Postmortem

For my senior project I decided to model a boiler. There were multiple reasons for this decision. The main reason was that I wanted to model one thing. Throughout my years at school I had a tendency to be too ambitious, making things like a city and a train station. These projects require me to model and texture one model every day. Needless to say this became too stressful, and the projects were never completely finished.

I wanted this project to be different. I wanted a task that I could not only finish, but have time to polish it up at the end. Once I decided on this I knew the model I was going to make needed to be big. Prior to this class I had decided on my Capstone project. For that class I was going to make a boiler room. This room had a good amount of assets in it, but nothing too grand. This is when I realized that I should sort of “combine” the two classes. I could make the room in Capstone, and model a grand boiler in Senior Project.

Once the model was decided on I had to do a bit of research. I came across a variety of boilers. Many of them were simple household boilers. This was not the type I wanted. I stumbled across one big boiler during my search. I noticed that it was made by Cleaver Brooks. I decided to do some research on what kind of other boilers they made. What I found was exactly what I was looking for. Cleaver Brooks made big industrial boilers. I decided to pick a couple of them that I liked and combine them for a unique one.

Looking at the boiler I was about to make I wanted to come up with a plan. My plan was to try and go through the whole process of a model. I decided to first model the low poly version. I put a 3000 poly limit on this version. After that model was done, I needed to bring it into Zbrush and model a high poly one. From there I was going to bake out normal maps and begin to texture. After the diffuse was done I wanted to take it into Crazy Bump and create the specular and ambient occlusion maps.

So everything was set to go. I had my plan, I had my schedule, and I had time. Like my plan stated I started with the modeling process. Working in 3D Studio Max went by without too much trouble. In fact, I came in under my poly limit. Halfway through I didn’t think that was going to be possible. The final count was around 2700 polys. It was now time to bring the model into Zbrush. I didn’t like that. Zbrush has more of a sculpting feel to it. It feels awkward when you’re not modeling a character or plant. This is where all my problems began. I decided to model the high poly version in Max. However, before I committed to it I wanted to practice the normal map process. This took up a lot of my time. I played around with the normal map process for way too long. My original schedule was to be in Zbrush for about 3 weeks. This translated easily to my new schedule with Max. The problem was I spent about 2 and a half weeks learning how to do normals, and what I could achieve with them.

Now I had a big time problem. It was about midterm and I was around two weeks behind. I had to work a lot harder in order to complete it on time. So that’s what I started doing. I began modeling the high poly versions and baking out the normal maps. It was then I realized my second problem of the project, the UVW map. The way the UVW map was unwrapped wasn’t bad for just a diffuse map. The problem was that most of the places where I wanted normal mapping to add in the details were too small. So I had to go back and redo the unwrap. This put me about a week behind again.

So there I was, over 2 weeks behind with 2 weeks left. Things seemed bad. However, the boiler must go on. I began the diffuse map somewhere along the way. I really was just focusing on base colors and a general layout. Then I really got into it. I was texturing like a madman to try and finish in time. Unfortunately they say bad things come in threes. Enter my third problem. My boiler wasn’t matching the style I was going for. I was focusing too much on the Unreal scene that I was creating. This was evident in the boiler I was texturing. So after a long time of staring at the boiler and images of Resistance 2, I decided to start over on the texture.

I found out as I was texturing that it’s difficult to texture in two different styles at the same time. My Capstone project was more like Unreal, and my Senior Project was more like Resistance. However, after many late nights, and little sleep I got the diffuse texture done. Luckily the Crazy Bump process was quicker than I thought it would be. I got finished just in time. I also printed and mounted like I wanted to do (even though the mount was ruined due to lack of sleep).

So how did the project turn out overall? I’m surprisingly happy with it. I’m not usually happy with projects at the end. I believed this project was going to go the same route, especially because I was behind on a good portion of it. In the end I think it turned out the way I wanted it to. There were some bad points. I would have really like to have worked with Zbrush more. I think I need to look into a way to work with it easier. However, there were also good points. I do believe that I matched the style I was going for. That was a big plus for me. I also got it into the Unreal engine. All together I’m happy with the model and I’m looking forward to polishing it up a bit to get it ready for the all important portfolio.