BA6 - On to the textures

So after the research, reference and finishing the UV maps for my buildings (images below), I am now applying the textures to the scene. Each asset of course will have an ambient occlusion, diffuse, normal and specular map (of course where needed). To start this off I used a photo of some stain glassed window from the Norwich Cathedral, this served to be perfect for the window on the church tower. Here is the photo that I used (took by me);

This was great, at least that's what I thought until a friend on my course pointed out that it'd be easier to build the window around the texture rather than the texture around the window. So I built the window using a plane polygon with the stain glassed textured applied to it and began using the split polygon tool to map out the main structure of the window and the rest would go with it.

As you can see the window on the right is the original window that I designed for the church tower however the one on the left is designed around the texture, this was the stain glass window texture would fit nicely into the glass panes and would look like it was meant to be. Below is a screenshot of the ambient occlusion setup.

 

After this I then applied the texture onto the window using the laid out UV map and here is how it looked.

It looks good for the most part however I wasn't finished with it, it needed a Normal map and specular map to really boost it and help it look better. Then with a bit of help from Lothar and getting some of the transparency settings right as well as other settings here is a real time render and render screenshot using my basic light set up.

Normal map using CrazyBump

 

Specular map

Real time render

Mental ray render/ the colours look more vivid in this render compared to the real time render

Upped the transparency to tone down the vivid colours

physical sun and sky render

toned down the colour in photoshop of the window

This will be the end result for all the church windows in my scene