Hero Asset Design

From the start I really could see myself having some fun with the chosen ‘Alien’ theme in how much potential there is to create something that has never been seen before and to really use the imagination to see what I could create. Day 1 I couldn’t get out of my head how I wanted to make some sort of power source, whether that was going to be a battery or some sort of high-tech alien technology.

As seen from the mood boards created, I instantly took that idea and try to find as many references as possible to really broaden my imagination on what I would like to create. In each of the images there is this emissive glow coming from the assets which I really wanted to try and recreate. As well as this immense emissive glow, the assets in the mood board are almost fully symmetrical with small details into the exterior design with raised faces and a very sci-fi look to them.

The sub-theme was a ‘Recycling Centre’ which was difficult to find ideas and references for as it’s not a very common theme in games or concept art, so I had to put a bit of thought in how I was going to portray this. Mainly the use of machinery parts and an almost industrial look is what I would be trying to aim for.

The sub-theme was the one I found more challenging into figuring out how I was going to merge the two themes together. I found that I was going to probably must use my imagination a little bit and just try to link to link the two themes as best as I could whilst maybe not being 100% accurate to the themes themselves. I can do this with a little story telling behind the scenes and hopefully that should be enough to get an idea of what I was trying to recreate.

For the design element I tried to keep to my original idea of a power source and used that to create these 4 asset drawings in Photoshop. The 4 assets all contain that emissive glow I was mainly looking for as well as trying to create a sci-fi exterior look to them.

I really thought about how I was going to make the hero asset stand out in the environment and how to possibly merge this with my sub-theme. I concluded that a recycling centre will need a main source of power, and for this I chose to make as my asset an alien piece of technology at the core of the recycling centre. Therefore, making the asset really stand out when it will be placed into the environment.

This was an idea that came to mind about a huge central core of energy between 2 components. The bottom component being the container of this huge glowing ball of energy, whilst the top was to be able to control/maintain the immense power this energy source created. Although I liked the design I thought it would be tough to merge with the sub-theme because I thought it looked to nice to be in a recycling centre.

I really liked this design and made the poly model in Maya for it. I thought of the green pipe at the top connecting into the walls of the recycling centre with a green liquid inside containing moving bubbles. There is blue emissive glow coming from the top and bottom of the glass as well as the green toxic like glow from the liquid. In the end it was just a little too complicated for me to pull this off and I had to give another design a go.

For the beginning part of making the design I simply scaled the main body of my asset to my desired size for me to start working on the actual geometry of the shape.

Once I had changed my viewport to ‘Top View’ I could select the vertices I wanted and then scaled them out to make the sides of the main body on an angle. To make sure I selected all the vertices on the back I had to make sure in my tool settings I had ‘Camera-based selection’ turned off. When turned on I was only able to select what my camera could see in a certain viewport.

Using edge-loops I was able to divide the object into equal sections allowing me to create some detail in the top piece. This is very helpful in laying out your asset into where you may want to make changes in the shape, adding details, or changing certain geometries of what ever you have selected.

Edge-loops can either be clicked from point to point to create your own desired edge or alternatively I can press ‘Ctrl’ with ‘SHIFT’ to get an exact edge loop across the whole object.

For making the top symbol I found to get perfect symmetry and to save time its easier to delete one half of the object and simply just work on the other half then I can mirror the object across later and merge the vertices to make the perfect symmetry. This also works with UVs with I will explain later.

Making the low poly model was a challenge which took a few times to get the hang of but in the end, it needed to be perfect to work with the UV layout. At first, I was deleting edges from the object trying to create less faces but then in the UV it wouldn’t unfold or layout my UV shell, so I had to go back and after some work I realised that less is more. I can map out where I need each individual edge, then I can vert snap the vertices in the right places and extrude the edges I needed to and vert snap again which made for a perfect low poly asset.  

Whilst going through working on this project it was always important to have good file organisation, so the software is capable of understanding what I am trying to achieve when baking the high poly model. Each part of the asset is named the same with the only difference is me telling Maya and Adobe whether it’s a low poly or high poly model.

Making the UVs was a huge learning curve but actually quite an enjoyable and satisfying experience. The first step was to open the UV Editor, from there I selected the object I wanted to make the UV for and selected ‘Camera-based’ which would show me the UVs of that object as one object as the main camera was seeing them.

As can be seen from the screenshot, when I do a camera-based UV it will lay the UVs perfectly on the object from the cameras angle but everything else will be skewed and not laid out very well so the first step is to cut the edges.

Once I’m back in perspective view, I can go along any seems that need to be cut in order to make the perfect UV shell for me to unfold and layout. I simply figure this out as if I were to unfold a box, if I needed to lay out the object flat, which edges would I have to cut? So that once unfolded, would lay out perfectly flat to the ground. I had a few errors at first as I was trying to cut edges out of the object for the low poly but then the object wouldn’t unfold correctly. Hence why less is more. Don’t overdo it otherwise the UV wont work.  

I had to do this for every low poly object that was in my outliner until I had the perfect UV layout ready for Substance Painter. Some things were trial and error as I found its better to straighten the UV shells, but as for some of the UV shells its more beneficial to just unfold so the UV doesn’t skew.

Finally, the finished asset was ready to be imported into Substance Painter for baking and all the fun stuff!

At first the main goal was to get the perfect base layer for my hero asset. This wasn’t necessarily going to be the end colour as I had a lot of playing around with textures to see what type of final look I was going for. I chose a nice steel-worn red, but this was mainly for the textures I received in this smart material. It gave some really bump textures to the metal which I could then start applying to the asset.

Looking at the normal-mesh map to see the textures and if I needed to add anymore.

I found the best and easiest way to paint on Substance Painter was with the polygon fill tool which when in the UV viewing mode, I could easily select whole UV shells or just certain faces to make sure no mistakes were made. I was able to do this through the use of a black mask to make sure I only filled where I wanted it.

Making the emissive glow in Substance Painter was fun and really allowed me to experiment with what I was trying to ultimately achieve in this asset. I was able to use the same technique by using a black mask and then polygon filling the desired areas. Having the option to play around with the emissive intensity was a great way of seeing how far I wanted to push the object into the night!

I was also able to utilise the stencil to create some really funky, sci-fi designs that I was also able to make emissive for extra effect.

Once I had the perfect colour to the asset, I added a few more textures such as dirt and scratches to make it look like it wasn’t perfect and had some wear and tear.

Once all finished in substance painter and I had exported my textures it was time to link them all up in MAYA with ‘Hypershade’ by connecting the nodes to the correct ports to make the asset come to life in MAYA. I however did encounter an issue with the emissive glow not being as strong as I wanted in MAYA but seems to not be a problem in Unreal Engine 5. Something I am still looking into, maybe emission nodes are incorrect or need another port. I’m sure I will figure it out and I will update soon.

Scratch that. I fixed it.

For the lighting I did a simple 3-point lighting set up with one main light and 2 separate lights to the side all at different strengths to give a more realistic look and to be really able to see the texture and details. With the use of planes to light block certain areas I was able to get some interesting effects in the renders.