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CGTutorials.com 

*Pictures will arrive shortly I promise!

Once you’ve created your diffuse map, chances are if you are working in the games industry, you have tonnes of ambient occlusion, extravagant dirt /scratch maps overlayed. This is all fine and dandy, but when you want to create your specular map, make sure you have all this elements removed, resulting in a clean base map which has basic colour tones and NO ambient lighting whatsoever. This would make the perfect base to start with for our specular map.

Also note that this base map should not have very extreme differences in tonal value, and by this i mean extreme darks and white areas. This can be tricky when you’re working with designs that have extremely contrasting tones, for instance, a cyborg zebra. Times like this, it’s always good to have masked adjustment layers to help you tweak those colours.

So once you have your base ready, go ahead and flatten it. What? Flatten it? Yes, flatten it. Some may disagree here, you would be losing a lot of control…but less is more, at least to me. I will elaborate more. Next, desaturate this map (unless you are going for a coloured specular map, to be honest, I haven’t had much chance to try coloured specular maps so if you have a tip or two, drop us a message)

Next, bring in those layers in your diffuse map that will help you mask out different elements. I assume most people work in multiple layers, unless you have a reason not to. You can then use this layers as selection masks and start adding adjustment layers and use Levels to control the tonal values for each different element.

Lastly, bring in your dirt map, scratch map, and ambient occlusion map. All this go after your adjustment layers. Multiply your dirt and ambient occlusion and dodge your scratch map, or whatever looks best in the final outcome.

At the end, you would have your layers in the following order:

• Ambient Occlusion
• Dirt
• Scratch
• Lots of masked adjustment layers
• Base specular map

Having your layers as such allows you flexibility. If changes are made to your colour map, you can simply desaturate it and bring it in as your base specular map. Because you have masked adjustment layers above your base specular map, you wouldn’t have to worry that much about tweaking your specular map all over again Always have your ambient occlusion map, dirt maps and scratch maps grouped individually so that you can bring them in as groups instead of individual layers.

That sums up this tutorial. I hope you found it useful. If you have suggestions or would like to share with us any tips and tricks. Feel free to drop us a message.

PS:Color or colour, whatever rocks your boat. I was educated the british english way.

3dcreature isn’t only about 3d art. If you have been around this site, you’d notice we have a bit of everything, ranging from 2d art, life drawings, sculptures, paintings, illustrations, toys. Anyone with a decent sense of aesthetics and an openness to appreciate the other disciplines of art would do best at submitting artwork links to 3dcreature.

Once you have registered, submitting a link to an artwork is easy. Just generate a thumbnail (cropped to 160 x 80 pixels) and attached it in a post at 3dcreature. Thumbnails should emphasize and capture the essence of the artwork.
On the other hand, if you feel like you just want to keep the community updated with the latest news, rumours or job updates, then drop us a message.

Please note that anything submitted to 3dcreature will be moderated prior to being posted online. This needs to be done to ensure we don’t get anything inappropriate.

So here’s how to start contributing links.

Step 1: Register at 3dcreature.
Step 2: An account will be set up for you.
Step 3: Start posting and have fun!