Semester 2: Final Project - Knight

Continuing off from where I posted, I have finally completed what I was assigned for the final project. It was a great learning experience and I learned a lot of things to do differently for next time.

Here is the final result of my project as shown in the UE4 engine.

This was my pipeline for this project:

1. Block out proxy shapes in Maya
2. Sculpt in Zbrush
3. Retopo for a low-res model
4. UV low-res model
5. Bake out maps in Substance Designer
6. Export everything over to Substance Painter
7. Paint on textures
8. Touch up textures as needed in Photoshop
9. Import everything into Engine and hook everything up

Some of these steps I had learning opportunities with, but I overcame each one. My favorite part of the entire process was putting it all together in the engine and hooking up all the materials.

The metal and the cloth have different values and I think that shows nicely.

Things I learned:

1. In the beginning, I spent way too much time on the proxy mesh. I knew that the mesh would be tossed out, but I tried getting every little nook and cranny as nice as possible, and that just wasn't necessary. As long as I had the overall shape and nice edges, I could have proceeded.

2. Zbrush was the biggest challenge for me because I am still unfamiliar with the program. I could have spent the whole year in Zbrush trying to get the piece the way I want it to look and still not have accomplished it. Anyway, I also learned when to keep pushing forward here. I cannot say I was satisfied with my result in Zbrush, but I had to keep going forward.

3. ReTopoing was not that bad at all. It was a nice busy work to sit down and work through problems. I heard this process makes more sense with time, so while some of the geometry is a bit wonky, I am hoping to learn better techniques for this as I move forward and continue working on this part.

4. UVing was fine, however I didn't learn until I was texturing that some of the UVs were pretttty weird. I need to check them and take them seriously before moving forward.

5. Baking the maps, behind Zbrush, was the second most difficult thing to do. It took about five or six tries for the maps to bake out properly, but even then, they didn't bake out nicely. I had fixing to do.

6. Painting in Substance was fun, and I tried to consider the small, medium and large detail, but also took the concept art into consideration too. Next time, I need to consider making textures a bit larger, as they were hard to see and I had to redo them.

7. I actually enjoyed figuring out the Alpha maps and hair cards for the helmet. I think those turned out just swell.

8. My other favorite part was at the very end, watching the whole thing come together in UE4 and setting the materials up. I am learning the importance of all the maps, how to make them, and hook them all up. I also had the chance to properly pack maps into 1 pack rather than import half a dozen. It was nice to touch the engine again.