Environment Assets - Skeleton

After finishing the main character and the mage statue environment asset, I was given the task of creating a couple more assets to fill up the environment with. So the first thing I thought of was to make a skeleton model, to scatter around the dungeon. With having this model available to me, I will be able to create more assets that include the skeleton model, like prisoner cages for example that hold skeletons.

Before beginning the skeleton I decided that I was going to create the skeleton out of separate objects so that I could pose it with ease within maya when it came to including it in other assets like the prisoner cage that I will be posing it inside of. To begin my modeling process I found a reference image of an already modeled skeleton on google images, so that I could crop it into four separate objects and model around it within maya.

Above is the first couple of progress screenshots that I took. I began in the center of the skeletons model as I believed that would be the most time consuming and i was completely right, modeling the spine and the ribs proved quite dificult, as its likely the most intricate thing that i've had to model inside maya so far. I'm quite happy with the outcome of the model so far at this point in my workflow though, as from this progress ill be putting parts of the model into zbrush to add more detail to them that I was simply unable to do in maya.

Here Is a screen hot of the finished models files structure within maya. Here I have positioned each objects pivot point on the bones joints so that when I select the top of the arm, I can move the whole arm, and then when I select the forearm, I can move that and the hand at the same time too. This system will allow me to pose the skeleton easier within maya when i'm creating the other environment assets. 

Final model within maya before exporting as an OBJ into Zbrush to be detailed.

Textured and rendered in Quixel

Above is the screenshots i captured of the skeleton rendered within quixel. I think it came out really well, being able to mimic the detail on the hands and the feet accurately without having have detailed low poly models for those pieces proved to be quite successfully. I would say however how I really struggled to lower the poly count for this skeleton model, the final lowpoly model came to around 12k polygons, which really isn't low at all for an environment asset, it would pass for more of a character model, so despite how happy I am with the final outcome of this model i would say that next time I attempt to model a skeleton again I will try to be far more conservative with my use of polygons. 

Albedo

AO

Normals

 Specular

 UV's

Unwrapping the UV's for this skeleton model proved to be the most time consuming and most difficult part of the workflow for this model. Mostly every part of the skeleton was pretty straight forward to unwrap, but when it came to unwrapping the rib cage and the hip bone, is when I had to take extra care. With the rib cage I tried my best to only have the seems on the inside of the rib cage, but unwrapping each rib proved very difficult. 

Im glad that I made this skeleton as its going to prove to be a very useful asset to our games environment, but i know that next time im going to be making one i will have to take extra time and care in making the low poly as low as i can so that not only will it run better in a game but unwrapping the uv's later on will be made much easier for me.