Doors of Essimir

I had been tasked with building doors and whatnot for Bones of Essimir, however since I was talking to Sarah at the time I was naming the file, I had accidentally typed "Doors" of Essimir, rather than Bones of Essimir.
Thus, the spin-off series, Doors of Essimir, was born.


Doors of Essimir

The Doors of Essimir is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where people strive to live their lives, under the shadow of the evil Door Cultists, who go around stealing people's doors.
Striking fear and panic into the hearts and minds of the masses, they show no mercy as they ruthlessly pillage and plunder the doors of the innocent, all for their own evil agendas.


Doorstruction

In order to get the desired look, I began by constructing separate boards. After all, since they were simple doors made of old boards, it was the most logical approach.
I began with a generic board, and duplicated it, altering it's shape so that it was different from the previous.
The pieces of wood that span the boards had a bit more work done to them, based initially on the generic board which was used as a base, I created smaller pieces, with increasingly more polygons in various places in order to shape it so it was not so similar to the familiar planks.

The pieces of Door 1

The pieces of Door 2

Initially, I tried to bring the doors themselves into Mudbox, so that I might come up with some awesome textures and whatnot. Unfortunately, right from the beginning, Mudbox pointed out that it had some issues with the file I was trying to import - probably because many vertices intruded upon other surfaces.

I did use Mudbox on the doors, however, deciding that perhaps I could get away with it. 

Mudbox-textured door

The problem was that while the textures looked fantastic, when Maya wrapped up my naked little doors in their Mudbox-given coats, it was as if sections of the UV map were plastered on the wrong places of the doors.

I did attempt to resolve the issue, first by tediously trying to amend the issue in Maya with all the vertices which I could see could cause problems, but alas, even after I had eliminated all the issues I could see, Mudbox was still hating on me.

I decided to resort to the old-fashioned method of saving the UV snapshot from Maya and bring it into Photoshop.
And thus, unwrapping became an issue. And it took some doing to attempt, and I couldn't figure how to make the necessary cuts on the whole door, so it left me bewildered.
One morning, a couple of weeks ago, I slept it. I knew I should have tried to get into SIT on time (since I was bound to the fact I had to work on Bones of Essimer stuff), however I just lay in bed instead. With the addition of my imagination going over various thoughts and imaginings, my mind also started pondering the door issue.
It was literally like having a panel window from Maya in my head.
Crap.
Anyhoo, I started pondering the UV issue, and I suddenly came up with what felt like the most obviously simple, and obviously bound to work method - treat each piece of wood as a separate piece of wood.
Well, damn. I did it again.
And it worked. I saved out the UVs and built the map up in Photoshop by using various wood textures. By having differing layers of wood, one of which had mossy wood, I then used the Eraser Tool in Photoshop to help blend various wood textures into others.
The results came out quite well.

Door 1 - Textured

Door 2 - Textured

After this, I doubled up on the pieces of wood that settle on the doors, and put the duplicates on the other side. By doing this, we have four doors for the price of two! :D

So here are some views of the doors now.

Note: Being part of the Door Race, they were purged from their homes by the Door Cultists.
If you have any information on the whereabouts of these doors or the cultists, please contact us.
There is a reward of [1] chicken/s and/or a shiny new (or nearly new) chamberpot.