The Bridge is complete and fully integrated with Unity 5. We have been working hard to update our assets to the new Unity standard shader, and we really think it has paid off. Our workflow is more streamlined than ever with the use of physically based rendering (PBR) and real-world material properties. We have always utilized the Quixel Suite to tweak our normal maps and create base textures, but only recently were we able to make use of Quixel’s built in PBR map generation thanks to this new shader in Unity 5.
We start by creating a base model and high poly for normal mapping. Then we transition to Quixel’s nDo for normal map tweaking. This allows us to make normal map changes within Photoshop using custom shapes and selections.
Once we have our normal map complete, we create a color map, or ID map, that separates the different material sections for our final textures. Quixel has a color swatch dedicated to each of their base materials, so we simply find the material we want using our own custom material previewer in Unity and apply the proper swatch to that area of the color map.
Next is where the magic happens. Quixel's dDo then takes all the information from our normal map and color map to generate base diffuse, specular, and gloss maps accurate to their real-world counterparts.
From there we simply tweak the maps to suit our needs and place the assets into Unity. The end result is a scene with physically accurate materials made to react with light as they would in the real world. Here is a comparison of the importance texturing and lighting brings to a scene:
But, just showing off screenshots doesn't fully capture the look and feel of walking through the Bridge, so this time we decided a video walkthrough would be appropriate. Here’s a quick look at the Bridge of Foundation Base:
If you're wondering what the Bridge will look like from the exterior, check out the last art devlog post here.
