Week 02:

I have done a new lighting pass, wanting to incorporate the circular window. The thought process being my hero asset will sit on the desk, illuminated by the window, drawing attention to it. Making it both stand out as a focal point as a stand alone image and if it were a game scenario telegraph to the player what is important.

I would like to push this further and find out how to create convincing light rays and eventual floating dust particles using Niagara systems.

ZBRUSH WORK

For more recent work I've taken to ZBrush wanting to create the various decorative repeated trim elements around my scene. Giving them a more hand crafted feel closer to actually being woodworked.

My first one being the leaf found within the main archway. Using Zbrush's knife tools to get the basic shape. Followed by lots of pushing and pulling with the move and polish tools. This was then decimated to go into Maya for UV Unwrapping.

This element was then used in the creation of the stairway spiral leaf motif. And this object would give me a WHOLE host of issues.

Starting with dynameshing several repeated leaves together to get the base long shape. I then ZRemeshed to get a editable level of geometry.

All going well using HPolish and Trim Dynamic creating the final leaf.

However my issues would arise when attempting to Bend Curve my mesh into the complex spiral. As a random section would rotate exponentially and without reason and bug out in all manner of other ways. (see image) All manner of technical solutions provided by both me William seemingly couldn't solve this. So resorting to more basic methods I finalized the shape and used the humble smooth tool, alongside others overall recreating that section of mesh.

The acorn was beautifully simple, using a high resolution sphere and radial symmetry tools.

Whilst this asset was a bit of a nightmare it will be the most duplicated element in my scene so the time spent on it wont be wasted.