Ship Wheel Modelling/Texturing Pipeline

I haven't wrote a post yet about my complete pipeline for one asset yet and as I'll be including that in my report I thought it was best to write one now while I still remember everything I've done.

I was looking for an asset to either feature on the wall behind the camera or above the fireplace, typically someone would put something of significant sentimental value on top there, I figured a captains favourite ship wheel would probably suit best.

I found this original concept in the 'The Art of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag' and figured it would save me a little research time if I used this. I did however look into the sort of detail designs that would feature in the silver work, along with what general wear would occur on an item like this and how well it would have been looked after - In this case fairly well as it's got a lot of sentimental value.

In 3DS Max I created a plane with the original concept on (I found a complete version on Google) and then modeled over the top of that. I've actually made this asset quite high-poly, probably more than I usually would have however I'm still seeing some faceted edges so maybe it's worth adding a little more there.

I actually blocked out a little more high-poly detail,before I sculpted it, this is because these are slightly more hard-surface but also acts as a guideline in Mudox of where to add the smaller detail.

The high-poly sculpt was completed in Mudbox, I've learnt a little Z-Brush and will be learning more after this project but for now I'm more comfortable with Mudbox. I basically start out by blocking out the larger shapes of detail then just move up levels to add in the smaller detail. The pattern is a very basic swirl pattern but on a much smaller scale so from a distance it will look much more intricate. 

The baking was actually done in Xnormal rather than Mudbox, I just prefer the results. I did end up with the slight issue with the pivots and of the high and low-poly pivots not being in the same position. This was quickly fixed in max and the bake came out really nice and a little better than I thought. This is actually why I prefer doing this sort of detail in Mudbox rather than NDO, I just think the results are a little sharper.

From top left to bottom right: Albedo, Normal, AO, Metalness, Roughness

I created a colour map inside Photoshop just to mask out the silver areas from the wood.

The textures we're as always done in DDO, I barely had to do any work here as the sculpt bake came out so nice. The wood texture is one of the ones I've already modified with some chips and a fair bit of dirt.

For the silver I actually didn't use the silver material as I find it's way too clean. I actually used 'Dull Steel' then changed this to add some more specular highlights and make it look like a more dirty version of silver. This turned out really nice.

This is the final result, I'm really liking it other than the slightly faceted edges. I was considering doing another version which is completely broken, maybe been in an accident and have that lying around somewhere. The image above was rendered in 3DO and because of the material set-up I have in UE4 it's a very accurate representation of what it actually looks like in-game.