3D Asset Creation for Blacksmith Scene

Blacksmith Scene

In this assignment we were required to make a variety of assets from a blacksmith scene. Each asset required multiple steps to be fully complete. These steps included:

•  Modeling a high and low poly object for each asset
• UVing the low poly asset, 
• Baking the high poly onto the low poly, 
• Then texturing the assets in Substance Painter
• Exporting all of our assets into a complete Unity scene

Here is the asset list:

• Barrel
• Stool
• Bucket with Handle
• Wagon Wheel
• Anvil
• Sword
• Hammer
• Horse Shoe
• Brick Furnace/Forge
• Covered Structure
• Wood Stump

We were also given some concept art to reference:

Concept 1

Concept 2

Concept 3

Know with all that being said onto the blacksmith scene that I created. This assignment taught me an incredible amount not only about creating assets for games but also about the overall workflow for creating assets. 

Of course I ran into quite a few bumps along the way. I would like to go over some of them and explain how I found solutions to them. 

A bake of my low poly bucket

Initially baking was a really tough process for me. The first couple assets that I baked did not come out near how I wanted them to. One of the biggest issues I ran into here was that I was not matching the silhouette of my high poly as best as I could. I soon came to learn that being as close to the silhouette of your high poly is vital. If you don't match your silhouette well then baking will not go smoothly. Fortunately, after I learned this I matched my silhouette of my assets much better and it made for an overall smoother baking process.

We also had to create Level of Detail models for the forge asset which required three models that would be used in the scene a low poly, a medium poly, and a high poly. 

Low Poly Forge

Here is where I ran into my next issue, I decided to model my high poly with a lot of individual bricks. This turned out to be an issue in the UVing stage. 

I was baking my high poly onto my medium and my low. My low actually wasn't too bad due to the fact that it was mostly comprised of large cubes. But when I went to bake onto my medium which had many individual bricks, I had a lot of issues baking. This was due to me stacking UVs on top of each other during the baking process, so Substance would paint on the same UVs multiple times.

Ultimately I re-UVed the medium forge multiple times to try and solve this and eventually that worked well. 

High Poly Forge

Last I would like to touch on the texturing phase of the project. I actually enjoyed the texturing phase quite a bit. But I do wish I had spent some a bit more time on it than I did. There were some areas on my models that I wish I had cleaned up a bit more and added some more wear and tear to them.

I did this for quite a few models but unfortunately some of the small details I added to objects were not very noticeable in the unity scene because you aren't looking at objects quite as closely as you are in Substance. 

Here are some of the map I used frequently throughout the project:

Texture Map

Normal Map

Ambient Occlusion Map

But even with the issues I faced along the way, I came out with an overall product that I'm pretty pleased with.

Blacksmith Scene by Jburgenger on Sketchfab

Overall I think the project went pretty well considering it's my first time being introduced to the workflow/process. In the future I definitely want to manage my time a little bit better and spend some more time in the texturing phase. But I have definitely learned a great deal during this project and am excited to continue to master it and perfect it.