Sandcrawler Part 7

Today I've been trying to apply a bitmap to my sandcrawler to increase the level of detail. After a few attempts I decided my best option was to use the uvw map rather that unwraping uvw, this was because of the sandcrawlers complicated shape making a messy map.

I found the best way to apply the map was to detach the surfaces individual sections piece by piece. One great benefit of this though is that the inside of my model is grey which may further improve the animation when the door opens.

After I added a few sections the black lines began to really stand out although were great were adding the detail. So using the GIMP software I lightened the image and colourized it brown to make the lines another shade of brown.

A difficulty I have found it with 3DS Max only allocates 12 slots for bitmaps which I have come very close to filling up but this could have been improved by unwrapping more sections as I only used it on the door, roof and back sections. But overall the model looks much better and is finally starting to look like a quality model!