Pillar: Final design

Pillar: Refined Ideas

I chose this pillar because I thought it was a very simple design with a clear canvas which would allow me to experiment on zbrush freely adding many different effects. I thought about the culture I would lean towards I chose Nordic, viking era which is what I modeled it after and decided to look at runes from that time period and see if I can indent it into the pillar.

I created the low poly pillar and extruded the faces on either side of the pillar to create an indent on each side so I could give the design writing in the center.

I experimented with Zbrush before hand to see what a piping effect would look like in corroded concrete. I found the effect quite interesting the way the pipe went in contrast with the concrete.

But it was not the desired effect I wanted or the design I wanted so I took my design I chose before. 

 I researched different rock textures to see which effect I would like to use on my model and looked at what the material would look like decayed and damaged.

 

I then proceeded to import my mesh into Zbrush and Dynameshed it in order to increase the number of faces to easily mold it.

I then experimented with effects with different brush effects to give it a stone like texture, after I experimented with some textures I then proceeded to damage the pillar by cutting it and giving it a corroded look.

After that I thought about what word I would like to translate from English into old Nordic I chose the work "Fear" and looked at the alphabet, I then took the cropped letters from the alphabet into Photoshop, them up to suit my pillar and made it black and white.

I then imported the rune into Zbrush, and put it as a brush alpha and dragged and indented it into the mesh.

The problem I had with this at first was the strength of the indent would then come out of the back of the pillar.

I then had to decimate it enough for it to be able to be put into Maya to take the detailed parts and sew them to my low poly mesh.

After I sewed them onto the low poly I was ready to I created a cage around the low poly.

Once I got it into UE4 I found a problem that it had not baked properly because the zbrush high poly wasn't in the same space on the map for them to bake properly and because of this I had to resort my low poly, use a high poly version that did not have my rune.

After that I re-baked it and made a normal and ambient occlusion map then put it into UE4.

I added a base colour and metallic map to give it a shine effect.