Sketchbook: Daniel Strickland

d_strickland

Hey my name is Daniel Strickland. I am striving to be a video game environment and/or lighting artist. 

I will be posting all of my work here in order to get feedback and stay accountable.

Critiques welcome!

http://https//www.artstation.com/dstrickland
 

d_strickland

MPX Boolean Project:

My goals with this project were to utilize the "3ds Max/Zbrush Proboolean + Dynamesh workflow" made popular by Ben Bolton. This is my first time using the workflow, so snags are bound to be hit. 

I have also not created a single prop as a project in over a year, so this will be a great learning experience. 

I've been working on this project for 6 days, and am going to give myself about a month to complete. I hope to complete the modeling stage within two weeks, but with learning this new workflow I will give myself some leeway in case anything goes horribly wrong. 

Update 1: 

I revisited the weapon as separate parts. I took my reference images and used PureRef to create an image board. I don't know why I haven't done this earlier, it is so nice to have! 



I want to make this gun piece by piece instead of aimlessly in the hopes of being more productive and feeling more accomplished as I completely finish (model, UV, bake maps) individual pieces instead of doing everything as a batch.



Tonight I mostly modeled the pistol grip. It is a complex shape that I couldn't justify using booleans with, so it is traditionally modeled with a turbosmooth modifier set to keep smoothing groups separate. 



Before tonight I had already started the handguard, but with some more research I conducted tonight I found out that there are two generations of MPX. I prefer the 1st gen. quad rail handguard because the 2nd gen's KeyMod mounts' circular shape doesn't complement the rest of the gun. 
Left: 1st Gen. Right: 2nd Gen. 

d_strickland

Tonight I worked on the collapsible stock. I tried to use booleans for the whole object, but found that I would not be able to get the curvature I wanted. So I just booleaned the cylinder and box shape together and cleaned up the mesh. I have turbosmooth on 2 iterations right now - I think my low poly can be built from one iteration to keep the curvature in the silhouette. 

I am always amazed at the problems I can solve with using primitives and modifiers with boolean operations. Something I have done a few times now is create a capsule, Volume select just the faces of the tip, and use an FFDx2 to flatten it! I love this workflow because it forces me to get creative with these shapes and modifiers and to explore options I hadn't thought of before. For instance, I played around by creating all of the extended primitives just to see what they looked like, and found chamfered box, chamfered cylinder, etc. This was a really interesting find, but I am that you cannot adjust the tension of the chamfer with these primitives. 

Here I have some objects I will end up using booleans with. 

d_strickland

Retractable Stock part 2. I modeled the very back of the stock. 

I figured early on that booleans wouldn't let me achieve the curvature I was wanting. 

Modeling this piece was difficult, but made easier with the side diagram that I've been using. The diagram's model must be from CAD because of it's "isoline display" edges throughout the object. I used these to help guide me. 

I tried to make all circular details have 12 sides. I'm keeping in mind that my low-poly will be derived from the first iteration of open sub div, so my circular details will actually have 24 sides. 

My geo so far has no shading errors, but the edge flow could be better. For the sake of time, I'll probably move on to another piece and then come back with fresh eyes to tweak the edge flow if I think it's necessary. The one thing that would be great is if my edge flow allowed me to add an "averaged" swift loop (or when you hold shift before clicking) to add tension to the bevel around the main details. 

  

  

  

d_strickland

MPX Boolean Project: Day 9

I made fixes to the pistol grip, added the rubber pad to the stock, and began refining the lower receiver. The pistol grip was challenging to get good topo. I find it funny that I keep resorting to traditional sub-d modeling instead of boolean-ing everything. I think I can finish the lower receiver tomorrow. 

  

d_strickland

Day 11: Made progress on lower receiver! 

I eventually learned that the front of the lower receiver "wraps around" a cylindrical pin, so I made sure to make that change. I will need to make the details on the right side, make boolean operands, and then be done with it. My biggest concern with the upper receiver is the ejection port. The handguard will be a ton of booleans so that'll be quick and simple. I think I will be able to start UV mapping after this weekend! 

d_strickland

MPX Boolean Project: Day 12

Getting down in the dirt with this complex shape on the back of the receiver. It will be difficult to match exactly, but I'm enjoying the challenge. Here's a reminder of what the receiver looks like.

