Adding colour to the piece, remodelling and other quick fixes

Just a brief update on the environment: this time, I've chosen to add a bit more colour to the mix.

I've added some tapestries to the scene, which are placed liberally over the walls and ceilings. In my research, hippies generally do this to liven up a surface with psychedelic patterns, so I figured I would do the same with my apartment environment. In my opinion, it added quite a lot to the piece, making it seem more claustrophobic and hidden.

Here's some quick sculpts I made of those objects.

I've also been working on the vinyl player in the room, which I wanted to be a hero asset of some kind. I had the fortune of knowing someone who owns their own vinyl player, so I could use photo reference in order to nail the look of the object.

Here's a shot of the highpoly:

Right now I'm in the process of texturing the lowpoly, so it's on its way.

That's all for now, but next I will try and fix those radioactive-looking candles. More things need to be textured, but i'd like to think I'm well on the way to finishing.

Thanks for reading :)

More texturing update: Laptops and vinyls

I've been a bit busy working on other projects, but I managed to complete a few more textures this week, including the laptop and the vinyls/guitar case. Here's a current level screenshot, though not much has changed:

And here's a few renders of assets. I'm particularly proud of the way the laptop turned out.

Here's the highpoly model. I used real-world reference material to make this laptop, modelling it after an Acer model.

And the finished model. Here, I put a good Gloss map to use to highlight wear on the screen and mousepad. It's a really nice model and I'm quite proud of it ;)

With the vinyl sleeves, I was tipped off by a fellow coursemate about use of Anisotropic specular maps to get the most of my specular on a disk or other such processed surface. I found a map on the UDN after failing to generate one myself, and scaled and blurred it. Here it is for your use:

And here's the sink/worktop.

The worktops were another dull asset I felt could use some character, so I followed Jordan Walker's cue and used high normal, gloss and specular to make a loose liquid effect on the surface. I couldn't do it as well as him unfortunately, and it therefore kind of looks like mercury, but it's a nice effect.

And the last asset was the guitar case, which was more trouble than expected but turned out nice regardless. I contemplated making them openable, but I figured that I didn't have time to re-UV and model the inner lining.

That's all for now. I've got a surprise in the works but I need to finish up what I'm doing in regards to textures first. Thanks for reading!

Quick Chopper update

A quick update to say that I have in fact been working on the lowpoly chopper and have recently completed the modelling and unwrap of the lowpoly.

I'm still optimising and repositioning Uvs, but hopefully I should be able to bake soon. It stands at 18,000 tris at the moment, and I'm going to do some more tweaking to get it as low as possible. The challenge is getting the texel rate right so the bake is a consistent resolution

Thanks for reading!

General Texturing update

This week I've kinda been working at a slower pace than usual due to distractions, but I did complete some more textures for assets. I intend to get the least interesting of the assets done first in order to help motivate me, as opposed to leaving the worst till last.

Here's a shot of the current level:

As you can see, getting there but still a load of untextured assets. I've been working through them this month and managed to texture a couple more this week:

These little pillows I scattered around the environment were a simple sculpt after the experience of sculpting the previous organic assets. I unwrapped them to fit a 512/512, with a mix of bohemian patterns, which I could potentially go lower res with if it takes me.

This radiator was a chrome model based off a Victorian-era design, which I felt was relevant given the age of the building. I used a high gloss and spec map to give the radiator close to chrome highlights on the main tubes and the chrome, and did a little bit of highpoly work to make the gilded part more ornate. I may have to come back to it at another time to push for extra detail.

Above pictured is the highpoly for the small TV in the corner of the room.

The small TV in the corner was another asset which posed a challenge to me, . Finding reference for the back was difficult, and in the end I settled on no particular reference and just fabricated the grilles on the back from what I had learned. 

Here's the final model. To tell a bit of a story I added the note on the side, where a tenant had decreed that the TV is free to watch, despite the barely legible text on the front.

The final model is the record case, which is a fun little asset I found when browsing shots from the actual level. Below is the highpoly:

And here is the lowpoly:

The previous mesh had pointless geometry in the level, so I streamlined it by baking the detail to a lowpoly mesh instead. I had to spend a lot of time tweaking the unwrap to fit all the relevant detail onto the 1024/1024 (the case also has an inside so it can be opened and filled with assets).

