It’s that time of the week again, folks. Think of it like an end-of-school test… you’ve been looking through the forums for all the best stuff during the week, and now you can tally up your results with our round-up.

Let’s recapitulate like it’s going out of fashion!

 

Keep On Workin’

In the thread that never dies, there’s been a huge amount of impressive stuff stacked high on the pile of awesome that is WAYWO!

Prophecies has put together a pretty stunning environment in UDK. [Edit] He also has his own thread showing the progression of this environment, it’s well worth a look! You can find the full thread right here.

Not long before that, Firebert had baked himself some pretty nice arms, you know, as you do.

And that’s not all! PogoP has managed to put together pretty much the best wooden box prop I’ve seen around these parts. I’m not usually a big fan of wooden boxes, but damn that is a pretty wooden box.

There’s plenty more cool stuff in that thread, but if I posted it all here then there’d be no reason for you to go and dig through the thread yourself. Go and do that now.

 

Dyson Goes Steampunk?

JonathanF has a pretty interesting thing going on with his “Vintage vacuum cleaner” thread. He’s found some interesting reference photos of a crazy old Kirby vacuum cleaner, and has done up a pretty nice high-poly and low-poly asset.

It’s certainly refreshing to see a prop asset like this instead of the boring old concrete blocks and oil barrels!

 

 

Blend It Like Blender!

If you’re a fan of open-source, then you probably already love Blender, and you probably already know that the 2.53 beta was released recently with lots of nice updates.

You also might like checking out Dim’s “Paddle Frigate” thread over in Pimping & Previews, where he has been rocking the house with some amazingly detailed high-poly models, renders and, more recently, low-poly textured goodness of a historic steam paddle frigate.

Here’s his render of the engine section, the large-scale shapes are fairly unique, and the fine detailing is accurate without becoming overly busy or noisy.

He’s documented the whole project very well, from the initial planning through all stages of asset creation, and it’s fairly impressive to see the whole project pulled together. Not a lot of people can manage that level of dedication, and it’s well worth a look!

 

Tutorial Overload

PhilipK is a generous human. At least, we assume he’s human. It’s entirely possible that he’s actually a tutorial-making machine from the future, sent back in time to teach everyone how to do awesome environment art.

Check out his tutorials on how to produce pro-looking environment textures with the greatest of ease, they’re linked right here on Polycount!

Also, if you missed ‘em in previous posts, you might like to know that he’s got links to his other tutorials here on his personal website.

 

The Londoning

Finally, if anyone is hanging in or around the London (UK) area next month, there are rumblings of a Polycount meet-up. Usually, spicy chicken is involved.

There may also be talk of polygons and pixels, but seriously, it’s mainly chicken. Get the low-down and nail down a date in danshewan’s sensational organizational thread here.

 

Relevant links

• Polycount’s “What Are You Working On 2010″ thread
• Prophecies’ “Ransacked castle environment” thread
• JonathanF’s “Vintage vacuum cleaner” thread
• Dim’s Paddle “Frigate thread” thread
• PhilipK’s “Step-By-Step Material Tutorials” thread
• “London Meet-up 2: The Londoning” thread