 

  The shape isn't quite there, but I got a solid start. You can see I added another ortho ref image. The sizing isn't perfectly aligned to the original image I've been modeling from. 

The pistol grip has a slight shading issue in the "U" shape. I made it less obvious by altering the topo slightly. 

d_strickland

MPX Boolean Project: Day 16

Models Done:

• pistol grip
• rear stock
• barrel
  
• some pieces/parts on the receiver
  

Easy/Quick tasks:

• iron sights
• handguard bottom
• redo the shapes subtracting the collapsable stock indent
• bullets

What needs to be made:

• magazine
• upper and lower receivers, all details attached to them
• Ejection port (closed?)
  
• charging handle

Questions:

• Is it okay if I make the dust cover for the ejection port closed? This would save a lot of modeling I'd have to do, but I'm worried it isn't "kosher" to display a 3D gun like that.

Insights / Comments:

• I found a high quality video that I used to find great reference photos and learn about the gun's anatomy.
  
• The lower receiver is made of hard coat anodized metal - unsure if it's aluminum or steel
• the handguard is made of aluminum
• I need to confirm other materials used on the gun.
• I should revisit my calendar!!! I'm about halfway through so crunch is on the horizon.
  
• My progress this past week has felt a bit slow. I lost my drive to work at times, and it is easy to get confused with all these parts. I'm still confident and happy with the overall progress I've made. It just needs some more detail and then I'll be done modeling!!!
  

d_strickland

Day 17: Bolt Carrier and Ejection port

These images are all in wire frame because they are Boolean operands inside the upper. I think for the main subtraction the boxed-spline I have going around the edge will work fine to bevel. These pieces aren't finished.

I have developed a technique to create objects that have cylindrical-like forms. I start with a box, create edges with space to subdivide, and chamfer the edges using a chamfer modifier. If you make the chamfer amount large enough where the two inside edges meet, then you may lower the tension to .55 and bam - you got a semi-cylinder. You just got to make sure and weld those vertices of the two touching edges before you make your UVs and bake.

I have also been using the FFD modifiers liberally. I use them in conjunction with basic primitives to get geometry that would be complex to model traditionally. It is really nice to be able to use modifiers like this instead of Edit Poly, because you keep your mesh intact and available to alter edge amounts for making high and low versions.

d_strickland

Day 18: Boolean workflow frustrations

Today I got the bolt carrier and ejection port made. I replaced the spline intended to subtract into the upper with two capsules. I also did some minor fixes to the front and rear sight.

Ok I definitley have some issues with the workflow.

The biggest problem is once you have added an operand, you can only view "result" or "operands." There needs to be a "ghosted" or semi-transparent option. This problem is very evident when doing multiple subtractions in one area. I personally had a rough time with my ejection port because the shapes cut deep into the gun and it becomes impossible to see what you are doing in the "view operands" option.

Another huge issue is that splines aren't compatible with ProBoolean. Adding the Edit Poly modifier does not help. And I'm referring to splines that are extruded or lofted, so polygons are present and it isn't just a pure spline.

I had to delete a few of my spline-based objects meant to be subtractions and replace them with other primitives. Sometimes this works, but for the chamfer I made around the ejection port, it was not ideal. Of course using a spline to chamfer an edge isn't ideal either, but that was the solution at the time. If you don't know already, you cannot chamfer an edge that is created through a boolean operation. It wrecks your geo. So if you want to do this, you have to find a creative way to jerry-rig the chamfer. In my case, I used one of the subtraction operands that creates a hole to see the bolt carrier, duplicated it, and used vol. select and FFD to create a 45 degree bevel.

LaxerCut from Onikanabo may be the solution I need. I will really need to consider buying it because it looks better every time I look at its features. https://www.onikanabo.com/lazercut

d_strickland

Day 19: Magazine

Good news and bad news. Good: I made the magazine. Bad: The rest of the gun isn't wide enough.

And this is exactly why I wished I had a top view from the start.

The magazine is correct. In this photo, I had to squish the magazine to fit into the lower receiver. I had a feeling that the gun was a little thin in width, but only now with the magazine made do I really see it. I should have done a second blockout where I defined the pieces slightly more.

Here is with the magazine, lower receiver, and pistol grip (mostly) at the correct width.

