[HELP] Please help me complete a scene (sculpting/texturing/lighting assets)
Hello everybody. I am working on a scene based on the image below, from Alexandre Dibone (https://www.instagram.com/alexandrediboine/)
Right now I have finished blocking the entire scene, and have a couple of textures in place, for some of the wood parts, and the walls:
I'm not really sure on how to tackle my next steps, since I'm a novice.
I know I need to now UV all the props.
What I don't know is:
1 - Should I change any of my assets, add bevels, change topology, etc? (I can provide better views of the models)
2 - Should I bring each asset to Zbrush and scuplt them? Give most/all a pass of subdivisions and use that as the high poly? Or should I decide only a couple to give this treatment? (scuplting, subdivisions etc.)
3 - If I decide to sculpt only a few assets, and then want to bake the normals, on substance painter, will I have problems if only a couple of the assets have a high poly version and the others are low poly only? ( because I would export everything into a single FBX file, in order to texture all the props in one atlas. Sorry if my wording is confusing. Let me know and I'll try to explain my question better).
4 - I don't know how to properly light a scene, so help here would be apreciated too. I want to emulate the lighting as it is in the drawing from Alexandre.
Thank you for the help!
Replies
So, I decided to start smoothing some of the assets, that I think wont need scuplting. Used a simple subdivision modifier and then smooth modifiers with shade smooth. I plan to bake this into the low polies.
What do you think of this approach?
Hey! I think the concept can be split into large shapes/level geometry, which can be textured with tiling textures (wood, stone, tiles, etc) and props/detail meshes which can be textured using an atlas and/or individual textures.
With low poly meshes hard edges can be used on steep angles to control the shading (when baked to, make sure to split UVs here). With mid or high poly meshes, using bevels or support edges help to define the shading.
Take a look at the polycount wiki to see if you find some info thats relevant to your project 📖 🤓
Thinking about what specific artstyle (what game?) you want to use and what you want to learn with the project might help you to figure your path out. If the project gets to complex, one can still re-scope.
Much success 🚀
Have you planned the end results?
Hand painted or?
I'd look into all the anime, toonish, style, texuring and rendering, shading tricks, would benefit this a lot.
This is how i can envision this (a step you probably did already and would usually do before starting projects, i think anyway, i.e. plan ahead) <link.
Or like this <link.
If i had to say anything, i think out of all of that, either one of wood or rugs should be expeidited, to all your attention, test techniques (end results) and see what works, then put the scene together once you written down the entire process and got the look and lighting you are after. That is what i would do and yet i didn't either. ;) Thinking about it now…lucky you.
Either way all the best with it, looks neat and fun.