"DeFy BuGGy"

This vehicle was made from a whole lot of errors, mistakes, and failures on my part. A colleague of mine challenged me to a duel of the Arts. We were to make a dune buggy that had seen some damage and war. To say the least my first pass took a week and then didn't get finished to my liking and failed to come close to my colleagues' own vehicle. I had second guessed myself, and overlooked major steps. So I took the model I had used and re-did the engine components, added a more believable suspension system, further cleaned up some Geo, worked on re-fining the silhouette , and took an over-all closer look at the major defining shapes from the concept we were using.  After messing with the model for a day I then redid the UVing to add more texture space and density. This gave me a new Normal map that was a bit cleaner than before. I then worked on the the cosine map and defined each materials' surface.  After this I started on the Diffuse map and when I felt the "Dune buggy," getting to my liking I starting playing with the Spec map. At the same time I would re-define the other maps with what I was conveying in the other maps.  I found I was wondering into the same problems as my first run and I was getting lost in the different maps and not getting the type of differentiation I wanted through-out my different materials. I learned that I had started too soon on adding too much contrast in the cosine and spec maps.  After a couple of long nights tweaking, the maps started to do what I wanted them to do.  After this I started to add the grunge and some of the damage to the model a little more with each pass.  What I had learned from this challenge was that when laying down the model & textures to not get too ahead of oneself, to plan better for the final pose of the model, and to ease up more on the cosine map & spec map before adding major contrast in those respected maps that will ultimately define the flaws that make the prop unique.