THRONE ROOM Mad Maximus Throne Osman Samano
I am looking at post-apocalyptic games/movies for reference, mostly Fallout and Borderlands. 
I am creating a very lighthearted approach to the theme, where the owner of the room is a crazy man-child; juxtaposing with the serious situation. The owner is trying their best to create a beach resort in the new world, but has little to work with. They are also stuck underground.
WIP:
I have done a slightly detailed block out of the throne room, minus random objects to populate the scene, like boxes/cans of food, junk, etc.
I will post the progress of items I make, a post every two or three items, or when a large set piece is created.
I am creating a very lighthearted approach to the theme, where the owner of the room is a crazy man-child; juxtaposing with the serious situation. The owner is trying their best to create a beach resort in the new world, but has little to work with. They are also stuck underground.
WIP:
I have done a slightly detailed block out of the throne room, minus random objects to populate the scene, like boxes/cans of food, junk, etc.
I will post the progress of items I make, a post every two or three items, or when a large set piece is created.
Replies
I also feel satisfied with the "giraffe floaty" model, but anticipate it will be difficult to make the texture look like plastic. I have also been working on the finished model's base textures in Substance Designer. I am considering then taking them into Painter for fine details.
Floaty:
Base Textures from Substance:
Left to right, base wood grain texture for planks, leather, porcelain, [attempt] rubbery plastic for floaty.
I have also finished modeling the barrel bonfire:
I have not decided if I will sculpt the planks for an AO map or simply use the base texture and take it into Painter, I will try both.
Not pictured are the restarted subway train, half-finished kiddie pool, and complete UVs on barrel firepit and walking planks. Next update will be of finished floaty, toilet, barrel, and pillars. I am most excited about the pillars, for they have had some planning; everything else has pretty much been winged, woops.
Every model I have made has had at least three iterations, and my textures have had two. My textures will be finished after I improve them with Substance Painter. So far I have created the base texture for about six models: walls, pillars, floor, wood boards, pool floaty, and toilet.
Before texturing the pillar I sculpted a higher poly pillar in Zbrush, for the broken section, and re-topologized in Maya (also did this for toilet). I was lazy with the re-topology of the pillar and simply did an intersection boolean, then triangulated for easy clean up (should have done this for toilet). I believe I should extrude the faces that have the tile texture on the pillar.
These are the base textures (before custom painting in Substance Painter):
Pillar: 5 Textures 2K map
Floaty: Will have 3 textures (top, bottom half of ring, and head) 1K map
Toilet: Will have 3 textures (lid/seat, porcelain, scraped/broken porcelen) 2K map
Wood: 1 Texture 1K map
Barrel: 1 Texture 1K map
All textures where made using Substance Designer.
I have not used Substance Painter since Summer of 2014, so going back into the software will be another small hurdle. I will try to finish the models and textures 3-2 weeks ahead of time to spend the last few weeks understanding Unreal Engine 4. For that reason I will keep my polycount to game levels, I prefer game modeling.
The broken pipe is what provides water to the pool, and is UV'd.
The radio is one of many random noise props, not yet UV'd.
The claw will be positioned next to the toilet. I had made this a few weeks ago, but forgot to post it, it is UV'd but the shells are not yet organized.
I made a new and more detailed toilet, but still need to boolean out the broken section of the bowl. It is still up in the air, for I have it UV'd and if it is too time consuming to fix any problems a boolean can create I just may leave it as is.
The big tires the toilet sits on top of are UV'd, as is the wooden board that is supporting the toilet.
To add more noise to the ceiling I made lights, along with accompanying wires, and pipes.
The pipes will be behind some kind of metal grate with alpha transparency. The lights will have an emissive shader.
For most of my UVs I have avoided stacking any shells so they can double as light maps, but if there are problems I will create second sets.
The issue I have been dealing with is getting reacquainted with Substance Painter, the last time I used it was the summer of last year, and I was mostly only playing with the particle brushes. I have been digging in their pre-made smart materials to better understand their use, and will be making base materials in Designer and add effects atop the material in Painter, rather than all within Designer.
I used a mixture of their smart materials, and changing settings on them, to texture some of the models. My favorite is the broken water pipe.
Broken Pipe: 1K
Barrel: 512x512
Pipes: 512x512
Cans: 512x512
Another speed bump that I have just gotten over was the fact that I cannot "stack" the maps from Substance Painter, when the fbx is imported with multiple textures for separating objects on the model. I was also not able to bake the ID maps with Painter, so I would just bake their ID's with Turtle in Maya. I used the baked ID maps in Designer for masks, and just imported the textures made in Painter. It was a painstaking process, but is finally finished. Now I just need to import the models and textures into the Unreal Engine, and assemble the scene. Cutting it close.
Some more finished models:
The quality could be better, but I am satisfied with the work because of what I learned during the process.
The scene:
Porcelain graph