New Orleans - Jackson Square

This is the second incarnation of New Orleans in which we decided to add more detail and handcraft almost all of our textures. On the original New Orleans I mostly modeled buildings, but in the second version I moved almost exclusively to making textures except for a few later props and the riverfront area which I modeled. I also was in charge of laying out the environment and the initial lighting in Unity which was later modified by Josh Dicarlo. The in-game screen shots are from a demo of Jackson Square we produced.

Models, excluding the riverfront were made by Dan Siebert. Other environment and building textures were made by Dan Siebert and Jennifer Stolzer. Characters were built, textured, and rigged by Josh Dicarlo. Jennifer Stolzer also textured characters and animated them. The Cathedral was built and textured by Josh Dicarlo. We worked on several versions of this project from September 2007 to about February 2009.

We tried to stay as close to the original as possible. We used photo reference of the French Quarter to base our models and textures off of. Though we used photo reference, almost all of our textures were hand created in Photoshop. Most textures were created at 1024x1024 and sized down to 512x512 or lower for in-game use. We used normal maps to increase the depth of our buildings since Unity does not support displacement maps. The normal maps were created with Normal Mappr from grayscale bump map images.

1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Normals 1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Reflection 512x512

1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Normals 512x512

Reflection 512x512

1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Normals 512x512

1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

There are several interior spaces we created for New Orleans. The French Cafe was the only interior featured in the demo. The Voodoo Shack was one of my favorites since it is so dank and dirty. You could tell lots of bad JuJu went on here. The Voodoo Shack prop models and prop textures were created by Dan Siebert.

French Cafe 1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

French Cafe Normals 1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Voodoo Shack Walls 512x512

Voodoo Shack Wood Beams 512x512

Voodoo Shack Doors 256x512

Voodoo Shack Windows 256x512

The streets were challenging because their attributes had to be unique and interesting, yet tileable. The brick sidewalk was one of the few pictures we used for a texture. I enhanced the color and added lost of grime in Photoshop.

Cobblestone 1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Cobblestone Normals 1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Cobblestone Intersection 1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Cobblestone Intersection Normals 1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Park Wall 512x128

Park Wall Normals 512x128

Park Step 512x128

Park Step Normals 512x128

Area before the river. I built a stage that could be added for special events. The entire riverfront area is 7616 tris. The steps structure in the area shown is 895 tris and the stage with signs is 154 tris.

Steps Structure 895 tris - Stage & Extras 154 tris

Steps Structure 895 tris

Canvas 512x512

Support Ropes 512x512

Speakers 256x256

Support Truses 256x512

Concrete 1024x1024 (512x512 in-game)

Voodoo Fest Sign & TV 256x256

Voodoo Fest Sign & TV Illumination 256x256

Voodoo Fest Sign & TV Normals 256x256

Grass 512x512

White Bark 256x256