Joshua Plettinckx - PBR Game Assets

Asset | Flamethrower

To start of my pre-production process I used my flamethrower character i drew for a character design class which is also a part of the Rustborn world. The only issue with my initial concept for my flamethrower, is the complexity and functionality in my design was lacking. Therefore, I had to rework my design a bit to make my asset more believable and more complex.

For the redesign i used real-life references from motorbikes, machinery parts and gas storages. I then went into Photoshop to photobash those references into my flamethrower concept but I quickly went into Maya to blockout my initial concept and added interesting shapes to make my asset well, interesting. After I was satisfied with my silhouette I then added more "logical" functionality. 

After reworking my design I can move on to my next phase, creating my highpoly model. Thanks to my blockout I didn't have to guess my proportions and could recycle some parts for my highpoly. I made the highpoly with edge loops and crease sets for more complex parts, this also gives me a bit of control on the edge sharpness. After my highpoly i went on to make my lowpoly from my highpoly. The important things for my lowpoly is to not remove to many edges so to not break the silhouette of my asset and optimizing flat surfaces as much as possible.

                         highpoly (no smooth) > highpoly (smooth) > lowpoly (triangulated)


Next up, was unwrapping. Through the unwrapping process I focused on making the UV islands as straight as possible and aligning them along the UV axis to avoid pixelated seams in my texture. I also kept in mind to keep the pixel density to be consistent throughout the asset. I did sacrifice smaller and less visible parts to have less detail. Lastly i made sure my seams were made on sharper angles on my mesh. This whole process could've been a lot better spacing wise, unwrapping wise and having better foresight when it comes to unwrapping smaller details. I definitely learned a lot during this process.

I then moved on to texturing. Before i can properly start texturing, I created polygroups  in Zbrush on my highpoly for the ID map. I then started baking my highpoly on my lowpoly in Substance Painter. 

Now onto actually texturing the Flamethrower. I first assigned the properties like metal and plastic to the respective different parts of my asset, i then assigned an other layer for paint/color followed by adding the roughness and height layers. for the coloration on the metal parts i made 3 different layers that have a mask with a fill layer that uses a anchor with a paint mask. To finish up i added some dirt spots and dust in crevasses.

To wrap it all up, I brought it in Unreal and made some nice renders for my presentation. For my renders i mainly focused on catching highlights on my roughness detail and having a nice establishing shot. I made sure the objects around my asset were not grabbing to much attention by changing their saturation or color.

Background objects are from Quixel 

Asset | Axe

Thank you for going trough my work hope you enjoyed what you saw! Check out my Sketchfab if you're curious to see more of my 3D work.

 https://sketchfab.com/Pansdaz