Agricultural Stuff

Something I put some serious TLC into is the floating gardens, or "chinampas", in the background water. Because of the heavily aquatic nature of Tenochtitlan, floating gardens like this were integral to Aztec farming. I wanted to make sure these crucial objects were represented so I actually went and modeled some of the vegetables you would have seen in a place like this.

We've got pinto bean stalks on the left, corn in the middle, and amaranth on the right. Obviously there were many more things grown by the Aztecs than that, but these three staples provide good variety to the scene since you don't see them up close anyway. And since I'm showing you these and you can clearly see that there isn't actually any detail on a lot of these simpler objects, I'm gonna show you how I get them textured quickly and easily. I'm employing the exact same methodology I showed you in the Conservative Texture Usage post, except I'm using a startlingly simple texture.

The texture file you see in this image is an exact representation of the actual texture being used on these game objects; one half is solid white and one half is solid black. On the simple objects that don't need any textural detail, I just slap this guy on 'em and he pretty much takes care of everything for me. It's great because when I'm modeling I spend NO time meticulously arranging UV's, I just cram the UV's from the main body of the object into the upper half of the UV space and the outter ink object into the lower half. And since they're all using this material in the scene, I can take advantage of Unitys mesh combine functionality and turn a whole array of simple vegetables into one object. It's beautiful and fast and satisfying. :)