Final Battle Arena in Unity

So when I put the statue into the existing battle arena in Unity. It looked good but the old arena still needed updating. In the process of doing this I had to update Unity. For some reason when I opened the project again all of the materials had broken and were not fixable. So I had to make a new project. I do not regret this choice as it meant I could start off with the new arena model straight away. I applied all the textures and animated the camera. This time I added in more lights and some alarm lights. I decided to make the ground have blended materials but there was no way to do this in unity without buying a software. I scoured the internet for a solution and found one. I downloaded a vertex painter with blend shaders and got a texture for the ground that I liked. However, for this blended material to appear in the build I have to place a duplicate of the ground object into the scene and not do anything else before building. If I change something after placing in the object, the material does not work. I have used emmisive maps on the crystals to make them glow for extra effect. Lastly, I added in a few sound effects and some music that I have used in a previous project. I also animated a few of the alien ships in the scene to add to the story a little bit and make the arena less static. I am really happy with the way the camera moves through the scene and I like how some of the story is shown throughout the arena.

There is a particle effect that I am really happy with for figuring out myself. On one of the spaceship engines I have made a particle effect for heat distortion. It has been made using the glass material shader and a normal map I made from some random generated clouds in Photoshop. I wanted to mention it because I am very happy with the effect.

Finally, I thought I'd show the final statue in Unity. I have used such a bright light coming in from the left because it shows the detail of the normal map really well and makes the scene more dramatic. I am pleased with the way it turned out.

3D Statue Textures

The texture for the statue was made with several rock textures, some rock crack alphas, colour layers, overlay layers, an ambient occlusion map, and a UV snapshot. I made the rock crack alphas from images of ZBrush brushes. I used a mix of colour layers and overlays to make the green glowing areas. Here is the first texture.

Only the eyes are glowing in this initial texture. I decided to change the colour of the rock because all the other alien structures in the battle arena are purple. I chose a green colour for the glowing because I want the mineral that is being mined to be that colour. I also made an emissive map of the glowing areas which I will put below. I also will put the normal map below. This is generated from everything except for the ambient occlusion map and colour layers. Here is the next version of the texture.

The texture of the staff was a bit more basic. I used the same rock textures and the same colour but I did not use an ambient occlusion map as it didn't have much effect. The normal map is made in the same way as the body's. Here it is.

3D Statue Model Progression

So I used the model sheets to make the parts separately. Every single one was made in half and then I mirrored them to get the other half. I did modify the head from its initial model because it did not fit onto the body well. I looked closely at the initial concept art to modify it but I also used the aesthetic I had established on the body model to make it fit better. This is the final model for the statue with all the components attached.

I had also started to rig it at this point and as you can see I also made a staff. This is not the final version of the staff. I made the staff based on the repetitive pattern I had established on the body. I will make a separate post to discuss the texture more but the next step was to make the texture. Here is the test with the initial texture.

This is an early version of the texture without the final colouring and details. I had planned to add soem glowing lines through the armour to hint at a hidden energy or mineral inside the statue's rock. Here is the next, and final, version of the texture.

Here I have added some glowing lines amongst the armour and made some of the purple rock glow a green colour. I have made this an emissive texture although I have not applied it in Maya. The next step was skinning and posing. Skinning this model was a challenge but I set it up so that I was happy. I realised during this step that I have not rigged the legs in the best way. The hip joints are slightly too low but I had to make it work otherwise I would have to redo the skinning. Anyway I experimented for some time until I found a pose that I liked. Here it is with the staff's final model.

I did not pose it with the purple texture as I found it slightly distracting. Overall I am happy with this pose but there are a few problems with the model. I should have added a few more edge loops under the arm as the texture has stretched slightly. I will attempt to position it in the arena, in Unity, without drawing too much attention to this area. Anyway, here is the final pose with everything textured.

3D Statue Model Sheets

As part of the statue project we have to create model sheets for our statue. I started with the head as this is one of the main focuses of this project. As my statue is an alien figure I did not want it to have a human head. So I looked at the praying mantis and alien concept art made by others. Following the reference of my concept art I created this model sheet.

Front:

Side:

I then moved onto the body without focusing on the head hands or feet as they are parts that need their own model sheets.

Front:

Side:

Next I moved on the hands.

Lastly I did the feet.

3D Statue Concept

For 3D Art Production this term we have to create a statue for our battle arena. Seeing as my arena takes place in an ancient alien site I felt that a statue of one of the aliens would be fitting. I had a general idea of what one of the aliens would look like but I still needed some reference. Here is the concept I came up with surrounded by some reference images.

I then took this slightly further so that I'd have a little more to go on when creating a model sheet to model the statue from. I focused mostly on the head design before starting on the main bulk of the body.

I am pleased with what I came up with.