It's going to take me maybe a whole evening just to re-adjust every piece to this new width.

Besides that, I still need to add some more detail to the sights, the bottom of the handguard, and charging handle. There are also boolean opperands I have lying around that I need to utilize. THEN I'll be done modeling. So... I think I can do all of that tomorrow? I'm going to be really tired having stayed up late this night, but I got to get started on the UVs ASAP to stay on track.

d_strickland

Day 20: Fixing width, adding details, and activating booleans

• Upper receiver width fixed
• created magazine spring using Helix and FFD Box (super cool)
• finished sights
• finished charging handle
• Started a detail in front of charging handle that is flush with rail system, will need to subtract the rail system to make room for it
• Discovered that the failure to use splines as booleans may only apply to splines that generate geometry via "view in viewport"
• Activated some boolean opperands that I left for the end, due to scariness of not having done this before and not wanting everything to get messed up (everything is fine)

The image below shows that the extrusion off the back of the lower receiver needs to be brought forward. I am going to use booleans to make the chiseled shape that connects the stock. It's already made except some minor details.

The image below shows that I haven't gotten around to fixing the position of the details on the right side of the gun. Should be pretty straightforward.

With the way things have been going, I expect to be completely done modeling things by the end of tomorrow or into Saturday.

To Do:

• Fix the position of the stock connection in the back
• Move details on right side
• Model handguard bottom
• Fix pistol grip intersection
• Model in the connection between the upper and lower and handguard (this may take the most time, as it's a little complex.)
  
• MODEL 9mm!! Completely forgot. Oh well, should be supper quick.
  
• Create any final details that were overlooked, while keeping in mind what is doable with Alphas in SP.
  

d_strickland

Day 22: DONE MODELING?! (Image heavy for the sake of critique)

Oh boy oh boy!

• Any details that aren't being baked will be made using Alphas. (Bottom of magazine, any words, the cylinders that hold the trigger group, etc.)
• Any smoothing you see in the following pictures is not representative of the final product. Due to using the ProBoolean workflow, I can't control shading without adding an edit poly modifier or collapsing the stack.
• I plan on having one magazine with bullets inside - that will be made after textures are baked. (at least I think that's a safe plan)
• I fixed a few problematic areas! The place where the upper and lower receivers are pinned on the front and the handguard meet, the back of the mag-well (sorry if my gun knowledge begins to show its limitations), and the main horizontal edge where the upper and lower receivers touch.
• I also have added a few details that I hadn't blocked in, but I'll see if you can spot them. Here we go!

d_strickland

Day 24: Let the Smoothing Begin!

Starting with the biggest and baddest, the handguard and upper receiver have been dynameshed and polished. I also have started reducing the complex piece of the retractable stock. 

Yesterday I spent trying to figure out the smoothing process. I tried 3D Coat, didn't like how high I had to make the voxelization to get the subtle smoothing I was going for. I tried LazerCut with Inset SG and found a huge flaw with it. So I decided to get a trial of ZBrush and have been getting great results. I would like more options for polishing based on smoothing groups. I tried a plug-n that made poly groups out of smoothing groups, but polish by group didn't look great because dynameshing the mesh with polygroups gave the groups a noticeable error.

d_strickland

Day 26

Creating the high poly meshes using dynamesh and polish.

Fun fact: I made a separate 3DS Max scene to reduce the strain of loading such a huge scene. This Max scene of the high poly meshes is 1,048 MB. And I'm still missing half the gun!!!

I feel good about what I've accomplished in modeling the MPX. I have been giving myself leniency regarding due dates because its the summer and I'm not wanting to stress myself out. 

d_strickland

Day 27: High Polys Created

What's next!

1. Create Low-Poly -- Figure out texel density and polycount
   
2. Bake Normals + Additional Maps
3. Texture
4. Render + Setup
   

Oh yes, my polycount for the high polys is 8,450,880. The Max file for just the high meshes is 2,514MB. I wish it didn't have to be so high. I think Inset SG from LazerCut would be perfect to create the high poly meshes at a much lower overall cost - if it worked perfectly.

