BA6 | Specialism #19

Unwrapping the UV’s on the Stairs

Using the same process as always, finding the faces which all face the same axis and projecting onto them once selected.  The sides were straight forward enough to UV as you can see. However I had to project the front faces of the stairs separately. I thought I might be able to map them from the top but it wont work.

 

Once I had this, I flipped the incorrect facing UV and resized them so that they were the same in terms of size and proportion to the sides.

 

Next job was to unwrap from the top so that I could project onto the steps from above.

 

 

Because I mapped the tops of the steps and the front face sides separately, I wanted to go back through and sew them together to make 1 net so that when I texture the stairs, they don’t appear disjointed or with majorly ugly seams. Here is what it looked like with the newly selected faces placed together in their rightful positions on the UV map. 

 

And here is how the UV’s and checker pattern appeared once I had sewn the new edges together.

 

I could have kept going with the UV sewing continuing the pattern for the other side of the stairs so I was left with one long net. However, as the other stairs are the back of the environment and technically in a different area, I thought I might as well keep them as a separate net on my UV grid to make the most productive use of the space and keep the quality high. 

 

And finally, because I am really proud of them, here are the UV’s in their final state. Obviously massive right now to demonstrate how neat the checker pattern is! Genuinely happy with them. 

BA6 | Specialism #18

Unwrapping the UV’s on the 1st Rock

Now that the rocks are at a stage I am happy to call “finished” I began to unwrap them. Here are screen shots from standard/auto mapping through to my manual planar mapping based upon axis and vert manipulation. 

Because these rocks are incredibly organic in shape and fairly complex in terms of the number of vertices and faces I had to be careful which faces I selected as which axis when planar mapping.  As you can see below, I started with a side axis planar projection, however this is what the checker UV’’s looked before I had projected so you can clearly see the difference between auto and my own UV’s. 

As you can see I continued to select faces around the rock and decide which axis to project them from to get the best UV results. 

 

I then spent time sewing the UV’s together in the editor to create a seamless net. 

 

After this, the final step was to project onto the top of the rock ensuring the final faces were all selected ready for the projection. I then resized this section to make sure the checkers weren’t stretched and were a similar size to the rest of the rock.  

BA6 | Specialism #17

Asset #7 - Temple Stairs

With the deadline just round the corner I don’t want to bite off more than I can chew…even though I kind of already have!! Haha. I'm going to build some temple stairs, just a few steps that are made of crumbled old stone with broken side walls. The wont be a fully modeled set of stairs, I will break them off before they reach the temple. I am hoping this will bring the scene together a bit more as right now it feels a bit lost :( As always, here are a load of visual images I have found to help me model my stairs.

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Building Asset #7 - The Stairs

The stairs were really simple to build and make look organic. I built a basic stair formation like so…Sure, it looks like a lot of unnecessary edges at this stage but I needed them to emphasise the organic aesthetic. Plus I went onto tidying them up.

 

Using a mixture of extrusions on certain faces inwards and outwards plus manipulation of the vert placements I was able to create a set of stairs that looked organic and similar to those seen in my reference images. I wanted them to look rugged and misshapen, whilst they are temple stairs they are also in a jungle which isn’t supposed to be maintained by people everyday so they will become weathered and damaged. 

Asset #8 - Boulder/Rocks

I knew that I wanted to create some rocks for my environment but didn’t really have a clear vision on where or how to incorporate them into my environment other than “hey look, a rock. Look how it’s just randomly sitting here…great”. I will admit that with the hollow log and tree stump I was headed this way with my assets under the impression that the bridge and pillars were going to be the focal point of the environment. This led my other assets to look a little lost and I knew I needed something to pull the environment together! Especially before I started to build things for the sake of building. 

SO! Enter rocks with purpose!! :D I built the stairs and felt inspired by a model that I found whilst doing visual research for the stairs. The stairs had a rock formation around them and led up to a doorway/pathway. I thought to myself I could try to re create something similar. I began to build some basic rocks, experimenting with a new tool that I had wanted to use for ages called the lattice. 

 

First of all I did a bit of research into rock formations in a jungle environment. Ultimately it will be the texture that makes these large rocks look how they should so it was crucial I found images of rocks in the right place. Had I of researched rocks from a dessert I wouldn’t be getting the right impressions of the textures a rock from a jungle needs. Here are the inspirations and visual references I found which I feel give me a pretty good idea of how jungle rocks should be.

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I didn’t really document or capture much of the development of the rocks as they started off as a trial/experiment. I started off building a rock that had a large crack in the middle. I also used the lattice tool in order to duplicate the same rock but manipulate its shape whilst keeping the geometry correct.

 

I never kept this rock which is why I didn’t document any more of its creation. The rock worked as a small rock as once enlarged to the scale to frame the stairs the crack became far too out of proportion, plus I was worried that including the crack would cause more problems later on when texturing as I already feel I have bitten off more than I can chew, I'm trying hard to add to my workload so that I can maintain a high quality. Therefore, this rock got binned haha. 

I ended up reverting to a previous save where I had the rock shown above, but before I had created the crack. I then used a series of extra edge loops, vert manipulation and re size tools to enlarge the rock formations into a rough outline/mock up of what the scene might look like with large rocks.  Here is the WIP as it stood when I was testing out blocks to see how it would look. 

 

I then began adding in more detail to the rock to achieve a look that I liked.

 

I also manipulated the stairs so that they fit in between the rocks. I want them to be as if they come out for the rock or at least blend in.  

 

Current Stage

At this stage the rock formations need a little more work but not loads, I don’t want to up the polys anymore really! The stairs also need to actually go somewhere; not just end suddenly on the other side! From feedback I have been advised that maybe I should just b ring the stairs down again on the other side just to finish it off so this is something I will probably do :D Here are my current WIP shots though. 

Oh yeah, I also added in polygon planes which I intend to texture with a floor as feedback suggested to me that my bridge didn’t read well as a bridge because everything was “floating” so I am hoping this will help. My main goal is to texture the assets though. 

BA6 | Specialism #16

Building Asset #6 - Tree Stump and Roots

Once again focusing on organic modeling for this tree stump, it’s not just a cylinder extruded with a basic wood texture, its going to have life and character :D right now its basic, but you can begin to see where I am going with the top. 

 

To build the long roots coming out from the tree I selected faces that were ultimately square and that would extrude evenly.

 

Using the top view and perspective views, I drew a CV curve along the path I wanted my roots to take. 

I’d then select the faces I wanted to extrude along that curve, then select the curve itself secondly. 

 

After further vert manipulation I was able to model the tree stump further to achieve a natural and organic aesthetic. I was also able to model in another root beside the one I had just created using the same method. 

Using the CV curve tool, I was able to start on the third root. Using the CV curve tool, extrude faces and vert manipulation method that I used previously to further model the root. 

I ended up adding a fourth leg although I'm not 100% sure if I want to keep it or not! So indecisive XD Oh well, here are some shots of it with both hardened edges and soft. I think it looks fine either way and with textures will be fine but I thought I should experiment with both.  I may also be adding some terrain beneath the stump too but it all depends on time.