Quain Courtyard pt 2 scan material processing

I had a successful shoot day!
It was rather bright outside, so I had to deal with a lot of harsh sun and directional shadows.
I took a lot of notes as well, and recorded sound.

First I wanna talk about Photoshop's 'Photomerge' function... it's a tool I've been using more lately especially with Alchemist. Its a simple photo stitching feature. Under File>Automate.
It's gotten better than what I remember 5-10 years ago. It keeps all photos on separated layers with masks, and looking at the chunky shapes, the stitching is rather sophisticated.

I would like to, in the future, use a tripod and carefully measure out and scan a large area for material capture. However, I got successful results from just a handful of photos (5-8 or less). I can also repurpose the photogrammetry batches of photos (intended for geo reconstuction).

 

I was able to make this material kit in about a day. I love Alchemist's "Generate Board" feature, which quick exports your material collection into a thumbnail sheet.

The four slate textures were especially fun... in the courtyard, there are four types of slate tiles. I started with two types of slate, pulled from photos. Then used their "Pavement Generator" to define two types of tile patterns.

There are still some frustrations with this Beta release... it will crash on saving, and is a little slow on my laptop.

Something important to mention was that part of my capture day I took a couple of 'reference photos', wide shots of the area or in general, any photo that documented the qualities of the space and were not intended for reconstruction. These were especially valuable, as it helped inform some of my color choices.

I've been feeling a little overwhelmed about asset generating, but I recently rewatched the Star Wars Battlefront GDC talk. Their level kit contained like, 8 assets. They were simple enough that they could be scaled/rotated and repeated throughout the environment. Quality over quantity! And my favorite quote is still that the experience of going on location was more valuable to the artists than the data itself. It's time we stop making CG art based off of Google Images.