Blunderbuss Hi-poly

For this last week I started working on the hi-poly model of a pirate's blunderbuss. I picked this gun over the modern day guns because of the mixture of organic and hard surface together and also for the interesting silhouette the gun has.

For this week I will be working on the low-poly, baking the normal map, and creating  the texture.

I am still unsure if I will end up working on the finer detail in zbrush but I will see where this goes.

Battery Charger Low Poly

Update:

I finished the hi-poly,low-poly models, fixed the normal map and also rendered out the occlusion map. Also finished the texture for the low-poly and rendered out the render of the model.

While working on this project I learned how to use xNormal to bake out the normal map and occlusion map and learned how to use Marmoset for rendering out my final images. Also started using bevel to cut down on the poly count for the hi-poly model.

The problem that I was having with the normal maps were artifacts from overlapping geometry, I fixed it by baking the model in pieces instead. I learned many things within the last 2 weeks working on this one model, all in all time well spent. I am sure that there are still somethings that need fixing but will have to move on to the next project.

Software used:
Maya
xNormal
Photoshop
Marmoset

Battery Charger - Low Poly

Normal Map

Low poly

Normals applied

Hi-poly with cleaner topology

Update on my low poly. Have weird things happening with the bake will have to re-bake normals and finish textures but will start on the next hi-poly model.

Battery charger (hi-poly)

click

Finished the hi-poly model of the battery charger. Next step is to model out a low-poly mesh, bake and then texture.

Assignment 3

Talked to a few people on what would be best for a portfolio and decided on hard surface modeling of assets/props/items instead of making an environment.

Workflow

1. Research - look for multiple images of prop to be modeled
    (1 day of research within the 1st week)

2. Highpoly model of prop.
    (the rest of the days left in the 1st week)

3. Lowpoly model of prop to bake normals onto. Unwrap and textured.
    (2nd week)

A total of 2 weeks per prop.

List of assets to model.

1. Energizer battery charger.
2. A portable generator
3. Firearm of some kind
4. Dentist Chair
5. Radio/Jukebox/golf cart
6. Canon A-1 camera body and lens

For the prop I will be modeling an Energizer battery charger. I'd like to start off with a simpler model just to get into this workflow of baking normals onto a lowpoly. 

I started modeling this just the other day so not much progress yet but will keep to the schedule from now on.