Finishing the Triple A Asset

I've gotten my dumbbell into Unreal and built a little environment to help with lighting and to generally not have a single object on a slab of concrete-ish game floor.

I enjoyed positioning the dumbbell in Unreal and seeing how the light would interact.

I put another dumbbell into the scene as they are commonly bought and used in pairs.

Showing the lighting.

Weights, a bench and those rubbery inflated ball things. 

As well as screenshots showing the object in engine I bought the object into Quixel and textured it showing the topography of the model. 

UV layout.

Dumbbell model in Quixel showing topography. 

Overall the project went reasonably okay given my history of modelling projects going quickly awry. One of the problems I encountered later on with the model was getting the normal maps cover the model properly (which can bee seen in the screenshots) as well as some of the parts being slightly too small making the detail more pixelated then what I would have liked. 

Triple A Quixel and Unreal

Today I applied suitable textures to my model in Quixel Suite and begun setting up everything in Unreal for the final hand in tomorrow. It's not quite done yet as there're a few things that still need a bit of work but I should be able to happily meet the deadline.

Quixel model.

Small environment with pull-up bar and power rack. 

Dumbbell in engine.

Another shot of the dumbbell.

I still need to make a proper environment for the dumbbell and sort out a few of it's texturing issues but all in all it's going well. Should be dandy by tomorrow.

Triple A Mapping

After putting the low-poly and high-poly models into XNormal to get the texture maps I brought them into Photoshop to correct some errors and distortion in the mapping which would cause the materiel on the object to lie slightly off. After doing that I combined the maps for the separate pieces of the dumbbell.

Normal Map

Ambient Occlusion Map

Colour Map

Hopefully with these maps I should now people able to put the materials onto my object in Quixel and be well on my way to being finished. 

Dumbbell

For my triple A asset project I have made a low poly version of my dumbbell and unwrapped the UVs so hopefully soon I can bung on all the different maps and details and have the project done.

Low-poly Dumbbell; actually quite similar to the high poly bar a few deleted edge loops.

Edge -loops.

Different parts of the dumbbell mapped out. 

It'd be nice to get as much done during the early part of the crunch as opposed to the final two days of nervous agony. A bit like last year but worse. 

Derek the Installation Monitor

I Robin's class today we were working with Insert Multi Mesh tools. These tools allow us to essentially virtually kit-bash models together from pre-existing parts either on ZBrush, made in Maya, or found on the internet. The model I decided to make became Derek the Installation Monitor.
An old oil rig monitor, Derek patrols the are looking for things that can be seen as dangerous to the now halted drilling operations and promptly ignoring them as he wishes not to waste too much ammo lest it be needed later on.

Derek to the left. 

Derek to the right.

Derek's face. 

I enjoy this way or modelling in ZBrush exclusively for hard surface work. One thing I need to work on is getting better with the rotation and moving tools and finding the best mirroring axis for symmetry. 

AAA Dumbbell Progress

With my Triple-A asset project I bought all of my different Maya parts into ZBrush and really just added detail and put them all together, making the plates subtools of the bar.

Front view of dumbbell. There are a few scratches and knicks in the plates but most of the detail on them will come from textures. 

3/4 view of the dumbbell showing the spinlock and the plates. 

One thing I realised was that I had to do each of the plates separately as there is no way to duplicate and move about individual tools in ZBrush. It really seems like something that could be added. I'm happy with the progress of it so far and now I just need to get on with other things like the low-poly unwrapping and what-not. 

ZBrush Alien

In todays Zbrush lesson we were working with DynaMesh and Insert Mesh. These tools make it a lot easier to model things, especially non-humanoid things.

What I created using these tools was the head of an alien.

Profile picture of a specimen of the Blorthog species.

Snaggle-not-actually-teeth-tooth

Rear view showing the back of the head and eye globes.

The design was to have antennae coming from the back of his head but I struggle to make them look right and eventually gave up.