GAD Uni Blog: Task 3

Introduction and research

For this task we have been asked to create a loot box for a game of no more than 5k Tris and using a x2048 texture size. We also had to create this asset I a different style to what we normally do. For the loot chest I started looking into different themes for a design. I eventually decided to look into ancient Egyptian treasures and tombs. My first idea that I started blocking out in Maya was a sarcophagus but I soon moved away from that and looked more into chests and boxes.

Once I now had an idea for the box I then looked into different Egyptian gods but decided to focus on Anubis and his depictions as well as patterns and hieroglyphs.

Modelling

I started by blocking out a basic box shape first and then started work on making the design that would be etched into it. I had decided to try recreate the scene with the scales as it is quite a famous depiction. To try and create a more stylistic recreation I traced the scene in Maya using curves. This meant that I could achieve rounded edges and make the carving look slightly cartoonish. As well as this scene I also created a winged scarab beetle to be on the ends of the box and added the Anubis sceptre to reinforce the iconography. I furtherly looked into the types of design features and pattern are present on these types of chest and added extra details throughout.

The next piece to make was the Anubis figure on the top of the chest. Instead of making the entire body I decided to make just the head while still trying to keep to the slight cartoonish aesthetic.

Once I had my high and low poly version. I took them into xNormal to bake out the normal and ambient occlusion maps.

Now that I had my normal and AO maps I took it into UE4 to see how it turned out. The bake was nice but for the designs on the sides I really wanted them to pop a bit more and so I increased the contrast of these areas in Photoshop and it brought them out a lot.

Texturing

For the texturing process I used a mixture of generators and hand painting to create smooth outlines to go alongside the normal map. Doing this way through using materials with no detail it created a cartoony style.