I thought that this would be a good test to try out the abilities of Unreal. I have never used Unreal before and it looks like a lot of fun.
A couple of hours of free spare time this evening and this is what I have so far. The art test brief states that the low res normal mapped model must be within 8000 tris. I think this currently stands at nearly 4000! Lots to do with it but having fun.
I'll be posting more updates when I have a little more free time.
Cheers.
Ant.
The low poly normal mapped model so far in Maya
The original concept art from the Splash Damage website (www.splashdamage.com)
UPDATE: 01/07/2011
I worked some more on the model and normal maps. I am creating the base mesh as a low poly model in Maya and I have created the normal maps by first painting them as 'height' maps in Photoshop and then converting them with XNormal.
This is what I have so far. Hopefully I will have the model finished today and then it is on with the next stage: MY FIRST ATTEMPT AT USING UNREAL!
6850 Tri's and counting. Low Poly model with Normal map applied in Maya
UPDATE 2: 01/07/2011
I managed to get some more time to finish the low poly model tonight. I came in under poly budget at 7884 Tri's, very happy indeed.
The next step will be to paint some textures in Photoshop and give it a nice worn look (you can't beat a bit of scratching, denting and rust in a texture in my opinion). Then it will be off to hit the tutorial videos and see how to get this sucker into Unreal.
Anyway, here is the model rendered in Maya:
Final Low Poly model (7884 Tri's) with Normal map applied in Maya
UPDATE 3: 05/07/2011
I think I am going to call this a day now. I managed to get some more free time today and I finished the textures (spec/normal/incandescent/diffuse). I also got the model in Unreal and I even managed to shoot some green plasma type gunk at it. Job done! Unreal looks like a lot of fun, but I have only scratched the surface.
Below is a render of the final model in Maya and some screen grabs from Unreal (I still can't work out how to make a decent video within Unreal). Cheers!
Textured model in Maya
The wireframe (7884 Tri's)
Also, here are the maps I created for the model. One thing I will change is the normal map, it is a little too 'clean' at the moment and needs scuffing up:
