The Sci-Fi assignment was a refinement project that provided models that needed to be UVed and textured, then rendered in Unity or Arnold. Rendering in Unity was a new task for the assignment and texturing included the addition of anchor points to our skill set. This was the first assignment where I really took advantage of tiling my UVs which has become one of my favorite methods for organizing with limited UV sets at my disposal. 

The project was one my favorite of the semester and my most successful. I become very proficient at tiling properly and organizing my UV space so that it was well optimized and also aesthetically pleasing to look at in Substance Painter while also making texturing easier. 

UVing was a bit difficult in spots especially on the details of the tie fighter but the crate went very smoothly. I became much better at using the negative scaling to fit all the pieces together without having to UV each piece and tiling made everything a lot quicker, although sometimes in the UV editor I was not able to snap my shells using vertex snapping. This was pretty frustrating because then I could not get the shells to match perfectly the way I needed them to. I never found a solution besides reopening my scene again.

*Crate and Interceptor models provided by Connor Zelinsky

Once inside painter both my objects loaded and baked correctly which...is always a fantastic feeling, no one wants to go back into Maya after getting the UVs organized and ready. 

The scratched metal I used was really great and helped to hide some of the seams from my UV cuts. All the scratches lined up great. Looking back at it now I wish that I had adjusted more of the colors on the metal since it feels a bit bright and too 'metal' looking as opposed to the Sci Fi theme but it was very satisfying to get it into Unity and add the post processing to bring it all together. I tried a few different textures but the scratched metal was the best looking and because of some diligent work in Maya painter was smooth sailing.

Texturing the crate was significantly more work than the tie interceptor. After other final renders I wish I had tried some more interesting colors and ideas but I still really liked how the interceptor ended up looking; sleek, classic, and high resolution. 

Texturing for the crate was more intensive with more colors and the use of anchor points and the emissive channel. The one real issue I ran into was getting my anchor points to work with the graphic that I brought in (the blue shape in between the block corner pieces). The sizing did not match with what I intended and after some tweaking it still never really got where I wanted it to. But overall, it turned out really nice although the red became much more intense within unity, which I think should be more darkened. The yellow trim and emissive pieces looked really nice and they fit into my final scene very nicely. It was tough to get DOF to work properly in Unity and it took about 45 minutes of tweaking values to get it to work sort of ok. It is used in the first render of the tie fighter at a close angle.

This was my favorite assignment from the semester, and I gave myself enough time to experiment and get each part done with enough time set up post process and organize my scene, which helped me later on during the final project.

I learned a lot from this project and thank you very much for reading!

Crate rendered in Unity with post process

Tie Interceptor with DOF in Unity

Above is the UV set 1 for the sci-fi crate and Tie Interceptor. My crate UVs came out a lot more cleanly than the tie fighter so there is room to improve on getting everything fit more efficiently.              

Both models ended up being pretty fun to work with since I like Star Wars, not sure how my Star Trek fans feel about it, but it was motivating to be working on something recognizable and getting it ready for painter. 

I had some trouble with the UVing of the interceptor wings as well as the smaller turret details and thrusters on the back. Nothing that could not be fixed with some time and effort, but I was happy to get into painter.

Wireframe of my objects

UV set for the crate

UV set for the interceptor