HFIL textures and FB shield updates

As I settled into my site supervisor position for the security company I work for, a pattern of time began to emerge that I was able to use to get some real work done ... well .. at least when I wasn't sleeping at the keyboard again. :)

HFIL - terrain:
After finally having a teamspeak chat with one of the members, I was able to use their 3ds max blender material that allowed me to paint out the terrain textures in an rgb format. This is how it turned out.

All my textures on a single blendmap for the terrain.

It turned out I'll need to make some more terrain textures to make everyone happy, I guess they had assumed I had made more. So I set off to make at least one more dirt and grass texture. It was also brought to my attention that the blood in the bloody pond wasn't bloody water as I had assumed, so I got rid of the alpha channel I was using.

I started the dirt texture with the two dirt colors I had set up with the previous dirt texture, and I used a noise filter. Then I used the oil paint filter and played with the until it started to look remotely like rough dirt or something ... vaguely. Then I made another layer with the noise filter again, this time with black and white, and used a crystalize filter to give myself some smaller chunky bits to help break up the oil painting pattern. I set the crystalized layer over the oil painting layer and this is how it turned out! Later I offset it so that it would repeat nicely.

I created a new grass blades texture for the cards I had in my grass baking maya scene, I made it a bit lighter around the edges than the other two blade textures. Once it rendered out [about 4 hours] this is how it turned out. I haven't yet offset it for repeating, so if you're taking my textures for your own personal use be advised that this one isn't repeatable yet! :) I'm also not sure if I'm happy with how bright it turned out, we'll see how it works blended next to the other two grass textures.

FB - shield:
I started getting impatient to get back to working on my shield update I posted for last month, so while the car was in the shop I sat down in maya and started deleting edges. The model went from a high poly count of 19626 to a low poly count of 3733 with basically no change in silhouette and minor changes to the textures.

high poly

low poly

Then I noticed that the marmoset toolbag was on sale for $25, and so decided to do the final render in there as I had never used it before .. but I have heard a lot of good things about it. This is my first time using the program, and was able to come up with a pretty nice render.

Low poly mesh render in marmoset toolbag.

It might be a bit before I get to plunge into my own projects again, as I received a request for help on another unlisted project. I accepted the unpaid offer, and unfortunately will be unable to post my work from that project until it's completed and posted by the actual owner of the project. I only hope I can keep up with the demands of the project and maintain the technical level they require for it.
Thanks for staying tuned, and I'll keep you posted.