this superb tutorial. There are very helpful, but part two of this tutorial with high poly modeling is corrupted. Can You fix this? I would be grateful.

  • ali

    hi. ty for ur tutorials. but video 2 is so so so sux quality. i cant see what is numbers. & why u dont show how create textutre in photoshop in this tutorial?!. ty for ur works.

  • ali

    this tutorial is so sux. cuz u dont learn how make dumpster texture. we are noob in photoshop & we dont know how u did it?!

  • varoken

    I’m sorry, but i cannot go on with this tutorial. Unlike others in this same website which are quite more clear. There is no doubt about your skills, but for a tutorial, there’s needed to be a workflow line, and i just find a monologue about how things should be done, but nothing to do with the video content. you made a wonderful effort uploading and putting so much time to create this, but please, next time, try to explain what you are doing, the time you are doing it, just to make us easier to follow your explanations. Thanks again and keep up the work. Greetings.

  • Marie

    Very nice tutorial. Lots of useful tips here and there for a beginner :)

  • http://www.izzetalsan.com izzet

    thank you, this is a great tutorial.

  • Arik

    Beat me to it :P

    Gotta watch what you show, mr. designer employeed at a game design firm.

    Good tutorial :)

    Also as was said, the audio isn’t synced, which is a bit annoying.

  • Rick Bross

    yeah, hahaha!

  • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth
    Author

    Yeeesh! Fixing that now….but lets keep it on the DL ok;)

  • Siphosethu

    where can i get a designer for a game bro

  • Stefan V.

    Hey Kaleb/Everyone

    I have a question.

    This is my first time working with normal mapping and I can see that the smoothing groups on the lowpoly model determis quite alot of how the normalmapping turns out.

    How should you arrange your smoothing groups to achieve the best normalmapping result?

  • http://kaleb-3d.com Kaleb Aylsworth
    Author

    This is a hard one to answer as it can only be approached on a case by case scenario. The main thing to remember is that the result you get when you apply the normal map to the low poly model will be a combination of the shading from the low poly model and the information from the normal map. Basically…if you have enough geometry in you low poly to have everything in one smoothing group without getting weird shading errors…then do that. But if you start to get weird shading in your low poly, you either have to add more geometry, or start separating you model into logical smoothing groups.

    Hope that helps!

  • Stefan V.

    Thank you very much for your reply Kaleb!
    Though my normal map still won’t turn out properly.

    I know this is big favour to ask, but would you be so kind to take a look at my project files ” I can include everything, Full mesh, exported mest, normal map”

    I would really like to get the understanding of normal mapping, and if you could point out the the mistakes it would help me alot.

    Kind regards Stefan

  • David

    thanks for answering my question concerning the ring the edges I figured it out before I checked your reply. Yes i had rouge vertices’s from removing some of the loops but I’m done with my version of the dumpster just have to bump up some of the textures

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