BA1B ★ Task 4 ★ Ruined Pillar
05:15
I started off by creating the basic shape in Maya before bringing the model into ZBrush to add more intricate patterns and damage effects using trim brushes. I used a custom alpha to create the pattern on the top of the structure.
After the high poly model was done, I decimated the structure in order to begin creating my low poly model. After the poly count was sufficiently low, I brought the model back into Maya and started cutting and stitching damaged parts to the original base model to create my low poly model. Unfortunately at this point I realised that I was not going to finish adding all of the foliage and algae to my model within the time limit, and decided to just create the base model with damage and abandon the algae.
I found this part very tedious and difficult as it involved moving individual vertices and merging to stitch the damage onto the original model. I had various issues with not merging the verts correctly, causing some faces to be recognised as N-gons, but this was easily fixable by going back and checking on the verts.
After this, I made the cage for the model by expanding a duplicate slightly larger so that the original fit within the cage, which prepared it for baking.
At this point I brought the high-poly, low-poly and cage into XNormal where I was able to bake the Normal map and Ambient Occlusion map.
These maps allowed the detail from my high-poly model to be visible on my low-poly model. (However, I noticed when moving everything into Marmoset Toolbag that the Ambient Occlusion map has very little effect on the final model.)
After everything was done, I moved it into Unreal Engine.
It was interesting to see my model's final outcome in Unreal, and it was fun to interact with it. As it felt like such a complex and borderline impossible project in the beginning, seeing it all done and being able to see it in the engine from all sides was very rewarding. I think there are a few things I would change and a few details I would add if I were to revisit this project, but overall I am very satisfied with how everything eventually worked out.
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