Diorama render and updates

So this is my render of my textured diorama (note, not the final one). I'm happy with how it turned out, I'm hopeful that it will look really nice in UDK. Since my last post I added a construction sign and made the fences dips be shown through the use of a normal map and AO instead of geometry as it didn't really need to be made 3D and it took up unnecessary tris. As for the making of the textures themselves, the sign was very easy since there was a construction site with some on the way to university from my flat conveniently. Using photos it was made quickly. The claw was okay but I'm not that happy with it, I think it could use with some more time on it which I may do tomorrow. The fence is fine and I'm happy with how the floor texture came out as my photos of dirt weren't perfect and I thought I would have to do it tomorrow with some new photos but my current ones were enough apparently. I also had a major issue with my hard drive requiring me to remake my decal map and sort out some errors on my digger textures which was very annoying and mostly my fault sadly. But nevertheless, I will be moving this into UDK in the coming weeks and getting some beauty renders of it which will be posted here then.

Diorama model

This is the model of my diorama. I may make changes to it but for now this is it.

Diorama design

Just a quick mock up of what I plan to make for my diorama. It's very simple and features several objects present in the environment that I photographed my digger in. It will be easy to model and not too difficult to texture either so I can't see a problem with me creating this. 

Digger textures

I just finished my texture maps for my digger. Here are all the maps.

Decal Map

Decal Specular Map

Diffuse Map

Normal Map

Specular Map

Render #1

Render #2

I'm not all that happy with the final result as I would have liked another few weeks to work on it but considering the time frame I'm pretty happy with it.

Decal map

I finished my decal last night. I'm pretty happy with how it came out because it was on a  512 x 512 map so it has really good resolution. I made them using my own pictures which I then cleaned up with the brush and eraser tools and used the alpha channel to get rid of the background. 

Finished Normal map

Today I finished my normal map for the digger. For the most part it proved simple with only a few errors. Whilst the map looks very empty, this is because I have only been doing a few select areas that I feel need the extra attention and detail. My normals were done in two ways, baking detail to a plane and then having the low and high poly model overlayed. I used the plane method for the majority as I felt more confident with it but the back section was done with a high poly model over the low poly model. Whilst basic, I'm happy with the work.  

Finished AO

I just finished my ambient occlusion map which will be used to add shadow detail to my diffuse map. It proved very awkward to create. I created it by splitting the model into 4 parts and AO'ing them. I had some issues with this too. I had to get rid of any overlayed UV's until there was only one set left there. I also ended up with many small artifacts which I had to remove. I also ended up hand painting a fair bit of it as I felt some of it should have more/less pronounced shadow. Overall I think it will be helpful to my diffuse. I also have it setup so that I can edit it further once I start adding more details to the texture (in case it doesn't look right). Next I plan to either create the diffuse map or the normal map.