Introduction
My name is Keegan Keene, I'm a texture artist at GameTextures.com and reside in the Dallas Metroplex area. I tried making textures for games way back when I was around 12 using GIMP, but did not really start getting into games until September of 2015 when I downloaded Blender for the first time ever. Shortly after I went to Collin Community college in 2016 and started doing various work then GameTextures in early 2017.
Procedural Bracers
I was inspired to make these bracers after spending a lot of time browsing armor sets on Pinterest and realized that bracers are essentially just cylinders on the arm. Below you can see the white square on the right is a 0-1 UV space plane and the left is that wrapped into a cylinder around the arm.
As you can see, the bracer fits perfectly when wrapped around making it great for making in SD.
Variations
Making variations was quite simple, I made the graph setup so that you make the height first then use a mask to select “smart material” setups which I built in the same graph.
So in each bracer, I would make the height first then mask materials on top after the height is complete. Once this was done, I could export to Blender to render and composite.
Rendering
I did my rendering in Cycles Engine and automated the compositing using Blender’s compositor.
This allowed me to export from SD and immediately render.
On the right, you can see the composite setup in Blender. It is nice that when I hit the render button it adds in my logo and background gradient for me so I don’t have to waste any time going into photoshop or something else.
In this setup here, you can see all 3 of the bracers and how they appeared in my viewport, below is what the render of that looks like.
Conclusion
I think making props and armor in SD can actually be very practical, of course, to get in a game you need a low poly mesh to make these displaced models to. It makes making variations easy so I can be used quite well for making lots of varied shields or armor pieces in a game.
If you want to see more of my Artwork please visit my Artstation!
