Asset Production

Pod-racer Asset Production

For the final assignment, we were asked to create an asset production model in 3ds Max, Blender or Maya. The asset model could be from a selected list of items with included a ship. For my model, I went with modeling a sci-fi ship or pod-racer. I started by looking up different images of pod racers to get an idea of my design, after a few images, I found a star war light-saber which I liked and made it so the pod-racer would have that shape.

Once I had my idea for my model I went into 3ds Max and started modeling. The first part of the model started with the outer case of the engine. Using a cylinder as the starting base, from there I moved the vertices to fit the shape as when as added and remove edges to help create the shape. Once I had created the outer shell, I Boolean out the circle to create the hole in the sides, after all, that I shelled the plane to turn it into a 3ds model and add more edges to make sure the turbo-smooth worked well. I repeated this process for the reset of the 3d model. The may tools I used to help get my results were loops, insert, extrude, bevel as well as swift loop. Symmetry helped a lot with creating this model as it reduced the amount of work needed to complete the model.

The easy part was done, the model had been complete and ready to be UV Unwrapped before texturing in quixel. At the start I was using 2016 to UV Unwrap which wasn’t fun and very very time consuming, Stephen our teacher/producer helped me a lot with this process by telling me to use 2017 as the UV Unwrapper is so so so much better. When I started using 2017 it was so much easier and better than 2016, UV was fun and easy, allowing me to create seam easily as well as loop edge and point to point seams. Peel Mode was amazing and the fact that it updated the UV map as you added seams which are even more amazing. However one of the best adds to 2017 was Area Distortion which shows how your UV unwrapped looked on the model by showing colors where it was stretching which helps a lot to fix problems in the unwrap.

White or clean means good, red and blue mean stretch if they are very dark.

Before going to quixel I had to create an ID map for my model to allow quixel to see the different parts of the model for me to texture. After that, I export my model out as an obj file and made sure tris were added to my model as quixel is known to mess up the tris in a modeling and reverse the view.

After the UV Unwrapping, ID and exporting the fun part was last, this is the first time using quixel to texture and at the start the textures and materials they offer are great lots to choose from to make your model look very nice. It took me a bit to get used to quixel and I still haven’t learned everything it could possibly do which will be great to learn as practices using it more in the future.

What helped a lot with learning quixel was a tutorial by Mike Acosta that explained a lot about how quixel worked and how to get your model in 3ds max to work in quixel.

With everything done I either could render out a mp4 of my model with the texture or use sketchfab a site that allows you to upload your model with texture, to which people are able to rotate and view your model themselves.

Link to the model on sketchfab: https://skfb.ly/S8Cu