FMP Progress

I've been working on the exterior to make it look complete and an actual playable level.

Area around the outside of the house. I made some bars of wood (re using texture space) and placed around the house blocking up windows, burning in the barrel and leaning against walls. Just like the interior is very cluttered, i wanted a similar feel in the front yard.

A small vista has been added also. As the house is a modular tileset, it meant i could easily replicate other houses in the area. I was also basing this environment from a scene from 'Shutter Island'

I also finally got around to finishing the roof. I made a few tiles using the texture from the slates i'd already made, then simply placed them accordingly. 

Ivy

I've decided to devote my time to developing the exterior of the house. Making the house seem delapatated, unkempt and derelict, I made some ivy branches to take over the exterior of the house. 

The method to create the vines is essentually the same process making the trees. Making a high poly leaf, attaching to a branch using the object paint tools in max and then baking down various maps to a plane.

I made 4 variations to ensure it never seemed repeated.

Vines as they appear on the house.

 I didn't want to densely populate the exterior, but have areas of concentration where nature has consumed the building. 

FMP Progress

Haven't posted a blog in a while so this update should show a fair amount of progress. The past couple of weeks or so I've been working on my asset creation to populate the house making it more interesting.

In hindsight I probably spent a bit too much time on a couple of these assets. Particularly the Box of matches which is a high-poly model baked down to a slopped plane in the box. (but I don't care it looks good)

Most of my time has been spent working on the living room as it was pretty much empty before. I've been using the cloth modifier (a lot) to enhance various assets. Curtains and draped over sofa's etc. As the modifier needs a very high poly base mesh to work correctly, I had to retopologise to create an acceptable mesh with a reasonable tri count.

On the left is the high poly version which is over 50,000 tris, on the right is the low poly version which is almost identicle using just over 600 tris. 

Wires from the two versions. Dramatic difference between the two. There were a couple of minor errors from the bake but these were fixed in Photoshop using a dust and scratches filter on a duplicated layer then masking out the errors.