I'm going on a family trip over the next three days so this project will be paused until Monday when I will begin making all of the low poly meshes. I want the final render to be fantastic, so it may end up being another couple weeks before the whole project is finished. That's ok, just gonna keep on truckin'!

d_strickland

Day 28! (Coming back from my family trip over the weekend)

No pictures today.

I have started making all the low poly meshes. This initial reduction in edge segments is so quick since the boolean operands are made with primitive shapes! The only problems come with retopologizing operands with subdivision modifiers and objects where I had accidentally broken the worst rule of the ProBoolean workflow: using an edit poly modifier to adjust the mesh. The meshes with subdivision modifiers have the subdivision amounts set to 0 and then I add in the curvature lost. For the meshes that I accidentally used an edit poly modifier on: I'll have to reconstruct most of those.

It is difficult to determine the polycount / segment amount for the low poly! I have no idea how this is going to turn out, but I am trying to keep in mind how far my camera will be in the renders.

d_strickland

Day 29

Today I worked on reducing the meshes, and tonight I completely made the low poly hand-guard and tried baking the normals and curvature; I got some interesting results! To summarize, I forgot to clean up my low-poly. This created shading errors.

This is my low-poly mesh with normal map. The linear artifacts I know how to fix. The waviness around the holes however, I am afraid it may be the high poly resolution of the topology. When I dynameshed, I remember looking at those holes and hoping that any waviness wouldn't be seen, but I think this is the case. I will double check this tomorrow.

This is a close up of my low poly - you can see where I should have cleaned up! Verts need welded or positioned better.

d_strickland

Day 30:

Forgot to upload my work from Monday, AGAIN. I tried to make the handguard again. I cleaned up the mesh, unwrapped by smoothing groups, and sized the UV islands to ~75% 0-1 space, to simulate having other objects on the same Texture set.

My findings: I can't bake curvature! I don't know what's causing this. Designer doesn't bake curvature from mesh at all, Painter can bake the curvature but with great pixelation. If anyone can help me out that would be amazing. I can't pursue making a curvature map based on the normal map because it counteracts slight shading errors of the low-poly, so this would show up in a curvature map. 

4k textures, baked high-low, per pixel. I tried per vertex but that didn't look good either. Different looking errors. The per-vertex seemed to ignore the high poly mesh. But on the bright side, all other additional maps turned out well!

So this is how close I can allow the camera in renders. I don't expect the texel density to be higher than this. This is also 4k.

Fun fact: I realized tonight that Substance Painter's SPP quality settings must deal with reflections' "Samples Per Pixel."

I'm glad I'm figuring out this problems now. It is a nice break from re-topo.

d_strickland

Day 31:

My goal is to get all of the low poly and mesh maps made over the weekend. Today I made my upper receiver, took the time to make it clean, and test baked it.

Test baking has revealed that I may need to push some verts to better match the silhouette of the high res. Besides that, there were no problems - even the curvature turned out nicely!

I was worried about really long and thin triangles, so I added some helping edges. I really wonder how much this triangulation impacts the bakes.

In the following bake results, you can see where some errors are popping up. I tried altering the front and rear bake distance, but it didn't fix these errors. I think it's just the silhouette that needs adjustment.

d_strickland

Day 33:

• Low Poly Meshes Done
• UV Mapping Started
• Feeling Good

My plan is to have the texture sets established with UV maps completed by the end of tomorrow, and maybe get all of my mesh maps baked.

My polycount turned out WAY LOWER than I expected. Its 26,000 Tris!!

I made the 9mm round higher res because I expect to take some close-up shots. But now that I'm looking at it again I think I can get rid of a few edge loops for the height of the bullet.

 These UVs are not final, please don't judge me

Most pieces I have already unwrapped, some I haven't touched. It shouldn't be a long process tomorrow.

d_strickland

Day 34:

• UV mapping finished!
• Texture Sets Established!
• Added more resolution to lower receiver and pistol grip to reduce faceting, because my polycount is ridiculously low (now 26,551 tris)
• Baking mesh maps and fixing these errors will be the last arduous task. After that, it's smooth sailing through texturing, lighting, and rendering.
  
• Feeling GREAT!!

The UV texture applied is a 1024 tiled 4 times, to simulate 4k. I am using 3 texture sets across the full MPX and one 1024 for the 9mm.

