Creating a Low Poly Treasure Chest (Viking Edition)

The final product, coming in at 404 polys. The limit for the project was 500 polys.

The second project assigned was to create a low-poly treasure chest/loot box using the same methods that were utilized with the well.

The first step was to create the low poly model. I wanted to make something themed after Norse culture, so I started off by creating the bow of a longship and going from there. I thought it might serve as decoration for the main object, which is the chest itself.

the main body, which looks like a sad pelican now that I think about it

For handles, I was originally going to go for simple, geometric bars, but then I remembered that longships usually had dragons decorating their bows, so I set out to make that the bars/decorations.

The first pass for the dragon looked like that one snake in Grimm Adventures of Billy and Mandy:

while Norse longships had something like this:

So, after a little thought and tweaking I ended up with this:

I'd add in a tongue, but I want to keep it all low-poly

This is the final low poly model:

Now comes the fun part, which is the creation of the high-poly models. Unlike the well, I actually split the whole model in half. I figured that reconnecting the finished bits through the symmetry options would make things a whole lot easier. In the end, I was right.

I started with the more detailed part of the chest, which was the dragon:

my first attempt, which was just plain ugly

my second attempt, which was much, much better

My second step was getting the front of the "Ship" textured:

I tried making a norse pattern through the sculpting tool.

The top was just an elevated plain. The sides I used deformed cubes to recreate the boards.

Then came the chest:

the top slab was divided in half to create a symmetrical pattern

the chest was much simpler

My high poly modeling was not very organized...

so my laptop wouldn't explode, these were the only high poly models I made for the baking

...but it worked!

UV mapping was a hassle, but I eventually got it right.

In another file I created a pattern for the chest (similar to the rope for the well) that I edited into the bump map on a program called Paint.NET

With that out of the way came the baking:

as well as the texture maps, which I made in Paint. NET:

diffuse map

Spec map

I was going to use an ambient occlusion map, but for whatever reason the shading for that map refuses to work whenever I render it. The whole model "glows" even when there is no light shining on it. It might be because my version of Maya rendered it very brightly:

too bright

So I just used the map as a multiplier for my diffuse map.


In the end, this is the model I ended up with:

And here are the statistics:

Modeling Out a Low-Poly Well

For my first project in 3d Modeling II, I decided to follow along to a tutorial on how to model and texture a well. This was so I could practice making buildings, as that aligns with my interests.

Over time, I realized that to make a well, I also need to sacrifice small bits and pieces of my soul.

So here is how I designed the Bottomless Well of Torment.

I started like any other model: with simple geometry. There was a cylinder for the well itself, which was hollowed out in the middle. Cylinders were also used for the trees that held up the roof, which, in order to achieve their organic shape, were divided with edge loops, followed by me moving the vertices to form simple roots and broken branches. The roof was designed as a simple, deformed cube.

The ground itself started out as a NURB curve, which was then filled and extruded.

In the end of the initial modeling, I had this:

That was the easy part.

In order to create texture, I needed to create bump maps. To do so, the Well demanded its first sacrifice through the creation of a high poly counterpart to its low-poly form.

This was done through copying and subdividing the original models.

For the well and the ground that surrounded it, I extruded each face unconnected, creating "bricks" that covered the surfaces. From there was a long process of deforming every brick individually through their vertices. Then I subdivided and used the sculpting tool to create more texture.

Note the black spots. I moved the project over to my laptop, which only has Maya 2016. I assume this is a result of transferring the file to a previous version.

All those subdivisions

Since this high-poly model was just going to be used for the bump mapping, I didn't worry too much about mistakes or errors in the geometry. Any mistake can be fixed in photoshop once the map is exported.

The trees were simpler to do. I just had to subdivide them and use the sculpting tool.

After the sculpting was done, I had this:

Each brick was individually sculpted as a separate object

After the trees and well were done came another sacrifice. The Well demanded a roof, one that could be made through multiple convoluted means.

The tutorial videos went through three before settling on one. I, helpless, followed them all.

The first attempt had a system similar to the well take place: where each face was individually extruded and sculpted. This was unsatisfactory.

The second attempt was similar, except that  each face was moved and "folded" on top of one another. This process was the most painful to do, but did create a slightly better texture, though it was very ugly when viewed from the side.

the sides: note the ugliness

The third and final method was to simply model out each tile with a cube. It was successful. The tiles that connected both sides of the roof were bent with a deformer.

After the roof, the trees, and the well was fully textured, a quick bucket (cylinder) and rope (spiral that was extruded) were made. Supports under the roof were also made that were deformed into triangles.

UV maps were then put together.

organizing this mess took time

Which ended with a texture low-poly model ready to be baked!

It's good to ensure that the numbers are about the same size for every model.

the final UV layout for the low-poly model

Then came baking. This was a lengthy process of selecting the low and high poly models simultaneously and then waiting for them to bake.

This took a while (about an hour or so).

After that was finished, a bump map was created!

the bump map for the roof

Which I combined into one file:

the final product at the end

With some phot manipulation magic, I made the dffuse map from the UV layout, bump map, and the various textures provided to me by the tutorial (as well as a few, like the moss, from google)

the final texture map

so many layers (almost 40 in total). I used a program called Paint.NET to create the texture file. It's like a free photoshop lite

Though I would have made an ambient map, my version of Maya did not have that option. Neither did the one in the lab, apparently.....

The Well (and tutorial) demanded a highly detailed rope for whatever reason as well. I'm not sure why, and when I attempted it my system crashed

I named this file "Death.jpg" because that's what it meant for my laptop when I tried to render and bake it.

So I was forced to use the one that the tutorial provided, and after a little editing, got this:

it's not even that big of a detail. Why use a bump map?

Overall, this is how the well turned out:

And here are some quick renders of the well using Maya software