This is the surface of the Moon where most of the Performance and action in my scene is going to take place. While it looks like a basic plane mesh, It's actually been a difficult road to get it here. First of all, the initial levels and higher ground and lower ground area's were simply made in Maya and then exported to Z Brush. In Z Brush, I had a lot of fun being able to digitally sculpt in the craters and the natural/raw texture that the plane has - whilst facing the challenges of learning the Z Brush interface which has been an unprecedented journey for me. Getting that wonderful sculpt back into Maya and getting it back in there efficiently and how I artistically wanted it was the most difficult part. There's a lot of thing's that have to be played around with in regards to exporting all of the detail from Z Brush and getting that back into Maya. The detailed texture itself is a texture Map. This is known as a Displacement Map, and then on top of this there is a really cool velvet texture that I have found through external sources, so it's not a Maya preset. But that gives my environment a really nice and grainy but eased out look that compliments my rugged natural landscape. So really, we have a basic mesh plane with 2 Textured UV Maps laid over to give the artistic representation that I really really desired. I can say I am more than happy with the result! It's been something I have had to persevere with but my artistic representation of the Lunar surface has come into fruition!
