Once again a quite productive week! Not as productive as preferred but productive nonetheless! I've played around with camera angles, and made the first out of two cupboards! A bit of a simpler prop, but nonetheless one that adds to the diorama!

I also went through the cupboard and cabinet, opening them up a bit to add some storytelling!

I feel like it's all really starting to take shape now! Also managed to get some slight Parallax Occlusion in for the floor. It's quite subtle but does its job! Next week is planned for the second cupboard, as well as at least one bookshelf! Loads to do, so little time. See you next time!

Progress, progress, progress! For the past few days I've focused on finishing the cabinet textures! For about 12h of work I'm feeling pretty happy with it! Now that I also have a good smart material to reuse for the other furniture it's full speed ahead! Next up is probably to make the other large furniture pieces. Then it's on to the fun stuff!

Furthermore, I keep playing with the lighting. It's hard to get that perfect mix of storytelling together with good readability, but I'll get there in the end! Especially as more and more assets end up in engine as I'm doing baked lighting the bounces will come in handy and help a lot. At the very least I'm finding myself with a mood I like now!

That's it for now, see you all in the next update!

Hello there, it's been a while! Lately I've been recovering from quite a nasty cold, hence the delay in updates. Now that I'm back on track I've prepped all my meshes for ZBrush, made a highpoly for the cabinet in ZBrush and done quite a bit of lighting work. Although I'm still a fair bit away from where I want it I'm certainly getting closer! I also want to extend a big thank you to Timothy Dries and the Beyond Extent community for some awesome feedback which has helped me a ton, and still keeps helping! :)

In the next update I hope to be able to share some more highpolys and texturing work! Until then I leave you with the cabinet highpoly in ZBrush. Bye!

The past week went by pretty slow in terms of progress. Loads of stuff keeping me pre-occupied regarding school and what not (more on the "what not" in another post). However, some progress was made. I rearranged some minor things (like the angle of the rotating table) and also moved from a single "blockout" mesh into splitting the props up into separate assets.

Furthermore I also blocked out the anesthesia machine, something which would be the final large prop. The ones now remaining to block out are some books, jars, vials and dentist tools.

In other news, we started with deep dive projects at The Game Assembly! So for the next two weeks I'll be focusing on a plank floor material made with a ZBrush to Substance workflow. Here's a quick wip shot of a first test trying out brushes. It's still at its early stages, but so far I'm having a blast! Material studies are fun...in 3D ;) The plan is to by the end of the process have a floor material for the dentist diorama, so keeping my fingers crossed for it all working out in the end!

This week has been all about blockout. I've finished all the major shapes to a point where I'm happy with them, as well as added a bit more structure to the room itself with wall placement.

I've also added basic lighting to the scene. And while it still needs tons of work, I've at least started getting an idea of what I want. Next up would be to add the smaller props and start on the next pass for the large props (the blockest still need doors and whatnot so the smaller props can be visible). I'd also love to get in a more refined lighting pass (especially get a mask in for the lights to resemble shutters). Posting the new lighting inspo below. See you all in the next update!

Last week I finished the Wilkerson Dental Chair. That prop serves as a quality bar for this "new" project. I mentioned it back in the first blog post for the chair, and now it's finally time to get going with it! The project is based on a concept by Dai Nguyen, but cutting it in half just using the upper floor in order to make it a smaller project :)

Apart from starting blocking out things and setting up a UE4 project from the get-go, I've also made a small inspiration board with techniques and inspiration I want to use for the project. Mainly so far it's filled with the works of Scott Homer and Ognyan Zahariev. Be sure to check them out for some awesome art! That would be all for this week. See you in the next one!

Detail normals are in! Thanks to Jeremy Estrellado and his great explaination on detail normals I've figured out the missing link to my chair and finished the missing piece! A few final light tweaks and I should have a final portfolio post up in the coming days! For now please enjoy some wip renders, as well as setup and demo of my current master material. Thanks everyone, and see you soon!

This past week has been all polish! I've changed the footrest plates to be of wood instead, as well as the lower part of the armrests. Furthermore, I've added brass to the edges of the metal parts to make the whole chair more ornamental. There's been a lot of going back and forth between Painter, ZBrush and Unreal, which has been good as it's taught me the value of having a good lookdev scene in your final render engine, as closely matching my Painter setup to it. I've almost exclusively been viewing the model in Painter in the different render passes rather than the full material view. Instead, I've relied on Unreal for final material views :) (William Faucher has a good video on how to match your Painter to Unreal)

So what's left? Essentially making the metal match the quality of my other materials, as well as getting a detail normal for my leather set up in engine. Then it's render time!

Rework, rework, rework...

This week has been a lot of reworking and experimenting with materials. I've also learned a ton of new things in Painter and really expanded on my texturing skills. I also finally brought the chair into Unreal Engine 4 with a basic light setup consisting of an HDRI and a directional light.

Next week I will keep working on the textures, adding more wear and tear to the leather, as well as getting some color variation on the metal parts going. I'll also revisit the highpoly to add some slashes to the leather. If there's time I'll also tweak the lighting in Unreal :)

 

The texturing has begun! Bake issues have been resolved and I've finally moved on to texturing! This past week I also got the lowpoly reduced by a third. I also did a slight bit more sculpting, adding some tension folds to it. Still not happy with those so that's something I'll definitely revisit down the line. Right now I do want to work on the texturing though, getting a break from all else. As of yet the textures are still in an early exploration phase where I'm trying to figure out what direction I want to take the prop in :)

Next week will focus on creating some more materials, improving my general texturing skills while at the same time expanding my material library. These materials include various metals, both painted and raw ones, as well as wood. I'll also tweak my existing leather material and see where that brings me. See you then! (PS: The wireframe of the armrest ornaments is bugged, hence it's all black :()