BA2 - Creating the Scales

Creating the Scales

Since I have earlier experience with creating tileable textures I decided to create my own tilable scale alpha. The reason why I decided to do it in 3dsMax instead of Maya is because when creating tilable textures the co-ordinations are very important, and I find 3dsMax coordination system more comfortable to use. Also I find the baking results better. 

I started off by creating a single scale, I did this by first creating a plane and from there get the main shapes out and then use the shell tool to give it thickness. After this I created a plane in the size 512x512, this plane will eventually become the texture and will work as the frame for my texture.

To create a tileable texture I start off by placing the scales in each corner, this is to make sure the edges are tileable. I use the grids and the coordination system to make it tileable.

I figured out that if I used the array tool and moved the scales by 20cm I got a tileable result because it matched up perfectly with the other scale I had placed in the other corner.

Used the same technique but moved them all in the Y axis and I now have a perfectly tileable texture, ready to bake.

Here is a profile shot of the scales, since the alpha uses height information to create geometry I had to think about the height. If I would just create flat scales they would also end up flat in Zbrush.

Since the scales now were in place I used the 512x512 as projection, I placed the scales above the plane and changed the cage of the planes bake to be above the scales. This way I now get the height information from the scales baked into the plane.

Here is the result of the baking process. Note, this is not the Height map but the diffuse map combined with AO.

Here is the result of the tileable Height map (Alpha).