Reference Images
What I really like about this image is that the table legs appear curved like a H shape, and are actually strong enough to hold the weight of the table and its contents. I think that’s really cool and hope to replicate that feature into my asset.
What I like about this table is how the wall in the poker stash area is curved and not straight, it brings a unique flavour into this design. Although I would favour the straightened wall, I would definitely take notes on how this wall looks.
I quite like the little ball stands surrounding the roulette wheel from this angle, I think it adds a really nice touch to the design of this table. I could go for this support feature into my finished design.
What I enjoy about this vector image is that is stays true to the original concept of displaying where each individual detail of the outcomes when the dice is rolled, given the circumstances. I hope to include this into the finished design of my asset.
Process
I began by making the structural supports of the Roulette Table. I’ve achieved this by extruding a cube polygon scaled into a rectangular shape and extruded many times, ensuring I move each extrusion slightly to the left towards the middle and back to its original position away from it to resemble something like this.
I duplicated the table leg and in the middle of each, I extruded two faces to connect to the other leg, making a H shape. I then used those polygons to be duplicated to make two other supports to hold the table upright.
I then created another polygon and scaled it to a wide rectangle for the table surface, placing it above the legs for it to hold. However, I had to make this roulette table more like what it should be, as I had to find a way on how I would go about doing this. My next task was to create a smooth edge that would act as a smooth side that will stretch from basically half of the roulette table. I created a cylindrical polygon and deleted a quarter of the shape to make it look like this.
I positioned it correctly so that it wouldn’t go out of place in a designed sense. I also beveled the table surface and scaled it so that parts wouldn’t be sticking out of the recently created edge polygon.
It should look something like this after mirroring the smooth edge and decreasing the size of the mirrored polygon.
Okay, that’s done, now it’s time for the wooden surface on where the wheel should be. I created a cylinder polygon and deleted 3/4, leaving just one curved outing. I used that polygon to stretch the far straight edges out to expand it, ensuring they were both the same size.
I basically mirrored the asset and dragged it to the left so it should look like what the image is below. I also merged the vertexes in the middle of the ledge so that it wouldn’t have any massive holes.
Now it was time to make the wall that would separate the wooden ledge from the roulette surface. I created another cylinder polygon and applied the same method and deleted the majority of the quarters and extruding the straight lines on either axis, making sure I duplicated the whole polygon and rotated it to allow it to head in the direction it came in. It should look something like this.
I had to so something about that gap between the two polygons in the corner, so I straightened the wall out and ensured I follow the curves edge for no gaps to appear. Once that was done, I was pretty satisfied with the result. I then had to select the vertex on the disconnected part of the polygon and try to rotate it so that the edge matches up with the other cylindrical ledge of the table. I also duplicated the surface and filled in the surface for the poker stash area.
The curved gap should now be looking like this. Pretty good result here. A quick scaling to its original size was all it needs now.
Now I have to figure out how to fill in the gaps that both roulette surfaces created. I attempted to drag the vertex and connect it with the edge, but some of the surface would be glitching its way past the wall, so that was not an option. In the end, I had to settle for filling in the gaps with new rectangle polygons from cubes so that the table size stayed consistent throughout in all axis.
Now it was time to make the roulette wheel for the gambling centerpiece of the asset. I started by creating another cylinder polygon and scaling it’s Y axis to make a solid disk shape. I selected the faces below the polygon and scaled them back to make a curving support to keep the piece in place. I then extruded the top half and created an offset to make a pit where I extruded and scaled to make sort of a bowl shape. I proceeded to create another offset on the polygon that will act as the areas where the balls would land to determine a result. Now it was the center I had to replicate. I made two offsets with the extrusion and ensured the latter would be higher than the last, but not too high as to stand out above the walls of the wheel. It should look something like this.
The metal structure was kind of moderate for me to pull off in a way that its shape is complex. Basically, all I had to do was extrude and create offsets many times to make the metallic structure of this centerpiece. I continued this until I got the best result that met my needs.
I had to finish off the structure with a ball placed on top. I created a circle polygon and placed it on top, aligning the ball with the structure perfectly. Lazy? I know. I should really do better with this.
Once all of that was said and done, it was time for me to texture the asset, making sure I exported is an FBX and back it up on Box as with my other assets.
Substance Painter
My priority was to bake the texture before I could do anything with it. I hopped in the Texture Set Settings and ensured I added the ambient occlusion into the channels I wished to bake. Once that was done, I searched for a fabric material and splashed it on to the roulette surface, colouring it dark green to resemble a surface you would typically find in a setting like a casino. As you can see, there were multiple polygons acting as the fabric of the table’s main surface, so I filled in the remaining polygons with the same textures. The surface should look like this.
I ensured the curved edges would get the different textures, as it’s supposed to be a bit rubbery than the fabric, so I splashed some rubber texture on and scaled its size to not be too subtle nor large. You can see the texture in the image below.
Next was the process of plastering the image down. I admit, there was trouble getting it to work, as I hadn’t done something like this before. I eventually had to go into Photoshop and increase the canvas size as it would just insert a 1:1 vector of the image and that wouldn’t be too great to play any roulette games on. I made sure that it was rotated right, turning off the jitter and making it the adequate size to place in the center of the table like what you see here.
Here is the image inside of the texture shelf along with the default ones.
Next up was the area around the roulette wheel. I wanted to make it as accurate to the reference images as possible, so I made two new fill layers and applied a black mask to both, filling in the red and green polygon faces in a pattern like so.
I applied a wooden texture to the areas around where the pattern was created, with the exception being the central metallic piece that had to have a steel or metal texture applied to it. I think this is a pretty good result from me, as I had struggled with Substance at the time.
I exported the textures and ensured that ambient occlusion was included with the rest of the output maps as the asset could look more smoother and realistic with the texture map plugged in.
Bringing Into Maya
I selected the whole asset and assigned an new shader, just like before. From here, I was met with the usual attributes for the type of shader, making sure I repeat the steps as with my other assets up to this point.. Here, you can see the BaseColour, Metalness and Roughness textures being plugged in with the former’s colour space being sRGB. I went ahead and plugged in the Normal map just like before and assigned the AO map in the hypershader by converting the BaseColour and AO maps into the asset’s Base Colour node.
A quick look through the IPR render shows how detailed the asset and its shadows are. There is one problem I had. Upon plugging in the ambient occlusion map into the model, the roulette image plastered onto the table and its’s green surface would turn dark and it would look really weird and abnormal, so I had to remove it for the image to display as it should, and for the asset to appear properly. Once the AO was removed, it was time for the lighting setup to begin.
Evaluation
As mentioned in the above image, the AO plugin was really the only issue I had while making the model. If there is one thing however that I could improve on, it’s making sure the UV shells are together in one piece, as the wooden table surface has two UV shells instead of one. From a glance towards the affected area, it starts to become noticeable. One other thing is how I filled in the gaps on the main surface. I admittedly used multiple polygons instead of one and could have done something alot better by just using edge loops and verts to straighten the gaps instead of overlaying the polygons. I think that I could do better in those areas, but other than that, it’s really one of the better assets that I have created.
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