The whole purpose of this post is to document the reference images I have used as part of the asset’s development, the process of modeling the asset in Maya and the evaluation of what went well and what could be done better with the asset .
Reference Images
From here, you can really see how the four support legs that hold the vending machine up are longer than an average size of that with the same asset. I could always keep that in mind for the design of my version.
I really like the vendor design here, such as the vendor pay area with its separate colours for the buttons displaying the numbers and other symbols. I could take some notes from this feature if I can.
I like how the collection area has a revolving flap that can bend as a hand reaches out to grab the item from within the vending machine. I also like how it has the ‘Push’ sign to display it can be possible to collect your item of choice. I could go for that detail in my own version.
Process
I basically got started by making a cylinder polygon, acting as the support legs for the vending machine asset that I was going to create, I selected the top faces and scaled it outwards to shape it more like a cup shape than anything else. Once that was done, I duplicated the polygon into four parts and placed them align with both the X and Y axis to make a perfect rectangle to stack on top.
My next task was to make the shape of the main vendor. I achieved this by scaling up a cube into a rectangle and creating edge loops on the two sides I’d wish to extrude. Selecting both faces, I extruded along to make another set of walls. Doing the same to the bottom half of the polygons allowed the asset to have a floor. I was able to cap it off with creating edge loop toward the bottom of all three sides to make the area where you collect the snacks and drinks.
My next plan of action is making the polygons that would hold the goods while inside of the vending machine. By this, I had to select the helix polygon and scaled the radius so that it wouldn’t be too wide nor slim. The image below is before I decided to scale the polygon to a reasonable size again for it to be perfect. I also made sure to cover the contents with a roof as it is sheltered within a glass pane. I would come to add those later.
I created another rectangle and created an edge loop to the front to make a small barrier that would merely act as a detail rather than anything else. What I needed to do afterwards was to make a wall that would separate the helix polygon from everything else. I may need to rescale this shelf later on, but this is what it should look like.
I duplicated the walls so that each individual helix shape would fit within, I would group the helix’s together or the shelf later. I applied a lambert material and painted it black to see what it would eventually look like.
Here’s what the shelf looks like after all of the helix’s were duplicated. I would consider painting the polygons a different colour to make it stand out.
Now it was time for me to put some nice detail into this, I moved the right side of the vendor’s interior face forward just for the addition of a vendor pay area that would determine which item the person is purchasing upon slotting a coin in. Speaking of coins, after the image below was taken, I went ahead and created a hole in the polygon and extruded in inwards for the coins to be eaten up. I created 12 small polygons and aligned them up with each other. These will act as the buttons the person must press. On top of that, there it’s also a blue rectangle displaying the price of the item and which shelf it’s on.
It should look something like this minus the coin slot. I will plan to duplicate the helix and the shelf after applying textures on. Other than that, the asset should be okay to texture. I ensured upon exporting the FBX, I saved it in the C: Drive as with any other assets and also backed it up on the Box network so I will know where to find it if I mess up.
Substance Painter
It’s wise to bake the asset before getting started, as I would be including the ambient occlusion map in the asset, so I went ahead and did just that as I began to think of what texture to use on the vendor box. I decided to apply a steel rough texture onto the box since it’s close to a realistic looking vending machine. I ensured to check the scaling and offset on the texture so it would appear more rough and subtle.
I also applied a plastic diamond texture to the helix and a plastic grainy texture to the shelf and its walls. Upon closer inspection though, I found some unwanted seams on the helix, and that was probably down to me not UV’ing the helix right, so I quickly had to go back a little and make sure to UV something like this so that it would appear with no seams. The image is what the helix looks before I UV’ed it again.
And here is the helix after I UV’ed it.
Next were the vendor display settings including the vendor buttons and the price screen. I created another fill layer and applied a black mask and paint layer to it, then proceeded into the alpha shelf and pulled out a font, typing in the correct symbol before plastering it on each individual button.
As a bonus and because I wanted this asset to have some nice detail, I included some arrows I had found in the alpha shelf and rotated them to point down towards the collection area of the vendor, ensuring the opacity is scaled down as to not make it stand out too much.
The asset should be good to export the textures and attach the ambient occlusion into the output maps, so I did exactly those steps in order for the asset to look nicer in the IPR render view.
Bringing Into Maya
As with all other assets, I proceeded to assign an AiStandardSurface shader to the vending machine and follow the steps required, plugging in the BaseColour, Metalness and Roughness files in. Only the BaseColour’s colour space had to be left as the default sRGB.
I proceeded to repeat the steps for the normal map too, making sure its colour space was set to Raw as well. Selecting Tangent Space Normals was also necessary.
Now it was time to plug in the ambient occlusion. I selected the hypershade and was onto the node screen in no time. I scanned the utility option and pulled out an AiMultiply box, making sure both the AO and BaseColour were converted into the multiplier before connecting it to the shader’s Base Colour.
Now it should look as though it was finished, but there’s still a little bit more work to do before I light up the asset. I had to create a glass pane , covering the entirety of the vendor display and another smaller glass pane in the collection booth. I ensured to select the polygon’s opacity to a comfortable level so that the helix polygons would be visible through the glass. Speaking of which, I also had to duplicate the single helix to fill the single shelf as previously mentioned, then I had to group all of them together and duplicate them to make five other shelves to fill out the remaining space inside of the vending machine. Okay, it should be good to start lighting the asset up now.
Evaluation
When I look back upon the asset’s development, I sometimes think about how it can be improved. Don’t get me wrong, it’s probably a step up from me compared to some of my other assets, but I could’ve done something like reduce the polygons on all of the helix’s because the overall polygon count exceeds that of a sensible quantity. I could also do a little more with the design of the asset, like a better collection area, maybe even involving a cylinder approach to how people get their snacks and drinks. That could be a possibility for next time.
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