Week 21
This week we had a group meeting now that the basic white box for our level is finished, where each of us as a group were assigned assets to populate a scene in which will act as our benchmark, the benchmark which we have chosen is the corridor, for this week I have been tasked to create a bookshelf and a chandelier. I've managed to both model are high poly and low poly model for both of these assets as well as unwrapping and normal and Ambient occlusion bakes, I've got a good feeling about this project.
The bookcase was actually quite fun to create, taking full advantage of the symmetry modifier and a fairly simple design I was able to create a high and low poly within a fairly short amount of time whilst keeping the poly count fairly low, after showing this to my group they suggested something I was trying to avoid which was assigning ornate wood carving into the side of the bookcase. I first tried this using 3DS Max, using such modifiers as bend and turbo smooth I was able to create some simple designs but they all seemed a little underwhelming and I decided that 3DS Max was a little too rigid for the style that I was going for. Then something clicked and I realised that I could be using Zbrush now that I understand it from the last project and use it to literally paint detail onto the model. I did this by painting a variety of shapes onto a plane which I then exported to 3DS Max and using such tools as the symmetry modifier I was able to create a variation of detail in which I applied to my model using a high poly bake. I would have liked the poly count to be a lot smaller then the final count of 4.8 K, but in order for the books to look realistic and the shelves to look populated I had to weigh whether to have a high quality looking asset or a low poly one and I feel I was able to reach a balance of this.
Initially the thought of creating a chandelier made me feel nervous but after going back to research and as our Castle has a rustic Scottish mediaeval style guide meant that it wasn't as ornate as I expected and actually proves quite easy to create. I'm still not sure why the high poly bake didn't go as successful as the bookshelf maybe because the shapes are more curved, but I had a lot of trouble working out why my normal maps were not given the desired effect, I'm still not hundred percent sure on the process of creating normal maps this way although I am improving and hopefully I will find answers these problems although now I need to focus on creating the assets and focusing on the polish later down the line.
I've also learnt a new program specifically designed to bake high poly detail onto a low poly model this program is called Xnormal, and is a lot more effective than using 3DS Max's baking programs and will be a program I use from now on.
