High Poly Baking For Game Art
1. Layout of the design I want for my area (as seen in design pictured above)
2. Modeled a brick with some cuts
3. Laid out the bricks, offset a few, smooth them.
4. Added a dirt layer mesh to show where dirt would build up on the steps. This was as simple as taking the mesh from step 1, smoothing it, add noise and manually correct where necessary.
5. Took the steps into Mudbox and quickly made some rocky lines across the front, and pinched the top angle (where a step is the sharpest)
6. Back in max, applied a diffuse stone to steps and dirt to dirt mesh.
After that its baking materials and applying them back onto step 1 for the final. That said, when I do complete the FINAL IN GAME LOW POLY MESH, I'll chamfer the inner dirt areas, add a few extra cuts/edges to the mesh and shake it up a bit to create imperfections.
Next, let's look at a brick arch. Foe reference, I googled "brick arch" to get some ideas how I wanted the bricks to be laid out in a proper arch fashion. But that's as far as my reference went. I reference almost everything I do, usually creating a collage director of images to fall back on. Better to do it right that spend a ton of time on something only to have someone reply "impossible, retard!"
I start by modeling a brick (box with chamfered edges), and cutting unique chunks/edges out all around it (this is important for making it appear like a unique brick from different angles).
Instance and rotate/scale them all around to make my whole arch. Even the keystone is the same brick, but with a few more cuts (the 3 base stones are different as their size/position demanded it). Then a subtle noise over it all to make everything appear even more unique.
Apply a diffuse to those bricks, as well as mortar mesh underneath it all. I don't put much thought into this, just a lot of color variation. Again, it has a lot more to do with the end result than the source quality. More work was put into the bricks material than the mortar. For ths example, I worked a more brown toward the lower bricks for a ground transition.
Then a make a low poly mesh to bake the diffuse, normal and lighting map (AO) to a texture. I put the diffuse this generates into crazybump to pick up the small rock/crack details and overlay it on my normal generated from the high detail in max (reducing the blue levels to 128 so it overlays properly). And I multiply the lighting (AO) over the diffuse to add depth the diffuse map.
This is a technique I've used for years, and thankfully
MikeBart
took the time to document his version of a similar process. His results are excellent.
|
|