Help on creating a wide a treasure room full of gold.

WarframeZeeker

Hi!!

I am new to populating a scene with a lot of small objects and I would like to ask suggestion and guidance from people in polycount on how to go about doing it.

I am trying to create a scene with a lot of gold coins and not sure how to go about doing it. I tried doing mash on a simple gold coin and populating it but I found it creates computer delay and sometimes error from maya. Is there anyway to recreate a scene like this without taking so much computational space? 

One that I think about is Ivy generators, but how do I do it with coins instead of leaves.

LaurentiuN

Is it for movies? or games ?
If is for movies then with a particle generator you cand do it. Model a mesh and spawn 3d coins particles on that mesh where you want.
if is for games then i think you should do it with a tiling texture and with some coins models here and there for exemple on the stairs you can add some 3d coins.

jRocket

I would not make a tiling texture because I don't think it would look as good as dedicated meshes. Make a few different baked low poly meshes, and lay them out around your scene.

If you only have a few meshes instanced around the scene, it makes it much more manageable to make your high poly in whatever way you want(mash, physics simulation, manual placement, ect.) 

WarframeZeeker

i want the quality like the movies or as close as realistic as I can. I will look up particle generators and see if I can use that. Thank you for the feedback S1dk and jRocket. I do appreciate it.

More feedback would be awesome.

JedTheKrampus

Tiling texture is the way to go if you're rendering it in UE4. It should still look pretty good with parallax occlusion mapping and contact shadows. You can at least have a lowest layer that's a tiling texture, and maybe add some real coin meshes here and there to help sell the look.

chrisradsby

I'd say you'd have to approach it in 3 ways. 

1. Underlying tiling coin texture
2. Big piles of baked unique 3d meshes that you place on top of each other.
3. Single smaller piles of coins that is the small detail at the edges of the mound.

ZacD

I'd probably try using a tiling texture using POM, with a few placed meshes on top or in key areas. 

Bek

also relevant: http://polycount.com/discussion/comment/2498613#Comment_2498613

So for the instances for the larger baked stacks, and could use foliage tool for smaller piles.  This would also be a lot easier if it wasn't going to be interactive — if the player can walk around everywhere you'll have to spend a bit more time making it good from every angle/distance. But if some stuff remains firmly in the background, you can give it less unique attention.

AtticusMars

I would use a tiling texture with a POM material and pixel depth offset, with dedicated small piles where appropriate.

Shrike

That looks like it calls for displacement maps. Aside build the hills and simulate a thin layer of coins as physical objects with nearly no friction, and do the rest with textures. The things closer to the camera can have more models of course. 

Edit: Just 3D scan real dragon gold piles : P

WarframeZeeker

I love that you guys gave me so much feedback and suggestions!1 I will look into it and see what's best for my scene and report back here with my scene for constructive criticism.