Uncharted 2 Monastery Unity Screengrabs 2

Warning. Lots of BIG images.

Here's the detailed version of my take on the Uncharted 2 monastery in Unity.

I still have to sort out the Strumpy version of the shader to match the Max one better and work out how to get lightmaps working with normal maps.

Uncharted 2 Monastery Max Screengrabs 2

I've been detailing this scene from time to time over the last couple of months. I haven't had much free time to work on it, so it's taken a while. I've pretty much got there now I think.

Uncharted 2 Monastery Unity Screengrabs 1

Here is the Uncharted 2 monastery model in Unity.

I tried to recreate the blend shader with Strumpy Shader Editor. I haven't quite got it yet. I need to work out how to access a single vertex colour channel. It looks like it's using all three and ends up blending too much of the top layer.

I haven't managed to get normal maps working yet either.

I also set up some lights and baked a lightmap. Looks pretty nice I think.

Uncharted 2 Monastery Max Screengrabs

I got the beautiful Art of Uncharted 2 art book for Christmas and I just had to make something based on one of the concepts.

This was a nice one. Detailed, but fairly small and self contained. And I know where it is in the game, so I could check that out to see how it compared.

Terrible scan, sorry about that. Painted by James Paick for Naughty Dog.

So I've been making something based on that in my spare time over the last couple of months. I've not had very long on it in any one sitting. I've also been using it as a mock game project, writing down bugs and ideas for improvements for 3DSMax from an environment art perspective while I went. Which took quite some time.

I made a simple blend shader that's similar to the one used in Uncharted2. The normals are pretty messed up in the Max viewport though so it's got slightly weird lighting.

I don't know if I'll have time to work on it any more in the near future. There's plenty more I could do to it. But it's an ok place to leave it for now. I've exported the data and I'm attempting to get it working in Unity. I'll post the results from that in another post.

Oddworld Scrab Turntable

Oddworld Scrab turntable render.

Watch in HD on Vimeo.

Format Change

I'm experimenting with a new template and changing the format around a bit. It might change a bit while I decide what I like most.

I've added a new search gadget, but the colours are a bit messed up on the results page. Not sure how to fix that right now.

Oddworld Scrab Painted Stage 2

I managed to UV the dynamesh model with Zbrush's UV master and took it into Mudbox to paint up the textures more thoroughly.

Mudbox's texture layers were way faster and easier to work with than Zbrush's poly paint. And I could make other material channels. Wish there was an easy way to duplicate a whole layer stack though. Duplicating them all and setting up the masks again was a pain. Especially as I encountered a bug preventing me reloading the scene after I'd duplicated all the texture layers and had to do it all again. Good job the textures saved ok so I could just load them up on an older file.

Ephant Mon Sculpt Stage 2

Quite a lot more work done on this guy over the last week or so.

Much more refined clothing, better hands, added his tail (simple zsphere chain), refined his head. Mesh extract gave me separate finger and toe nails. Added a bit of asymmetry and changed the overall silhouette to more closely match the original character.

I'm about done with the dynamesh now. I can convert it to a standard subdivided model for the detail from now on.

Ephant Mon Sculpt Stage 1

I recently dug out my "Sculpting A Galaxy" Star Wars book and felt I really wanted to do some sculpts of some of the creatures in it. This guy is called Ephant Mon.

What I love about the creatures in Star Wars is that they aren't just people with things stuck on their heads. Many are really quite alien.

He's still at a very low level of detail. Quite a way to go yet.

Oddworld Scrab Painted Stage 1

Trying out PolyPainting in Zbrush. Fairly basic at the moment. I have some more texture and detail I want to add. I have to work out how to get the random brush stamps to work properly first.

Oddworld Scrab Stage 1

It's been ages since I did any sculpting. I've been busy doing some other stuff.

Recently I got myself Zbrush as I really wanted to mess with the Dynamesh stuff for quick concepting. It works. This model was made with dynamesh, mesh extract and started as a sphere.

It's a Scrab from the Oddworld games. I got the Oddworld book for myself a few months ago and just had to have a go at making something from it. Those creatures are great.

Here's a picture from the book.

I still want to detail it a bit more and I'll take it into Mudbox for painting. I'll have to do something with UVs for that though.