Hello,
This is just a short step by step tutorial on how I went about texturing the turrets in Brink of Extinction. What design decisions that went into it and the mistakes I made before I got things looking the way I wanted.
Like the enemies, pretty much the entire UV is mirrored. Before settling for mirrored UVs I unwrapped the entire mesh. This oftentimes meant more work unwrapping, but also essentially cut the texture resolution in half, which was especially bad considering I wanted to keep the texture size to 2K.
Since there are no details that are only on one side, mirroring mostly everything is a fine method in this case, and for the most part, you can either only see one side at a time, or view the turrets from above and at such a distance that you will not be able to make out any repeating details that look out of place.
The base texture for most turrets in the game is a smooth metal texture, with a masked rust texture on top to add a bit of a worn feel.
I tend to bake either shadows and/or occlusion in Blender to give the texture a bit more depth. It also makes lighting look nicer in game in my opinion. On top of the baked shadows I often add an overlay layer with darker edges.
Some details are too small to be modeled in so I use the same technique as with the edges, an overlay with darkened corners. These overlay layers also form the foundation for the normal map I generate in Photoshop, the darkened corners giving the edges a more rounded look.
Generally, as mentioned above, the turrets are viewed from such a distance that minor details won't show anyway, but I also add in some nuts and bolts and other minor details. I also mask out what will be lit with the emission map in Unity.
All turrets in the game have a theme color to set them apart in more ways than one, and hey, color is nice (BoE is fairly colorful for a post apocalyptic game). The colored areas also get a darkened edge to make it look like paneling, and also nuts and bolts.
Lastly I adjust the texture with contrast layers.
Most of the components in the texture (with adjustments) are then used to make a normal map, specularity map and emission map. Finished turret:
/ Dispering Minds
