One version of the Orc hut roof will be leather. This is a new material for me. Have a look at my first attempts to create this texture.
My first version of the leather texture was very simple and rough. Not much detail there, only the color hinting that this might be animal skin. But I managed to create some brushes to draw the seam lines.
For design reasons I added the pole parts as separate and textured them too. I also tried out different leather colors. In my mind the Orcs would patch together hides from different animals, resulting in this mixed material look. So this is more what I had in mind with the small hut. No door opening yet. Details are coming later …
After some further research I then started to add more details to “my” leather and the texture looked great on the screen but the print turned out to be very dark. Not that it’s not looking good, it’s just not what I expected and wanted. Still I made some test builds of the medium hut with the printed material. The first is the classic poles tent roof. Here the leather is wrapped over the poles which I made with blunt endings for a change.
The next build is the more classical dangerous-Orcs-with-spikes-everywhere version. The poles are placed over the canvas and secured with ropes. I am not sure how this would work – probably some more construction required under the leather – but it looks great 🙂
The overhang of the leather shows a ragged edge. In the dark print it is difficult to see, but the idea is to use a shadow background for the quick builders to leave it uncut. The advanced builders have the option of cutting out all the shaggy flaps. A little more work but it looks wild!
After I identified the reason for the color mismatch and fixed that problem, I worked on a more final version of the leather file. A first test shows variations of color. In the production file I will make different colors and materials (leather, cloth, straw etc) available through layers.
For example the Orcs living in a hot and dry Savannah climate will probably have their leather turned yellow because of the dust storms and bleaching of the sun. I realized for some reason I like the horizontal patching of the leather better. It makes more sense that way I think.
Now that I was happy with setup of the texture I went on to make a color consistent version as a final test. The way I have structured the file I am able to change the color and the patches very easy. So it was no big problem to adjust, print and build this roof.
No poles yet – just the bare roof – still I was very happy with how the roof turned out.
And here I have added the spiked poles to make it a true Orc roof! I cut out the shaggy edges and I even went a little crazy with the edging. In the previous builds I just edged the poles white sides with a single color. Here I tried to color match the sides with the printed texture. Doesn’t it look great?
I am very glad how my attempt to create a leather texture turned out. Let me know how you like it in the comments. In the meantime I will start to work on the other textures 🙂