This 9mm round will probably be downsampled to 512x512 instead of the current 1024.

d_strickland

Day 35:

(Image heavy)

Getting closer to solving major baking errors. Turns out Substance Painter "forgets" my UVs in a way where some UV islands spread across multiple islands which creates ugly errors. Collapsing the modifier stack and converting to editable poly seemed to help, but the issue still persisted in a smaller degree. And in my last try, I got this weird error saying there wasn't enough data in the high poly. Everytime I baked tonight my lower receiver didn't get any bake information.

Bake Test 1:

Bake Test 2:

Bake Test 3:

d_strickland

Day 36?:

Ok, so the reason I'm not sure I'm counting this day is because my power surged in the middle of baking in Marmoset Toolbag and I don't want anything bad to happen.

So how did I end up baking in Marmoset? Well, it's a funny story...

It seemed that I forgot to turn on "mesh by name." Silly me! Let's try baking again.

Aaannd substance painter freezes. So I give up, and see if my Marmoset trial is still functioning. And it is! I found a tutorial on how to bake normal maps, and WOW it's at least twice as fast as painter. I love being able to see the cage and change it's size in real time! I will definitely buy Marmoset when the time comes.

I only ran into one issue before the power surge, which involved Marmoset crashing when I had the samples on 16x instead of 4x. This was remedied by following the instructions in this pop-up, and baking one texture set at a time. At this point I definitely realized just how great Marmoset is.

And then my power surged from the thunderstorms and I decided to not attempt any more 3D work for the rest of the night. Tomorrow I will dive deep into Marmoset, and hopefully be finished with my mesh maps!

d_strickland

Day 37: Fixing the Cage

Today I learned more about how to fix what my projection cage will look like in Marmoset. The biggest problem is stray verts that somehow made it past the welding and delete by numeric (2). Sometimes there were problematic areas where there were teeny tiny faces hidden which needed to be removed. I think I've got my project to the point where tomorrow I can bake everything successfully. No pictures tonight, I gotta go to bed.

The basic workflow of prepping my meshes for baking is to add an edit poly modifier to make fixes, then add a turn to poly modifier (now with edge amount set to 3 to create tris, which helps the cage keep its shape) and a push modifier to simulate what the cage will look like in Marmoset.

Due to user error I will have to double check that all of my meshes are named correctly. I also learned that meshes that won't be baked still need a "High poly" to avoid errors.

If I still get bake errors after employing everything I've learned the past few days, I'm not sure what I'll do to fix them. I am almost glad that quick-loading meshes into marmoset will give each object its own cage which you can control the distance for. This will guarantee that each of my objects is accounted for.

d_strickland

Day 38: Baking is Done

Yes, I can say that all mesh maps are baked. There is a caveat. There where three meshes whose cages did not push out correctly in Marmoset, so I had to manually create a cage and bake separate maps for these meshes. I will combine them onto the marmoset bakes inside of substance designer. I used substance painter to bake these problematic meshes because Marmoset doesn't allow you to import a cage mesh.

It took quite a lot of attempts to get a "perfect" bake for the rest of the meshes. Some problems that I found I had to fix:

• UV islands slightly overlapping on themselves (the buttstock piece had this)
• Stray verts
  
• meshes not named correctly
• cage meshes become "broken" for low poly (edited too much?)
• Not undertanding Marmoset well enough to successfully see my new meshes updated in the scene
  
• Some cages not pushing outwards correctly need some verts "paint offset" in marmoset
• User error not keeping track of which meshes have been fixed, exported, and reimported
• Trying to find any solution to retopo my meshes to allow Marmoset's cages to push out correctly (no luck)

This stage of the project has really shown me just how much work goes into AAA low-high game assets. I know I'll learn from my mistakes, but some of these problems may come again due to the nature of having complex geometry, especially with this boolean workflow. I think these cage issues would be less pronounced with traditionally modeled geo. It makes me want to try face weighted workflow again.

I want to know how professionals deal with the kind of incorrect cage projections I was getting. I'm following the solution of manually making a cage and combining it with other meshes, but surely there are more efficient methods out there.

