Texturing the Mag helmet

Here are what  the UVs came out like on my first try, I thought that they turned out quite well but then I struck some problems in Substance Painter.

As I drew onto the helmet I noticed that a certain area didn't look right, its just at the bottom of the visor on either side. It turned out that the UVs were all messed up and needed fixing, looking over the specifications for the texture sizes again I realised that I rendered the UVs in the wrong size anyway.

Here are the revised UVs for the helmet, in the correct aspect ratio and no overlapping UVs.

I the put the helmet back into Substance Painter and applied the shader to it.

Soon after applying all the materials in Substance Painter I noticed that creating the textures this way is a lot harder than it previously seemed. I was unable to successfully apply any working materials, looking on line I couldn't find any fixes for this either. I then loaded the UVs into Photoshop and started to make the diffuse texture.

I started by getting a base colour down on each segment depending on where it would be located such as the back of the head, underneath and the visor are dark  where as the outer shell is light.

I then added wire around the texture as wires can be seen on pretty much all warframes within the game.

I added this texture as an overlay to give the helmet a gritty look as if it has been in battle recently, I think the effect worked quite well.

After applying the over lay i decided to create the normal map needed for the model, I did this by using a high pass filter to get the texture of the overlay to become prominent. Then I used the NVIDIA normal map tool.

I then removed the overlay from the visor and created another normal map as having the gritty visor looked wrong, I also toned down the overlay as the marks looked too deep.

Next i desaturated the diffuse map and moved around the levels to create the specular map which is then used as a metal map in the TennoGen. I also toook some time to create the ambient occlusion map in 3DS Max.

Here you can see that i have added the emissive map as the dots on the front have lit up, I also added the emissive map to the vents on the back of the helmet.

Finally I created the tint mask to finish the helmet.

After the problems that I had with creating the texture for the helmet I don't feel as though it is necessary to create a Syandanna as I have learnt how to create all the needed materials. Also creating the materials this way took up a great deal of time.

- Peter Howell

Warframe. (2015). TEXTURING GUIDE. Available: https://warframe.com/steamworkshop/help/index.php?page=texturing-guide. Last accessed 5th May 2015.

Warframe. (2015). SUBSTANCE PAINTER SHADER. Available: https://warframe.com/steamworkshop/help/index.php?page=substance-painter-shader. Last accessed 5th May 2015.

stpetersburgart. (2016). Dirt Texture Black And White. Available: http://stpetersburgart.com/dirt-texture-black-and-white. Last accessed 5th May 2015.