This is a documentation of my continued work on our Western Scene project, an assignment where we are building assets to render out a small Western Scene. I chose to make a general store scene.
Last week I laid out my assets and cleaned up my primitives scene to prepare for making assets. I also laid out some older assets that we were allowed to throw into our projects having made them earlier in the class.
This week I chose to work on the most complex asset, I wanted to get it out of the way as quickly as possible since I knew it would take time. This asset was the counter for my general store. I had an idea for a counter since I started this project, but it wasn't until looking at this reference where I really knew what I wanted it to look like:
There is two specific things I like about this photo, one is the L-Shaped counter, and the second are the display cases. In this post I cover how I started both of these assets. I looked up some reference for old wooden counters and found this one:
This was perfect, I like the granite top because I think it would make for an interesting material and I also love the wood engravings as I think it would be a fun challenge to recreate them. I decided to use this as reference for an L-Shaped counter, so I am not perfectly copying this reference, only using it for inspiration.
To get to this point took the longest, I spent about 3 days getting this model right. One issue I ran into was having parts line up correctly or placed symmetrical. I had to redo my process at least once. The solution to this was building the counter modularly, for example, the pillars and wood faces are individual objects that were snapped and moved across an axis to help keep the shape symmetrical.
Another issue was making different variations of each of these pieces, some parts had to be flipped, while others needed a creative spin on them, for example, the pillar at the corner junction was a complicated part that took a lot of time.
Here is a screenshot showing all of the unique meshes had they not been duplicated to create the rest of the object. After this point, it didn't take very long to finish. I simply prepared the UVs, made an ID map, and textured the object in substance, here is what the final asset looked like in Substance:
I was very happy with this, I had managed to recreate some of the wood engravings, add dynamic wood grain that varied for each piece. I even made normals to show some of the creases in the wood which worked great. The wood looks slightly polished just like the reference, and the granite top looks great. The final step was to export these textures and import them to Maya to render in Arnold, and the final product looked great:
I am very happy with the results, the creases show well, and the wood pieces really look separated and varied, which is something I've had trouble with wood textures before. There isn't a single angle the table looks bad from. After this I placed the counter in the scene, and I've just started building the display case to go on top of the counter. This case will feature a revolver I built in a previous assignment, which should be kept safe in a glass box as it will be one of the most valuable items in this general store.
So far this model hasn't presented many issues, although I am finding it hard to put closer details for this one. For example, I think the glass sliding doors in the back should have a latch, but I can't think of any other small details that would help this case seem less boring. I am thinking of having a velvet cushion on the inside to place the revolver on top of, I think that would help make this asset pop out more. Another problem with this mesh was the metal framing around the glass. I tried to unwrap it and had a lot of frustration for the attempt. Something about this structure is very hard to properly unwrap and it was taking up to an hour with multiple retries. I haven't solved this issue yet as I'm taking a step away from it to return to later, but I think I will be able to solve it as unwrapping hasn't been an issue for me in the past.
I think my progress on the project is good, it feels like it is starting slow, but I think that's because I am tackling the most difficult assets first. I think it will pay off in the end when all I have to make are walls and various items to put on shelves. Hopefully I am correct. Next week I plan to finish the walls and try and build a lighting fixture.
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