Hi everyone! So.. let me just start by saying that I'm not exactly new here or to the industry, buuuut this is gonna be my first time posting.

I'm currently working as an environment artist at Visceral games, where I mostly handle full environments, and the nature of my work is primarily low-mid poly with a lot of tiling textures.

These days, I don't get to do much sculpting, hard surface hp, or texture painting on the job, so my intention is to use this thread as a record of my ongoing efforts to learn and improve in the areas which I feel are being a little neglected at work.

*Oh, and comments and crits are most indeed welcome!

So, I'm just starting up a little hp/ sculpt project of a Gothic church entry way. My reference is mostly from Kylemore Abbey.

So far I've got the block model roughed in, one tiling texture/ alpha brush sculpt for the stone masonry, and I'm beginning to hp the door tonight.

i like that brick pattern did you hand-sculpt that

Yep. I modeled the brick pattern on grid in Maya to make sure it tiled, then worked them up by hand in Zbrush. Then once the sculpt was finished, I grabbed it as an alpha brush, tiled it in Photoshop, and then painted it back onto a subdivided plane in Zbrush.

interesting workflow, i normally render to texture that onto a plane

Yes, that's what I would do too if I was planning to use it as a texture, but I only want it as a tiling alpha brush for detailing my sculpt later on.

Small update. Finished hp for the wood portion of the door. Gonna work on the metal ornamentation next, and then do a zbrush damage/ detailing pass.

Small update: Added metal hinges and knocker and wood grain pattern to door. Moving on to stone doorframe next. Will come back for a wear and tear pass later.

I figure for the wood detail you used a rake brush but how did you do the hinge parts that are on the door? Did you model those out in Maya then detail in Zbrush or did you just use an alpha on the door?

The wood detail was created using 'noise maker' in Zbrush.
I modeled the hinges and knocker in maya, used Dynamesh to distribute the polys more evenly in Zbrush, and then sculpted the remaining details on top.

Building out the area around the door. Relief work, and stone/ cracks pass next.

Looking good!

Haven't had much time to work on it over the last few days, but I got a chance to mess with some Dynamesh and shadowbox fun.

Anyway, here's a small update on the stonework. I think I'll move onto the columns next, and then fill out the rest of the structure before I finally do a wear and tear pass on the whole thing.

looking nice!

Thanks!

OMG!

Finished the columns, and building out the major parts of the rest of the structure. Have to add the side windows, and the smaller roof details flanking the door before I can get down to the finer details.

Small update. Haven't had much time to work on it, but it's slowly getting there.

i'm liking this, how you gonna retopo?

This is coming along beautifully!
I can't wait to see it finished.

Thx! I don't think I'll go and take this all the way to an in game model and texture. I get a lot of practice at that on the job, so I prefer to focus solely on HP in my own time. If I were though, I'd kick out my subtools as reference and then build the low poly mesh using my intial blockout as a starting point.

Ok, so it's been a long long time... I kinda had a baby and finished making a game though, so I still call that a win. In any case, here's a quick update on a gothic window, and I'll probably go back and finish up that doorway now that I'm back at it again.