Modular Testing Continued... - James McAndrew Environment

Looking back on the previous test i had done i wasn't that pleased with the outcome. The reading on the normal map and AO maps didn't work as well as i hoped for. I decided to try again to see if i could get a better result. One of the reasons that this happened was because the low poly version was REALLY low poly, the final low poly wall test was under 100 tris. This meant that everything was squared off. This is why it doesn't look as good as it could.

Before...

After...

With this in mind i took the low poly back into maya and upped the poly count. As this is only a small section of one of the modular walls it doesn't give a true representation of the size or true count to what the wall would be, however for testing, it works well. The final count of the upped low poly model is still only around 1k tris as this will be modular that too too back. The main reason for doing this was because there is one brick that is sticking out of the wall and the squareness of the previous attempt wasn't good enough and didn't look very good. I am happy with the way that this turned out and with more work and expanded to be actual wall size will work well.

As we are having floating bridges in the game i also worked on a quick mock up of what one of the section might look like. This isn't the final look of these sections because some of the mapping didn't work due to the high poly being too far from the low poly. This test gave me a lot of insight as to how to do these modular walk way properly. In this model the dirt and mud underneath are combined with the bricks on the top. I found that this wasn't the best way to do this for multiple reasons. To give a rough guide to what these modular section may look like however this worked well. I would also like to add some small roots and stone sticking out of the mud to make it look like its been ripped from the ground.  

One of the main things that i am not sure how to do well is the modular cave like parts of the level. This is because unlike walls there aren't any really parts to join together. I will be speaking to Ewan at a later date to find out how to do this properly. Despite this i went ahead and tried to model a rough rock that could be used in a modular environment. The rock itself looks pretty good however i don't think it would work with other modular rocks on the same kind.

To get a better modular look i think that i need to make them more square and less rounded because rounded stuff doesn't combine that well.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------