Mower and mower...

My main focus since the summer has been learning UE4, and all it's details. This has meant that apart from the character during the 'King of the Dead' project I haven't had much of an opportunity to do any modelling. So I decided to start a little side project so that I keep my skills fresh in mind and get the opportunity to do some high poly modelling, retopologising, baking, texturing etc. These are all things I know how to do well, but are something I want to make sure I can do effectively and efficiently when it comes to working on my final major project.

Although I am focusing my FMP towards the more technical side of the Game Art I will still need to be able to create assets to fill the level. The quicker I can create said assets the more time i'll have to work on the intractable elements and tools I am planning on making. (More information on FMP idea and progress in future posts.)

Lawn Mower Reference Images

Back to the mower. Now this is cutting edge stuff. I have used my grandad's own lawnmower as reference for this as I couldn't find a good enough images online to work from. This also meant I could take photographs not only to model from but also for texturing purposes. I want this to be a truly realistic representation of the actual lawn mower but also be optimised so that it can be viewed in realtime in a game engine. This means calling on my previous PBR material practice to give it realistic material properties so that it will work in any lighting setup and still give physically accurate renders.

This will be the first time I have done a full model built to use PBR shaders. To make it easier to texture and make sure the right area's have the correct material properties I have separated all the different materials found on the object and baked separate masks for each one. This means I can work quickly getting the right values for easy element; blocking out the Albedo, Roughness, and Metalness maps out first to use them as a base to work from and add detail to.

As you can see already with these very basic textures applied and the baked Normal map you get a close to real looking result already at this early stage of texturing. It's just a case of adding/ layering more detail on top of these bases; adding wear and tear, grime, dirt, generally making the object look used as well as adding any key notifiable decals and graphics.