The introduction to this post is to document the reference images I have used for the cylinder light asset, the process in which I modelled and textured the asset, and the evaluation of what my thoughts are and what could be improved for next time.
Reference Images
My mind is allowing me to like the support mount that hangs the asset from the wall. It’s square-curved shape wants me to have a go at attempting to recreate it, even if my version looks nothing like what is shown here.
I favour the texture more on this one, it makes the asset look smooth on the outside, and the light source is also fancy. I guess I could replicate the texture shown in this image.
This image is a little different to the others in that it’s a grey cylinder light, but I like how the change of colour also meant for the light, as it’s a distinct shade of white that is easily noticed at first glance.
Process
I started with a basic cylinder and scaled the polygon to make its interior edges. I then deleted all of the faces inside of the polygon.
There are two ways to make sure it’s scaled in the Y axis. I used the mirror method instead of the vertex method to make sure I get the right height.
Now it was time for the support mount. I used a cube polygon and stretched it out to make a rectangle and extruded the center using edge loops and keyboard shortcuts.
However, I didn’t think the first stand supported the light asset correctly and thus had to redo the wall mount using a separate polygon. This was bound to work.
Here is what is looks like now. I think it’s time to export it as an FBX and bring it into Substance for texturing.
Substance Painter
Before I had any chance to texture the asset, I scanned over to the Main shader and made sure there was only one material installed to make texturing the asset easier than with two materials.
I searched for a plastic texture that would act as the smoothness for the cylinder light, opting for a Plastic Grainy material and ensured I’d set the five shown attributes for me to tweak how it should look. As you can see, it looks fine after I baked the model and added the ambient occlusion map in.
I had to add a new layer and a steel-like texture to the wall mount to give the asset some identity and difference. After that, I went ahead and exported the textures, making sure I plug in the ambient occlusion in the output maps, like so.
Bringing It Into Maya
The same instructions apply when I come to plugging textures in. I assigned an AiStandardSurface shader to the asset and plugged the texture files in for the BaseColour, Metalness, Roughness and Normal maps, making sure to select the latter three’s color space to Raw, as with the other assets. I added the normal map in the usual way by going down to Geometry and bump mapping the asset.
It was time for me to go into hypershade and plug in the ambient occlusion I made earlier. This will include the shadows in the asset and make it stand out in a way. All I had to do was drag the AO texture map into the shader and convert BaseColour into the multiplier.
Now that’s out of the way, it’s time to put a light into the asset to make it shine. I set up an Arnold area light and positioned it just right into the bottom of the asset to give it a source of information. Now it’s time to do some lighting techniques with it.
Evaluation
My final verdict on what I think of the asset is how well it captures the shape of the reference images I have undertaken to support me. That doesn’t mean to say it is perfect, as I look back on it, the wall support that hangs the asset is a little too much in height as it is in width. Another problem is how the texture is kind of hard to see after plugging in the ambient occlusion map in. I think for the next time, I should try to make textures like these more noticeable for them to be seen in Maya.
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