BUILDING THE SCENE’S UNIQUE ASSETS
Matt Mccorkell explains how creating additional props brought the scene to life
“I had the task of providing support and additional props for the Mos Eisley project,” says environment artist Matt Mccorkell, who was responsible for creating environment assets such as the satellite dishes.
“Considering that most shots of satellite dishes and communication towers were usually far in the background of shots, I decided to study some of the props from various ships in Star Wars. Then I started modelling out several dishes at once,” says Matt. “After finding elements I liked and throwing out the ideas I didn’t like, I started to detail the dishes to break up the large surfaces. I repeated this process over a couple of times until I found some designs that I wanted to model out.”
“While most detail was added along a radial alignment I found it more interesting to add details and modelled segments that broke up the direct symmetry of the dish itself. After all, in Mos Eisley not all supplies arrive in pristine detail and it’s easy to imagine the patchwork designs that arise from the constant repair they may need.”
This exploratory modelling took up the largest amount of time for Matt’s prop work. “Once the low-poly model was finished it was time for UVS, which I packed as densely as possible (no overlapping UVS for AO, Normal and curvature map baking),” says Matt.
With his maps baked out of xnormal Matt then took them into Quixel and started
the process of creating a material for the satellite dish prop. “There are some nice smart material presets for metals within Quixel,” he says, “but I find it best to use a smart material that’s closest to the look you want. Then disable each of the submaterials except for the two bottom layers.”
“Leverage quick masking based on the xnormal bakes and paint where you feel weathering should be heavier.”
“Once you are comfortable with that first layer, work your way up adding additional materials where needed. It is critical to see how each material layer is affecting each of the material aspects. Use the preview window to check Albedo, metalness, and roughness separately in order to insure that material properties all have the effect you are trying to achieve. Once you have your maps looking good in view port be sure to try them out in UE4 as well.”
The material setup for a small prop like this shouldn't take long to set up. “Pack Roughness, Metalness, and AO into a single texture by placing them within the RGB channels. These maps don't need any colour info so you can place them within different channels without losing any important info.”