I wanted to make a small guide for the methods I used to create the "Compound X" finish in my workshop. While this guide deals specifically with this finish, the method could be used to create all kinds of tiling finishes from photo reference. Take from it what you can!

My original inspiration for this finish was the liquid light shows that were prominent in the 1960's and 1970's.


(Photo's taken from www.liquidlightlab.com )

After doing some research on how they were done, I found a website that had a good video tutorial on setting up the basics of a liquid light show.

From what I could tell the method lent itself pretty well to creating a channel based finish (hydrographic/anodized/spray). Due to the amorphous nature of the shapes, I decided it would be cool to try and make it a fully tiling finish that could be randomly projected and remain seamless. This would provide a nice amount of variation and give people "options" so to speak.

Originally I had intended to do this finish for the Polycount contest that ran for the month of May. Due to this, there are notes and images from the early stages of the development of this finish and they can be found Here![polycount.com]

For this specific finish, I needed a number of materials as were outlined in the video at the end of the last section. However the materials will obviously change depending on what kind of finish you want to make.


Materials list

• Candle Dye (oil based)
  
• Concentrated Water-Colors (Water based)
  
• Mineral Oil
  
• Isopropyl Alcohol
  
• Light Table, or Projector (I used an LED light table)
  
• Camera
  
• Lots of rags or paper towels!

Once I had all the materials gathered I had to setup the photo shoot. I probably went a little overboard with the setup, but hindsight usually grants your a little more clarity. The setup I used for this photo-shoot was a tripod set up over the top of the light table so that I could shoot straight down through the liquid.




The results of this setup were pretty solid. I had to run through a few different photoshoots to get the exact shots that I ended up using, but that is to be expected. Below are some examples of the photographs prior to editing them for use in the finish.

Initially I had planned on trying to rather accurately re-create something similar to the photo's at the end of the previous section. My first attempt at tiling out the design manually fell rather short in my opinion.



This was produced using a method I've used for a while to stitch images together to create a tiling design. I create 4 identical layers, and offset them so that they fill a quadrant of the overall image canvas as illustrated below.



Once the quadrants were filled, I used a combination of a soft brush, and the clone stamp tool to begin filling in the areas producing visible seams. While leaving some errors I began testing this finish in the workbench to get an idea of where I was.




I found this effect interesting, but somehow lacking, as a two color finish it was too subtle, and when I would increase the saturation of the colors, or add more color layers I consistently got rather muddy results. I was a bit worried I was done and the experiment was a failure. On a whim I just started playing around with the photo's that I had taken, drawing little faces into the swirls and mirroring things to look like Rorschach tests.




In this experimenting I ended up making the following image image, which struck me as pretty cool, and gave me a new direction to head in for the finish. Rather than attempting to fully recreate the effect of a liquid light show, I would make a far more graphic representation of one.




Perceived benefits of following a more graphic design scheme

• In-game readability
  
• Ease of editing
  
• Variants more strongly defined
  
• Graphic nature lends itself to easier exponent masking

The method I used for the last image in the previous section was accomplished by increasing the contrast of a B&W version of one of my photographs. Then running an image trace on the picture in illustrator.



Once I had run this process over three suitable photo's I began the process of stitching them together. I accomplished this in part by finding natural similarities in the shapes and positioning the shapes together in such a way that they appeared to belong together.


I had found good positions for the elements and felt the weight and variation was where I wanted it to be. I then began the work of erasing the seams. I used the same method as the first scrapped test, wherein I separate the image into the 4 quadrants shown below, and manually draw in the connections and erase out any unnecessary parts.


Once this was completed, I ran through the image with a 4px brush and cleaned up where the image trace had left undesirable artifacts, or sharp edges.

I knew once I decided to go with a more graphic version that I would most likely make changes to the exponent. I wanted the higher key colors to reflect light more than the lower key basecoat. I created a selection of the black outline seen in the previous section, and darkened those parts on the alpha channel. I shrank the area slightly, and feathered the edges so that the difference in resolution between the diffuse map and the exponent map wouldn't cause too much artifacting.


Once I'd completed this, I began laying in my color gradients. Rather than doing it with the gradient tool, and having nice smooth color shifts across the whole design, I opted to go with a more scattered look. I felt it would cause more interesting variations, and due to the fact that I intended it to be fully randomized, I felt long smooth gradients would make the design less interesting. Using a large soft brush, similar to an airbrush, I painted in what would be the base for my color gradients.


Once I had accomplished this I was pretty happy with how the design turned out, but I still felt it was a little too plain. I decided to see about adding a bit of extra noise into the higher key color areas. I settled on adding an overlay that was actually quite similar to my original design. and it broke those areas up rather nicely without sticking out or altering the design much.



I decided to go with a high shine with this finish. It has such dynamic shapes that I feel like a more bombastic approach is in order. The phong settings used in this finish were roughtly 180 for the phongexponent, and 30 for the phongalbedoboost.

Color selection is a ton of fun for me. I had a pretty good idea once I decided to go a more graphic route what kind of color selections I would be making. I knew I wanted it to be a 3 color design, and I knew that I wanted one muted darker color, with two higher key colors fading into one and other.


Example of the pink p90 version

• Color0 (28 22 32)
  
• Color1 (201 74 143)
  
• Color2 (28 25 32)
  
• Color3 (206 107 27)

I decided instead of locking myself down to one or two specific color schemes, I would just make fresh ones for each weapon I intended to apply the finish to. It's more fun that way!


Example of the purple Glock version

• Color0 (25 22 34)
  
• Color1 (121 23 210)
  
• Color2 (28 25 32)
  
• Color3 (57 110 198)

Welp! That's it for this guide! I'll be trying to upload more of these in the coming weeks to cover some more topics!