Rusted I-Beam

I know it does not sound like much but the only thing I finished this week was the I-beam to the left.  I watched several interesting tutorials, particularly the last one on creating a post-apocalyptic effect, may prove fairly useful.As far as where I am headed from here, again, I would like to get some of those scenes finished before I begin the majority of work on this project.  I know that is a bit of a delay, but I feel they would be something useful for me to complete.  Once those are finished, or while I am working on them depending on how time flows, I would like to get several of the main buildings in my military base finished.  I will probably start with the hangar and garage.and then figure out where to focus on the rest of the map.

Now for me to pick apart the i-beam.  The model itself I feel came out very nice and at 78 faces should not break anyone's computer.  While I could construct an even lower polygon count i-beam - this one has some smoothing where the vertical piece meets each of the horizontal pieces - that is not a big worry at the moment, though might become one if my scenes get too detailed.  What real bugs me is the texturing.  Overall it is not awful, though would probably work nicer if the bump map was working as rust does not come off as flat as the model looks.  But what is broken is the UV layout, which I realize means that even the nicest texture will not come out that great.  For some reason the program insists on making each of the non-end-cap faces the same size on the UV map which causes the texture to stretch in tight spots, though it lays about how I want it to in the larger areas.  Once I get the UV map to lay right, I can fit the texture again and see if that also needs work.  Until next time,
~gunnah