Trash

When we were first gathered and told that we were going to be set real industry art tests as assignments, I got really exited. I was curious to test my own abilities and see how well I could do with these and practice for the real thing. I was also happy to have the chance to work with 3D again. Too much drawing lately, being the concept artist for our group project, I wasn't really doing much else. I had already shared my concerns with our course leader some time ago that despite the popular beliefs, I want to be more than just a concept artist.

The fated Wednesday came and we were set our first task. A box of trash. We were given a brief and reference to get us started. We had to make a realistic looking box full of trash within the poly limit of 500 tris. I started working right away, while still in class. I was that excited.

I didn't make any concepts, I decided to jump straight into Maya and see what happens. I wanted to have a pizza box. That's all I had as an idea for the start. So I found references and just did it.

The original was 376 tris, almost my whole budget so there was no way I was going to keep that. As an inanimate object the box didn't need all the edge loops I used to create it originally and having triangles wasn't an issue. So I optimized as much as I could and brought it down to 166 tris. That way I had enough left for the rest of the trash I planned on piling around my pizza box.

I modelled a large cardboard box and filled it with random stuff as well as a full bin bag which a copied and placed another on the side too. The whole thing ended up being 496 tris, just under budget.

For the texture we had a limit of 1024x1024px. and we only had to make a diffuse map.  I used various carton textures for my boxes, adding different effects to them such as wait stains and tape.
I also had to learn how to make AO maps in Maya and because of that, I had to keep all my UVs unique. It is a very interesting process and not as simple as in 3DSMax. IMO they really need to make it just a button you could press and there, done, an AO map. But no, I had to create new materials, use Mental Ray baking and then spend ages trying to locate where the map actually saved because it doesn't give you an option to tell it where to do so. It was a tedious process but it worked out in the end. I combined my AO map with my diffuse to make my final texture.

I was pretty surprised with the result I got in the end I was quite happy with it. I got some nice feedback as well and the changes I was told to make were minor. An obvious, but huge tip, was to always make a ground plane to make sure everything sits properly on it and there's nothing is floating in the air.