WIP’s, Finished UV’s
(oh, wait no, MORE UV’S!), Small Rock Assets and Tutor Feedback!
Yesterday I went into university to
show my tutor, Lothar, my WIP exterior jungle environment. He had seen various
assets I had made early on such as the rope and low level of detail bridge but
he hadn’t seen it finished as it stands.
Incredibly nervous, I showed him the work I have been slaving over for the past 3 weeks hoping for a positive crit and feedback session. And this is exactly what I got! Lothar seemed impressed with the work I had produced stating that it was portfolio quality if I could ensure the textures are good and that I continue to work hard on it. He seemed satisfied with my organic modeling and the only real criticism he gave me was that some of my models were too high poly; which is totally fair. However, I did say to him that early on in the project I had decided I wasn’t going to work in engine for this unit and that, whilst I didn’t want to go poly count crazy, I didn’t want to worry over keeping as low as possible. He agreed with this and said if I'm not working in engine then its fine.
One piece of advice he gave me was to perhaps add some smaller rocks to the environment scene which I have now done, UV’s ‘n all.
One major question I had for him was regarding the rope, do I cut up the UV’s and make them bigger but in smaller sections and at the risk of more seams? Or do I leave the UV as one long UV net with less quality texture wise but with no seams? Lothar said that I should cut up the rope UV’s and have them in manageable chunks to texture, this will also raise the texture quality and said agreed that so long as I try to make sure my textures are “seamless” it should be fine. I will need to go back and cut up the UV’s and resize them but I will do this when I texture them and document it then.
Incredibly nervous, I showed him the work I have been slaving over for the past 3 weeks hoping for a positive crit and feedback session. And this is exactly what I got! Lothar seemed impressed with the work I had produced stating that it was portfolio quality if I could ensure the textures are good and that I continue to work hard on it. He seemed satisfied with my organic modeling and the only real criticism he gave me was that some of my models were too high poly; which is totally fair. However, I did say to him that early on in the project I had decided I wasn’t going to work in engine for this unit and that, whilst I didn’t want to go poly count crazy, I didn’t want to worry over keeping as low as possible. He agreed with this and said if I'm not working in engine then its fine.
One piece of advice he gave me was to perhaps add some smaller rocks to the environment scene which I have now done, UV’s ‘n all.
One major question I had for him was regarding the rope, do I cut up the UV’s and make them bigger but in smaller sections and at the risk of more seams? Or do I leave the UV as one long UV net with less quality texture wise but with no seams? Lothar said that I should cut up the rope UV’s and have them in manageable chunks to texture, this will also raise the texture quality and said agreed that so long as I try to make sure my textures are “seamless” it should be fine. I will need to go back and cut up the UV’s and resize them but I will do this when I texture them and document it then.
Asset #9 - Small
Environment Rocks
As I had already researched and found
reference images for rock formations for the larger jungle rocks I made
previously, I didn’t feel it necessary to find more reference images for the
smaller rocks. I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out the
lattice tool I have previously tried to use but ditched. The tool allows you to
manipulate a model whilst maintaining the correct geometry and not breaking
your model.
For making rocks this is great. I was able to make a base shape with a decent amount of vertices. I manipulated it slightly using just the verts (low level of detail, base formation rock on the right).
For making rocks this is great. I was able to make a base shape with a decent amount of vertices. I manipulated it slightly using just the verts (low level of detail, base formation rock on the right).
After I got a higher level of detail
into my rock by inserting a couple of extra edge loops and manipulating the
verts to form a more accurate rock I duplicated again. On this new rock I
applied a lattice.
Using the lattice control points I was
able to further manipulate the rock formation so that it wasn’t similar to the
original rock that I duplicated it from.
I still felt this silhouette was too
similar to the original rock, so I made further manipulations to the lattice
and it turned out really well.
Time for a new rock, I went back and
duplicated the original rock again and applied another lattice., I also did
some basic tweaking to the model.
Realising I wasn’t getting enough
freedom with the current lattice, I created a new one with more control points.
This made the modeling a lot easier and more detailed, it enabled me to
manipulate the formation even further to get a more unique rock shape.
Finally, you can see all the rocks I
made. I wont be using the one on the far right as that was just a base model
but I have included it so you can see the progression of shape and form from
beginning to end :D
Unwrapping the UV’s on
the Rocks
I then had to fit these newly created
rocks into my environment and make sure the floor poly plane fits them too.
Here are some WIP’s of that process.
Happy with how the assets sit on the
floor (for now!) I moved onto ensuring all my UV’s were in place. Firstly I
knew that I had left some UV’s bigger than they should be for the purpose of my
blog. To fix this and ensure all my UV’s were in the correct grid area, I
selected my entire model and looked on the UV grid to make sure nothing was
floating outside the UV space.
After this I did some renders to see
how my model looked with the checker pattern on with all the UV’s in their
correct placements within the UV grid space.
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