Art Creation for Games: August Modeling Update

This month felt like the most progressive and successful month here at Full Sail. The class almost feels like it shouldn't be over, but the teaching in that course was so efficient and motivating all around for what was possible. We learned a large amount in a short time, so this might be my longest post yet. 

We started learning some of the basic principles of in game modeling. Working with hardening/softening edges in order to properly match the look of the higher poly mesh we used to bake. More efficient ways of lowering our polycount while still maintaining the silhouette properly. 

We used global proportions from an Unreal Engine character to properly match real life in Maya. During this second week we we're taught workflows to help speed up the process for creating a high resolution model to bake down as information for our low poly model. During that time we practiced significantly in Zbrush with Projection Master and Decimation to our need. For instance the model on the left had 1.7 million polygons supporting its silhouette and shape. However, I would bake by using only what polygons were necessary to hold the basic shape which was roughly 3,700 polygons. 

Here's an example of how the information is baked on to the lower topology. Note both models are the same, one is just composited to have the polygons shown. You can also see how the baked in shadows of the ambient occlusion map restricts certain light information. During the transition to week three we practiced more effective UV techniques, such as unitizing them to a single shape and only unfolding after deleting our history. 

The importing process also became specific at this point. The files we worked with were .fbx files exclusively for Substance & Unreal. The exporting specified for earlier versions of Maya when we exported along with triangulate and smoothing group options to ensure we optimize our models properly before our next import/texturing 

Like I said, we learned a massive amount of content in such a short span. But everything was so well separated to understand the core of each lesson. In this case we practiced with PBR materials in Unreal Engine 4. PBR is a basis of texturing that mimics real life objects regardless of how you light your object. Working under the principles of Roughness and Metallic maps rather than specular maps alone creates endless variation and more realistic models with ease. Especially in Substance Painter. As you can see I was able to create a realistic mossy concrete pillar using the simple layer stack. Substance really is an incredible program for this industry.

During this time we also practiced with the node editor (shown left) in Unreal in order to create PBR material spheres directly in engine as opposed to texturing outside. 

PBR - Material Node Spheres - UE4

Material Nodes - UE4 (Left) Substance Painter PBR Texturing (Top Right) UE4 Real Time rendering

Although we had to import our assets into Unreal for real time renders Substance also provides its own render in a separate mode from texture painting. Each pillar/radio was rendered out in roughly 20 - 30 minutes per angle. Everything below was rendered in IRay and the final piece was my final rendered in Unreal.