Orb Bridge Project (Blocking | High Res Meshing)

 

Orb Bridge

BridgeBlockout

Sculpted Planks

Orb Planks

Crate Final Render

Final Render

 

Wireframe

Crate Game Res and Baking

 

Originally I wanted to use my initial low poly blackout as starting point for the project, however after some complications with Zbrush exporting and some other technical issues I decided it was easier to just do a low poly from scratch. Since we did not have a hard polygon limit I decided to bevel the outer edges to get a better silhouette, while keeping the inner edges sharp. If I would use this asset in an actual game I would definitely keep simple outer edges without bevel as it bakes really nice even without it. 

Crate Highpoly

 

For this assignment we had to create the high-poly of the crate. Usually when creating this model for a video game I would try to avoid sculpting most of the details and instead add them in substance painter as this allows for a non destructive workflow and is much easier to control and change. However since the point of the assignment was to use Zbrush I decided to sculpt most of the damage. I started out by tryng to stay close to the reference that showed little damage, however after some feedback I decided to push the damage to make it more visible. In the end I might have gone a bit overboard and added to much chipping, but it is hard to tell until the object is textured. I decided not to add any wood grain, as I might want to use image textures later on which would result in a mismatch with the grain.

Crate Blockout

 Crate Blockout

For this project I decided to create the realistic crates from sea world. While the crates are extremely simple objects it was the only reference that showed a realistic prop. As this is the style I am best at and as I really want to improve my wood texturing, I decided to pick this crate. To model it, I used Blender as using its modifiers would allow me to keep a lot of the model non destructive making it extremely simple to do any revisions which is ideal for the block out stage. I started creating the low poly version of the model. Usually I would use this directly and add all the other details like planks in substance painter. However for this assignment I also created a high poly block out with individual planks. I imported the finished objects into Unreal where I set up simple lighting with a shadow catcher. I then rendered a picture of the highpoly block out, the highpoly wireframe, as well as the low poly wireframe.

Meet Mat

 

Meet Mat

Character concept

For the "Meet Mat" assignment, I decided that instead of just creating a cool looking material, I wanted to create a more specific character. I felt like Super Mario would be a good choice, as it is very iconic, and would work reasonably well with the simple shapes of Mat. As a reference I used the more realistic Mario from the Super Mario movie. I matched the colors of the base to look like the ? - block from the games. I decided to keep it in simple colors without any extra roughness or height details, to give a better contrast to the character and to not draw attention away from it.

Workflow 

Since this character relied on a lot of specific details, which had to look like they were 3D, one of the main tools I used were anchor points. I started of by creating an empty paint layer at the bottom of the project, for each specific part of clothing and added a mask to it where I then painted in the required shapes using paint and fill layers. I then added an anchor point on top of the mask, which allowed me to reference the mask in other layers. I then created fill layers for the required materials e.g. denim and used the Anchor points as mask to get the correct shape. Just using height information to create a 3D effect was not enough and didn't look good, as it had very harsh edges and transitions, and so I created a drop shadow effect to add extra depth. To create the shadow I created a fill layer with a black base material, and added a mask with a fill layer of the same anchor point as for the part that needed the shadow. I then used the Bevel smooth filter to extend the edge of the mask, and softened it with a blur filter. To make sure that there were no color spill, I then added a fill with the same anchor point on top of the stack and set it to subtract.

A similar technique was used on the leather and red fabric, where anchor points where used to create color variation and depth by creating darker and brighter areas on the base pattern.

To add the seams I used the curve tool with different brushes. Originally I created the edges of the pants by using  2 bevel modifiers on the anchor point of the pants and subtracting them from each other. while this worked, it added height to the entirety of the border, which looked good on the front but didn't work on the back where the pants merge into the suspenders. Instead I also used the curve tool to draw lines and inset them, which gave the desired effect.

An area that caused some problems where the eyes, as they are not flat but have a slightly rounded surface. I first tried achieving this effect by using a blur modifier, however this did not achieve the desired effect. I decided to model the desired shape in Blender by using a cube with a subdivision surface modifier. I then used the mesh to bake an alpha map which could be used for the correct shape of the eyes. The I used the same technique on the ears. 

The only really problematic area was the cap, as I could not figure out a way to intergrade it into the model naturally. Since I still wanted to include the iconic M patch, I decided to use half of the outer shell of the head as the cap. I then added the M logo using the embroidery generator in substance painter

 

Portfolio

The End of Crime

I created this project as part of my bachelors at Noroff. The assets were created using a mix of traditional modeling as well as photogrammetry. Everything was rendered inside of Unreal Engine. 

AR 15

This model was made a few years ago, and I updated its texture during my Bachelor's. The gun was optimized for video game use and can be customized with various attachments, as shown in the weapon reel. The gun uses two texture sets. One for the stock and body, and one for the magazine, and both handguard variations.

Aimdot Reflex Sight

For this project I retextured a older model I had made a few years back.

Weapon Reel 

A reel showing a few of the guns i modeled

Character Turntable

This character was created during my first year of my Bachelor’s. I wanted to create a game-ready character, so I kept it low-poly and also used as few texture sets as possible.