Well Scene UDK - Portfolio Piece

tweekedgirl

Hey everyone.

I've just started a new piece for my portfolio, as it's not been updated since I finished university, and I'm looking to add something which hopefully shows some improvement over the last 9 months.

I'm working on a realistic well scene, and I'm currently in the process of sculpting the high-poly well model. I'll be working on this daily, and would love any feedback or advice so I can aim for a really high-quality piece at the end of it.



Thanks for looking!

lotet

you should consider modeling the stones, bricks and roof tiles separately, instead of sculpting them into the surface.

Optinium

Agree with Lotet, I posted stuff on your Facebook to

Looking forward to seeing more

tweekedgirl

Cheers guys, I'm going to redo the roof separately with separate tiles as suggested, as I am struggling a bit to get any detail in them at the minute without messing up the surrounding ones.

tweekedgirl

Another shot. Pretty happy with how the high-poly has turned out. I'm going to spend a little more time tomorrow adding detail to the center spindle thing and need to add a handle to turn the wheel. Will also smooth the bricks on the well base as they're looking a little pixelated at the minute. Once that's done I'll start retopologizing.

lotet

much better! you should make the corner stones seperate too

Optinium

The tiles do look a lot better, are you going to rough them up a bit?
Having every brick separate would be nice but the cornerstones need it most as they're pinching where they butt up to each other which won't bake down nice.
The base ,in my opinion, needs the bricks at differing depths as the silhouette looks really flat almost perfectly cylindrical.
Also all the crafted bits on top and under the tiles (wood is it?) could use some sculpting on the edges, they look to round and clean, a quick TrimDynamic wash might do the trick.

tweekedgirl

Hey guys, I've finished the high-poly model and I'm trying to retopologize it using Maya's 2014 quad draw. However my problem is that the program is struggling so much with the high poly mesh it's practically unworkable. If I change the view to wire frame it speeds up but because the high poly is so dense it's just a block of colour and I can't see to do anything. Any advice on how to speed it up?

edit: switched it to viewport 2.0 and that seems to have fixed it

Optinium

Are you working with the highest subdivision from Zbrush? You only need the subdivision which maintains the shape not the details for a reference retopo mesh.

tweekedgirl

Yeh I've taken the highest subdiv. So would you recommend taking a lower subdiv which keeps the shape, making the retopolgised mesh using that. Would I then export the highest subdiv to bake the normals in Maya, or do I import the new base mesh back into Zbrush and bake in there, or are either suitable methods?

Optinium

Yeah you're trying to maintain shapes to then bake details. So retopo a division which maintains the silhouette best without being to dense. When retopping be sure to think about projection and how well details will bake etc...
As for baking I'd use xnormal, its quicker to set up then any other piece of software and IMO gives a better result. For an item like this I'd separate the elements and bake each individually in xnormal then combine the maps in Photoshop.