The sad thing is this week has made me feel as though baking can throw a wrench into the pipeline. I'm thinking that if I have such errors in my bakes that required the mesh to be altered, it can be a headache/discouraging to have to go back and redo precious work. Yeah the boolean workflow makes things faster, but there are so many things I have to keep track of that it is prone for error. UVs have to be always right. If making a manual cage for one mesh to combine with others, the UV layout has to stay the same. Baked texture maps increase in amount, making it hard to keep track of everything. The way I see it, if Marmoset would allow you to edit the cage's verts, edges, and faces, this would be the simplest solution. The paint offset tool is nice, but too limiting. For the meshes that project correctly, Marmoset is amazing.

I have taken all of this to learn some valuable things about baking.

1. Low-Poly geometry must match as close to the high poly as possible. The closer to matching the silhouette of the high, the cleaner the bakes.
   
2. Leave Unwrapping for the very last modifier(s). If you add an edit poly modifier to do clean up after an unwrap UVW, you will break the unwrap.
   
3. The more extreme the angle, the more likely a cage error will occur. I mean that if you have two faces forming a 90 degree angle or less, you may experience cage projection errors as I believe these tight angles pushed my cage inward at their location.
   
4. N-Gons mess up cage projections - clean it up
5. Thin triangles will mess-up the cage projection.
   
6. Reconsider having 90 degree faces. Would chamfering that edge match the high poly more so? More geo at the cost of clean bakes sounds like a good trade off to me.
   
7. small details need to match the high poly too. Don't neglect segment amount on smaller details. Don't use an octagon on tiny cylinder details because that won't match the high poly cylinder and will look bad even if it's small. If it is flat enough to go on the normal map - go for it, but any geometric detail regardless of size relative to camera needs to have the silhouette to match the high poly.
   
8. Don't let your cage intersect itself. Don't be deceived by the cage "enveloping" your low and high poly.
   
9. Test to see how your low poly meshes will project/push before unwrapping. This would have saved me a lot of time. Think about this. If your cage is messed up enough, you'll have to do major edits to your low-poly. Maybe even your high poly! You don't need to unwrap your low to see how it will push outward; just use the push modifier for that. Once all of your low-poly meshes are ok for projecting, then you can safely unwrap them knowing that you won't have to make any changes to the meshes.
   
10. Smoothing groups make unwrapping a piece of cake. This saved me from frustration. If I had to edit a mesh it wasn't a big deal to unwrap from scratch.
    

Now for the results!

Bake 1 from today

Baking individual meshes with manual cages

Bake 2 - Clean except for the meshes with manual cages. This is all Marmoset maps.

Substance Designer being used to combine bakes

I still have to combine all the bake maps. Then I can move onto texturing!!!!!!!!

d_strickland

Day 39: Bakes Combined, Ready for Texturing

I ended up altering the UVs of the barrel because the shading looked bad on the inside. This was relatively simple and quick, as no manual-cage mesh was on the same texture set.

I discovered how cool bent normals are! I'm afraid they will lead to incorrect lighting, but this may not be the case. I turned the environment around trying to see if the bent normals made the surface look incorrect... it is hard to tell. I suppose bent normals would be unnecessary for certain lighting scenarios or even raytraced scenes. I think it will work for movable game assets in order to simply occlude specular light.

I discovered in the midst of combining and fixing my mesh maps that the ambient occlusion maps did not account for the meshes that used other texture sets. I fixed this by baking AO in substance painter with use low-poly as high poly, and have the baker match "always" instead of "by mesh name." I then blended this with my original AO maps with a min(darken) blend mode in designer - and it worked perfectly!

I used designer to invert the green channel on the marmoset normal maps and make changes to the mesh maps. Here is my setup.

Finally, here is my MPX with curvature as basecolor, bent normals, and ambient occlusion.

d_strickland

Day 41: Working on base materials and starting alphas

Before I forget, I need to write down the errors I have made so I won't repeat them in future projects. The following errors I do not intend to fix, because I need to have this MPX done by Friday, since I go back to school next week. 

Errors on MPX:

• Not triangulating before baking
• Not using skew maps on the magazine details
• Not properly unwrapping/relaxing the handguard (there is one spot hidden where a face is overlapping on another face's UV island, and the top part of the curves of the HG are slightly stretched.
  
• There isn't enough topology to support the curvature on the thin vertical structure of the stock - it's creating intense normal bending.
  
• Marmoset bakes have pixelation?? Ambient occlusion and world space normals have some noticeable stretchy-pixelation which makes tri-planar projection look bad.
  
