The altar is basically done at this point, but I am not really satisfied with the way it looked. The build is okay, though I think I could have extended the stalks past the top a little more, but the textures are still not very good. So I went through and made some changes to the textures which involved loading up the model back in blender, playing with the UV mapping and the .dds files.
To start I opened up the stalk texture in paint.net, then in a separate layer opened one of the exported UV layouts from a stalk. Fortunately I got luck and the one I randomly picked had all the leaf parts on one side and the stalk parts on the other. Using the UV map as a guide I went through and played with the stalk texture and made it two part, one for the stalk and one for the leaf.
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I didn't do much to the moss area other than opening the UV map and making the moss top larger to put more of the texture in the image.
For the base, again I made the pieces as large as possible to get more of the texture in and I just played with the .dds file in paint.net a bit more. I tried to give a bit more depth to the texture by playing with the relief effect.
The most work intensive part of the upgrade was making a new texture for the top (remember the top and base share a texture file). I didn't do much to change it, but I wanted to make the channel along the edge of the top darker to give a bit more detail to the top. All I did was make a copy of the base texture, opened paint.net and in a second layer I opened the UV map export for a reference and used the curves RGB function to darken the recessed strip along the edge of the top.
While that was simple enough, it meant I had to open the top in the UV editing, create a new material called top and under the new material make a new texture for the diffuse and specular textures.
Then I had to export the OBJ. Next I copied the new .dds files over to the asset pack folder, write a new definition in the materials script for the plant_altar_top material. Open the model in GMT, re-scale and rotate it on the Y axis, apply the materials using the node select and set materials, recalculate the tangents & normals and save the model. In my test dungeon folder I had to make sure it had the updated .dds files and I had to write a new definition for the top material. Load up the game, test it (had to re-scale it again) and check it again. All that to add a dark line along the edge.
Anyways, here is the rendered and in game pics of the slightly updated plant altar (without grey stalks)
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Next I want to go over how to package the asset so others can use it. Then I will consider the tutorial done other than updates, or to answer replies. (Beside I want to get onto learning normal maps, and get the couple items I'm working organized.)
