Status update from my previous blog entry, the M44 is now fully baked! But just that, no texture yet so far, only normal and AO. Here's the progress and also shows the first time a fully exploded view of the rifle.
As mentioned before, it's not your typical lowpoly current-gen model, the tris count wasn't *that* optimized for a game model, it's at 78.448 tris including 5 bullets, with 2 sheets of a 4k texture. My focus more to quality instead of in-game performance.
While doing this, though, I found it's abit time consuming to set up a parent-child connection from one object to another and match them high-to-low after. The connection was meant for easier posing the rifle later on and also to make sure my high and low both on the exact same location for bake process. And because of that, I wrote a simple MAXscript to help me setup the scene (match parent-child connection and also position between high and low mesh). This might not be any useful for everyone but if anyone want it, here it is:
(
allObj = $*
pairs = #()
-- collect objs
for objLow in allObj where (matchPattern objLow.name pattern:"*_low") do
(
objHigh = getNodeByName (substituteString (objLow.name) "_low" "_high")\
exact:true ignoreCase:false all:false
objHighParent = objHigh.parent
objLowParent =
try
(
getNodeByName (substituteString (objHighParent.name) "_high" "_low")\
exact:true ignoreCase:false all:false
)
catch(undefined)
pair = #(objHigh, objLow, objLowParent)
append pairs pair
)
for id = 1 to pairs.count do
(
pairs[id][2].transform = pairs[id][1].transform -- match transform
pairs[id][2].parent = pairs[id][3] -- match hierarchy
)
)Pretty simple, but wanted to make this blog post to look more smart then it actually is, so there you go. For anyone trying out the MAXscript just make sure you have set your naming conventions properly as how Painter would see it, nameOfAsset_high will match with nameOfAsset_low, highpoly mesh will be the source for location and hierarchy match-up for your lowpoly mesh. That's it!
The next update for this rifle here probably will be the final one with presentation shots and all on the Portfolio section. Thinking to create a thread over at Polycount to show my smaller progress throughout the texturing phase. Will post the link here if I decided to go with that.
EDIT // Here's the link to the >>> Polycount discussion <<< hope to see you there!
Till next time!
