We have this inside joke in our friends' group, one of many, about the street sign that resembles my nickname, and it has become our chat group picture. Throughout the years, I've always made some variations of it, mainly once every season to commemorate occasions, like the World Cup or something similar, to spice things up. So lately, I've been really into stylized game art, and I took that opportunity to create something for the group chat.
I wanted to create something relatively simple and quick to continue experimenting with Marmoset Toolbag before the trial ended. Its baking tool is really good, and I wanted to give it more testing.
After a quick block out, I began dynameshing all the parts and started sculpting the wood detailing. I employed some new techniques and combined them with ones I already knew. What intrigued me the most was crafting the bits that protrude from the wood, creating a deeper, layered appearance rather than a simple box shape. Overall, I focused on making the wood stand out from different areas.
For the retopology stage, I aimed to make it as low-resolution as possible. This was somewhat challenging; for instance, I attempted to handcraft all the parts protruding from the wood, which became quite tedious at times. Therefore, I combined some parts of the mesh from the decimation process with some manually retopologized sections. I believe it turned out decently in the end.
The next steps are less complex this time and more straightforward. In short, the baking stage was really fun in Marmoset, exporting the maps as PSD made it easy to fix baking errors in Photoshop. I also decided to add some foliage that grew on the floor, so I quickly made some leaves and flowers.
The texturing part was relatively simple since it's a stylized asset, so I didn't go overboard with detail. In summary, I made a lot of use of the bake maps to paint edges and used ambient occlusion to target mossy areas, etc.
this project allowed me to explore various techniques and tools, from sculpting and retopology to texturing and baking. Despite some challenges along the way, it was an enjoyable journey of creativity and learning. I'm pleased with the outcome and look forward to applying what I've learned to future projects.
