4. Dressing It Up
Texture: The "skin" that goes on your model and makes it look more real, these can be anything from stock photos to your own handmade textures. This is a really great place to get into for beginners. If getting to grips with the modelling and animating software was tricky for you or if you just are unsure about how to create a fully 3D model perhaps starting this will give you some inspiration. Texturing can be done from photographs of the world around you, it is essentially what you use as a skin to wrap around your models. The most basic cube can be turned from a crate to a companion cube using mainly textures. The key here is not only getting your basic texture, the different colours of your object, the real flare comes from a "bump map". This is a black and white image that overlays your current texture. It's what makes extra little 3D parts of your image. If you had a bump map of a piece of wood it would cause there to be indentations where the grains were. If you had a bump map of cobblestones it would make them come out of the surface and look rounded. The software CrazyBump is vey simple and very good at creating maps from your normal textures. You can also play with lighting/texture types to make things reflective. This is a whole discipline in itself and really is what makes your scene come to life. You can turn a dull corridor from pristine white dentist's office to dingy horror asylum using clever texturing and lighting.
Software to Check Out: Gimp, CrazyBump and all the free game textures resource websites