Winter Submission: Sci Fi Rifle - Part 6

Today is the day of xNormal, colour maps, and finally bringing the rifle into Quixel suite.

Using xNormal, an ancient piece of software, I baked the high-poly model to get its bump map for export.

The high poly model as it appears in ZBrush.

The normal maps

Next, I exported the low-poly's UV map to Photoshop, and applied bright colours to differentiate between different materials better when it arrives in Quixel.

The low poly currently makes Super-Soaker's look manly.

Using Quixel Suite, also known as 'Loading Screen and Crashing Simulator 2015', I changed it from a gun for clowns and childrens birthday parties, to this:

Next, I brought it into Unreal 4 to properly present it.

Winter Submission: Sci Fi Rifle - Part 5

As I haven't found a version of ZBrush for home use, I started unwrapping the low poly model over the weekend. Once this is done, I can create bump maps of the high poly models and lay them over the top of the low poly.

My Environment Art for 'Five a Day' - Part 1

Over this term, I've been part of a group making a point and click adventure game called 'Five a Day', a murder mystery Noir thriller starring fruit-headed people in the 1940s.

I was given the role of Environment artist, and felt it was about time I showed off my work, which goes from 3D modelling through to texturing and lighting.

Here are my final assets ready to go into the game, and my lighting prototype. I'll make another post detailing the final lighting bake, otherwise this will be a really long post.

Starting with the flat textures:

This texture is pretty neat. By leaving the gaps in the lattice blank, when it's applied to a rectangle this appear invisible in Unity, thus allowing light through and creating some awesome shadows.

Wallpaper textures to give some life to the brickwork.

And now onto the 3D assets as they will appear in engine.

These last two objects are my experiments with glass-like textures. By altering the opacity, reflection levels, and specular levels, I feel I have created a good likeness to glass. However, I wasn't able to pre-bake reflections of the room they would be situated in onto them due to our brief (no baking except lighting in the scene), which would make the effect more believable. They do however reflect the light in the scene, which I am very happy with.

Speaking of which, here is the prototype lighting of the scene.

The next post will be of the final lighting, and all the assets in scene and looking pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Practicing UV Unwrapping and Texturing

Where I've been focused on my environment art work for Games Production (seen here: http://fruitysharks.blogspot.co.uk/), I've rather fallen behind with my AAA asset. So today I practiced UV unwrapping and texturing.

I took a chair asset I made for the game, as it was a relatively simple shape, and set about re-learning the tools I'll need to complete my Sci-Fi rifle asset.

This is the asset I was practicing on - a round arm chair. The UV's were a bit of a state, so I began by separating the object into it's sub-tools.

Slowly splitting and sewing the UV's into an optimised layout.

Once I finished optimising the UV's, I exported the UV snapshot to Photoshop and quickly painted the albedo shell.

And here is my final result. The colour needs a bit of work, but overall I feel more confident with the UV unwrapping tools in Maya.

Winter Submission: Sci Fi Rifle - Part 4

I've been taking the components of my Milano rifle into ZBrush recently and using the programme to add fine details. Here are a few screenshots of what I've done so far.

 The suppressor and gas block

 The bolt and charging handle

The stock 

The chassis of the rifle. the lines are purely for texturing purposes, to give the impression that this piece is made from brushed metal 

The cheekrest 

The hand guard

I hope to have this stage finished over the next few days, and then it will be UV un-wrapping time!