Well, that's all.Thanks for reading :)

Fairy Lights! Progress update

I haven't updated in a while, so I thought I would show you what I've been up to.
Here's a shot of the current environment:

As you can see, I have used fairy lights to brighten up the ceiling. In the research I have done of hippie interior design, fairy lights are often used in conjunction with tapestry to decorate walls and ceilings, so I thought since my apartment's ceiling is a tad dull, it could use some brightening up.

The fairy lights themselves are simply made: I used Twist modifier on some cylinders in Max to make the normal map for the wires, and simply used emissive maps and cylinders to make the bulbs themselves.

Other assets I have textured this week include the mattress and the beanbags, which were factory-made but still organic assets which required both Max Modelling and sculpting.

The beanbags themselves were created firstly in Max, however the placeholder wasn't unwrapped efficiently for texturing so all the beanbags had to be remodelled. I began by using Max to place the seams between fabrics by chamfering edges and pulling edges in, then making them a separate smoothing group and Turbosmoothing.

After testing the bake of the seams worked, I then took the lowpoly and used a combination of soft selection and adding edge loops to create organic sag. My plan was to import this into ZBrush and use a height map generated from the previous mesh to place the seams, though this produced strange results so I opted to repeat the same technique again to make the seams again before I export.

Here's a shot of my sculpt. As with my sofa I used custom alphas and the standard brushes to add bulge and weight, and the used the subtractive Clay brush to add holes and wear. The sculpt came out much better than expected and took almost no time at all :)

In making the final model I had unwrapped in such a way that I could load in a variety of textures into the diffuse and alter it easily, so I made three diffuse variants of the beanbags. 

This one is more patchwork and has a more homemade look that would appeal to hippies. That and mushrooms.

And this one is more basic.

The mattress was another interesting asset to create. The hardest part to do adequately was the padding on the cushion, as I had chosen this image as reference:

I retopologised and unwrapped the mattress, and then put it in ZBrush. I used a custom alpha I made in Photoshop to make initial indents where the sponge bunched and the button was located, which I will share:

I then sculpted to pull the fabric up around this and then added folds and creases to suggest tension. 

It actually came out rather well, and made for a nice bake.

In the diffuse I used yellowing and burn marks in order to suggest wear.

Here's the mattress in the level. Wondering why I added it? The floor in the concept seemed unnaturally clear, and I would have imagined that due to the state of the apartment the hippies would want to sleep on the floor of their pad. In the future I hope to drape some duvet or blanket over it and maybe put a few props on it to add story.

Well, that was long.. If you're still reading I hope you learned from my mistakes and figured out some techniques  of your own for organic assets.

Thanks for reading :)

Update: Asset Refinement and new techniques

Here are a few shots of my current progress. I will detail the changes I made below,. and the reasons I made them.

Assets

The first big change I made to the environment was to resculpt the sofa. The previous sofa model was very undramatic and the fabric seams were not as visible, so I resculpted and baked the entire thing, making it one of the best models in the scene. I found some custom fabric alphas online which helped to sculpt the new sofa.

Here's the sculpt. Since my texture was very low on unique space, I sculpted the cushions and body of the sofa separately.

And here's the Marmoset 2.0 render, vastly better than the previous sofa. I made the wear more subtle and numerous and added more geometry to smooth out the model and sag the cushions a little more. 

Here's some more assets, newly textured, rendered and added to the scene ;

The chinese coffee table has been edited to have a glass top for more visual appeal. Next on the priority list is the beanbags and radiators.

Here's a WIP apartment door. I added latches as the hippies would probably appreciate a harsher lock system to hide their operation.

And here's a second texture pass on the bookcase. I felt it worthy of this now that I understood gloss maps properly.

Carpets

In creating the pile of carpets in the corner of the room in the concept, I was initially concerned about the best way to do it, and my previous attempt to fold the carpet vert-by-vert was laughable. So I speculated on a technique to do it in the same manner as real life!

My new technique was to make some highpoly carpet planes in Max, as well as a notched "well" shape.  I would then texture the carpets front and back. Then, I would drape the carpets one by one over this structure using cloth simulations to make a pile of carpets:

After I had a pile of carpets, I would create a lowpoly shape roughly matching the silhouette of the carpets, and unwrap it. Then, inside Max I baked Diffuse, Normal, AO and Height maps from the highpoly carpets.

Pictured below is the result, and frankly I can't think of anything better, as it came out much better than I expected :)

Well, that was long! As for my next move, continue with texturing and try and push the environment as far as it can go. Thanks for reading :)