Environment project: texturing and lighting

After blocking out the basic shapes of my Wild West town, I now began to think about the textures and the actual style of my town. After researching a lot into the Wild West I knew that buildings were either made out of wood or sandstone and Only minimal glass was used for the windows. 

In photoshop I attempted to draw my own textures for the windows doors and signs. I enjoyed doing this and experimenting with the different paint brushes and effects on photoshop trying to create the realistic surfaces of the different materials. 

Painted textures

After creating a folder full of different textures, I started UV unwrapping all of my forms one by one. I found this one of the most challenging things so far on this project, but after understanding how I did a few I slowly got faster and more confident. I also realised that I didn't need to fuss about correctly uv unwrapping the sides of the objects which weren't in shot, as we simply don't see them. 

After I was happy with all my textures I moved on to lighting. I wanted to set my scene in the early evening when the sun is setting. I applied a dome lighting to my scene as well as two rectangular ones which come from the building on the right. I wanted these rectangular lights to act like light flooding out of the windows, so I made them orange and warm. They are not so obvious in the first shot, as you can only see the glow on the floor! But in the second shot you can see a glow on the windows opposite, and they also cast shadows on the pillars. 

Final shot 

From another angle