Texturing

I was very happy with the model I had produced, however, in order for the object to work in our environment the ship would need some sort of texture. I looked online for various textures which included metal plating from buildings, rusty doors, ship plating and many many more. I eventually settled on what appeared to be metal plating from a battle ship or an aircraft carrier. I felt the blue, grey tones as well as the rectangular plating would gel well with the model. The texture itself would give the ship a used quality to it, which would suggest it had been used for a very long period of time. 

Before I customized the texture I began to familiarize myself with the texturing tools and interfaces in order for the material to be placed correctly on the object. I noticed that when I applied the material straight onto the object it appeared warped and distorted. This was because I had not aligned the UV's correctly in accordance with the texture plane. I needed to create a UV planar and match it with the surface I wanted the material to be applied. This took a few attempts to get right, but once I knew how the planar interface worked I could match the texture map with my model. The result was rudimentary but gave more than adequate results.

In order for the texture map to work I needed to add more detail and increase its size to mach the model. I had difficulties in applying the textures as many of them were distorted. However, once I was familiar with the tools I managed to fit the texture to the model. 

Now I was confident I could texture effectively I set about tweaking the existing texture I had by adjusting its size and shape as well as its hue and saturation. I did all this in Photoshop. I had to manipulate the texture and multiply several layers to mach the existing texture. I was careful to maintain a constancy regarding the plating but added burn marks and imperfections where the metal had been worn.