"NEXT GEN" MODELING AND TEXTURING FOR GAMES:
Other Pages:
2. Low Resolution Modeling and UVs
3. Texture Baking and Surface Transfer
5. Links and More Useful Stuff
I wanted to write up a comprehensive "Next Gen" tutorial for folks out there interrested in the process. I've done this sort of documentation internally at the companies I've worked for and thought it would cool to make one available to everyone. This process seems to be the current favorite for games so can't really be considered "next gen". It's really "current gen". For this tutorial I'm going to build a WWII sniper rifle inspired by the Springfield MD1. I say "inspired by" because I did this fast and didn't really stop to get the details perfect. Let's step through the process from the very beginning. I want to let you know what tools I prefer so you can just go out and do this.
Here are the textures I painted so you can see what's used above. Click them to view them at half resolution. Note that I always paint textures 2X what is going to be used in the game so I painted them at 2048. You can get those big huge versions on the texture creation page. Because texture baking saves you so much texturing time, you can also spend a little more time on the details:
Here are just a couple points before we even get going. I use Maya and Maya hates polys. Funny but true. If you start messing around with meshes over 3 million polys strong Maya won't handle it well if at all. Maya can deal with lots of polys if the model is broken up into a lot of pieces but that's not always desirable especially if you're bringing in ZBrush models. The only thing I have found that works is upgrading my hardware. My 64 Bit Windows Vista Ultimate machine handles these higher poly models well because (I believe) it uses all of the RAM I have whereas Windows NT will not. If you're not in the market for a big bad machine, try to keep your single meshes to a reasonable size.
Here's the software list for this process. All of these have demo software if you're learning:
Maya 2008 (earlier will work but some edge loop stuff won't apply)
I also used ZBrush for the leather cheek guard but it was such a small step I did not cover it (I also forgot to take screenshots). ZBrush worked great for the leather stitching and texture. I did however bust my poly limit because I was just being careless and had to use XSI to bake the normal and occlusion.
Most of the time if you're in the industry you'll have an awesome concept artist like Ryan cranking out awesomeness for you to model from. Sometimes these concepts will be three-quarter shots which allow you to use your imagination and add the cool bits that makes the model yours. Other times you will get orthographic conepts (front, side, top, back) when accuracy is critical. For the latter, you generally bring these images into your modeling package and use them to model over.
At times though, concept art is not available. That's okay. Go to Google Images and start collecting reference like I did for the sniper rifle.
Next Step - High Resolution Model >>