Archive for February, 2011
Game – Dumpster
Here’s the completed low poly model of the dumpster, accompanied with a few bin bag buddies. All objects were baked from a higher poly version.
The dumpster contain 2310 tris. I decided not to go overboard with the dirt and grime overall and kept it to a minimum; having only heavier dirt where it would be required like the inside of the dumpster, this gave a general use appearance to the model.
On the bottom surface of the dumpster, I’ve added some piles of scraps and rubbish, this was done with the aid of Crazybump to generate the normal and occlusion map to add some subtle depth to it.
The high poly models of the bin bags started out from a normal sphere that has been altered using the FFD 3x3x3 tool and the Noise modifier to give some randomness to the shape. Then in edit poly I used the paint deformation to brush in the creases to give that authentic material look.
After I was satisfied with the models; I imported them into Polygon Cruncher which optimizes the high poly down to create the low poly version. After a few tweaking of the edges it was ready to be baked.
The low poly model of the small bag contain 282 tris and the larger one has 242 tris. To add some variety to the models, I’ve created two versions for each, one white plastic bag and one typical bin liner bag.
I knew before texturing that the plastic see-through bag would add more realism and interest to the overall piece and was worth the extra texturing work involved. As it was a spherical shape I thought it would be difficult to texture the pieces of rubbish together without showing large visible seams, but the randomness of the texture help hide most of it. I tried not to spend too much time on getting it perfectly seamless since it’ll be shown quite faint from the plastic material.
Crazybump was used again to generate a normal map from the scrap image to add presence to the rubbish and tin cans, this was blended in subtly with the crease normal layer to create the final look.
Game – Shipping Container
Here is a finished model of a shipping container. It uses 3533 tris and was baked from a high poly.
The model is symmetrical apart from the handle in the middle. Parts of the uvw map was mirrored to save texture space, the top and bottom panels are mirrored since it won’t be often visible and the sides has been mirrored since only one side could be viewed at one single time.
For the texturing, I tried to give the appearance of a fairly new container, used for maybe less than a year; so only some light scratches and a few wear.
I didn’t want to go down the heavy rusty look since that’s been done quite often and I think it would detract the overall appearance of this particular model, it would also make it harder to duplicate several times as you would easily spot the same rust marks from a distance.
Game – Safe
Here is a finished model of a safe. It contains 1820 tris and was baked from a high poly model. I tried to give the safe an aged appearance to it, slightly worn over the years but well kept.
I’ve lowered down the opacity on the blending modes for the dirt layers to give a subtle effect. The document model was done very quickly using a plane geometry and a alpha channel on the diffuse texture map.
Game – Ceiling Fan
Here’s a low poly model of a ceiling fan, it contains 1010 tris. There was no baking of a high poly version for this particular object. The normal map was created from scratched using the nvidia normal tools in photoshop.
To created a soft edge in the normal map, I made a selection of the object layer (ctrl + left click the layer) and inverted it (ctrl + shift + I), added a small feather to the surrounding edge (shift +F6) and then press delete a few times to get a soft gradient edge.
Nearly all of my previous game models have been baked from high poly models so starting from a blank normal canvas was something I’ve not done much of before. I’ve learnt a few new techniques and workflow from making this model.
Game – Table & Chairs
Here are some low poly table and chair models, they were baked from high poly versions. The table contains 346 tris and the chair has 596 tris.
The original textures were done in 2048×2048 maps but what is displayed on the final image are the lower res version, 1024 for the table and 512 for the chair, there’s not much of a difference apart from it being slightly less sharp.
The texturing was fairly simple and quick to do, starting with a wood image as the base. Some parts of the texture had to be rotated to follow the grains of the wood texture so this was done by duplicating the wood layer and masking out the particular part and then rotating it.
I tried to make the edge of the table slightly more worn out, this was done by painting the edge with a soft black brush and then using the ‘blend if’ scale in the blending mode option to make it more scattered looking.
I made the specular map more soft and white to give the appearance of a coat of varnish on the table and chairs.