• Not giving enough segments for the upper/lower receivers and not making their meeting point cleaner.
  
• Not placing the fire selector against the body - it's floating. I definitely plan on fixing this. I don't think my bakes will suffer from moving these objects slightly closer to the receiver. If anything, the ambient occlusion won't be as defined where these pieces touch, but I can paint that in if I want to.
  
• There is a slight shading error where the HG meets the upper rec. In certain lighting scenarios it isn't noticeable.
  

Bent Normals Side Note:

I've decided that bent normals look bad. At least with Marmoset's pixelated bakes, it looks bad. When testing lighting in my spare time at work today, I realized that bent normals are not realistic, and even though they appear to occlude specular lighting, they create more problems than its worth/

Here is my most recent lighting test. I'm just having fun trying to figure out what looks good. This is using distance field shadows, volumetric fog, and movable spot lights in UE4.

Here is my spaghetti-lookin' graph. Multi-Material Blend doesn't work for me, so I have to use the simpler material blend node.

The idea is that once I'm happy with the base materials I'll make them into .sbsar files and use them in painter. I've been focusing on the "Parts" texture set.

Here is what the MPX looks like now.

I'm working on creating the alphas to be stamped to make height details that I skipped in the high poly stage. The magazine definitley has some materials to be made for it, and all this texturing is still very much in progress.

d_strickland

Day 43:

I'm debating whether or not to post the MPX. It isn't finished, but school is about to start so I won't have time to work on it. I also wonder if this would be confusing to the fact that I want to be an environment artist, because I've heard professionals say to only put in your portfolio what you want to do as a job. Yeah, I maybe picked the wrong project to do over 40 days ago, but I've learned a lot! I feel like I honestly won't be able to finish this, and that it may be best to just pack it up and move on. The biggest contributing factors to this project not finishing is not planning a schedule, and accepting a project that was too detailed for the time I had.

My MPX has basic materials applied, and some height details. For whatever reason substance painter freezes when exporting textures, so here are some viewport shots of where its at.

d_strickland

Day 44:

I made more progress today but I still can't export textures from painter   I don't know wh

d_strickland

Hi everyone, it's been a few months! I graduated in December, got hired at Traega Entertainment as an environment artist in January, and have been adjusting to the post-college life since then. It has been great being able to relax and play video games most of my free time, but I'm feeling ready to hunker-down and really create this thing. 

So what am I doing? What's an Aventador? Why did I decide to create it in the first place, and what progress have I made so far? Well let's dive into it!

For this project, I am modeling a Lamborghini Aventador SVJ.

Why? 

1. Because it's GORGEOUS. I've always loved the design of Lambos. 
2. I want to learn how to model a vehicle. They have intimidated me in the past, so I want to overcome that fear.
3. I want to learn MAYA! Yep, you heard me. I want to learn modeling and UV mapping. The rest will be done with other software.

Progress?

The past few weeks I've been slowly blocking it out. Progress has been slow for a few note-worthy reasons:

• I've been distracted by games and internet.
• I don't enjoy modeling as much as texturing and rendering.
• I'm not strictly following a schedule.

All of that said, I know that this Lambo is gonna get made. 

• I'm feeling tired of all the games I've been playing, 
• I've broken down the car into sections to make it easier to manage + work on
• I'm changing my sleep schedule and being more cognizant of my daily habits in order to work on this project more.

I think the biggest issue I'm facing right now is a lack of focus. I have had a hard time sitting down and working on this for more than 30 minute increments. I think discipline, scheduling, and a change of mindset will help this the most. 

The first time I attempted this Lamborghini, my reference was mixed with different versions of Aventadors, so I've made sure to specify the exact model.

REFERENCE!

All of these photos are SUPERHD so I'm able to zoom in and really analyze the curvature/forms.

I don't have any particular method I'm following. I'm afraid to add too much detail right now. An interesting comparison to make between this project and my MPX is that of difficulty. The MPX was my most difficult modeling project, but that was using the boolean-dynamesh workflow. For my Aventador I will be using Sub-D modeling. So for this workflow I think it is the most complex asset I've tried to model. I'm looking forward to being done with modeling and moving onto to considering what environment I want to render it in!