The purpose of this post is to detail the references images used to support how I was going to model the bar table, the process of actually making it, and the evaluation, where I reflect upon what I’ve created and use points for me to improve if I had the chance to do it again.
Reference Images
What I favor about this image is how the textures blend in with the maroon colour and how there are some darker areas if you look close enough. I plan to keep those in mind when I make my own bar table.
Another simplistic designed casino bar table, I really like the color of the asset, engaging with the table’s codes and conventions. I also like how it blends in with multiple shadings of brown. This is something to take on board when I get to making the asset.
I enjoy the simplistic design of the longer widths of the table, having one rectangle extruded outward and using old fashioned edges to separate it from the rest of the face. I could definitely go for that design choice.
Process
I began to make my bar table and plan to make it as simple as possible, starting with a cube polygon stretched into a rectangle.
From here, I was able to use the extrude and edge loop tools to capture the same appearance of the bar table as was within the images I used. Starting with the bottom edges of the design, I achieved this by scaling the extruded faces inwards, and performing another extrusion to move up a bit before creating a central face using the edge loops and extruding only that face to create the table wall. From there, I made another extrusion and scaled to model something of a flat table surface.
I wanted to make the table fancy after extruding to make a flat tabletop surface, so I picked up points with the edge loop, making sure the distance between the lines and the edge of the table stay symmetrical as possible. This was done with creating new edges in around the two walls to make a rectangular face in the center. Now it’s all ready to be textured in Substance Painter.
Substance Painter
The whole asset is just one shape, so there really was no need to get all in depth with this one compared to the other assets, but the main thing for me to start off is including the AO in the channels as previously mentioned and baking the asset. I started by dragging a wood material onto the table and changing its scale so that it was subtle and doesn’t stand out too much. I then added a paint layer and top and created mould all around the asset to give it a story. That story is the spillage of beverages seeping into the design after people became a little too drunk and rowdy. I wanted to replicate a mouldy and dusty looking surface top too, as shown below.
The dust layer is faint, but you see where I painted over the asset. It’s enough to be subtle and resemble an old looking bar table in terms of texturing. Now I had to export the textures in the same way as my last asset, by adding an AO shader to the export settings, and I’m all set to bring these into Maya.
Bringing into Maya
The same rules apply to how I go about plugging these textures into the asset. I assigned an AiStandardSurface shader to the asset and headed straight to the BaseColour to plug in the texture of the same name. I then did the same for the Metalness, Roughness and finally the Normal maps, which fell under Geometry and had to select Tangent Space Normals in the drop down. Next was the AO, so I went into the hypershader and made sure I plug the texture in right, which was pretty simple. Here’s what it looks like after the textures have been plugged in.
Here is the image for the bump mapping normal map plug-in.
A quick check through the IPR render shows the lighting complimenting the texture’s noticeable detail. Now it’s time for the lighting to begin.
Evaluation
This was arguably the asset with the least amount of polygons, as I only had to work with one shape and model it into what it is now. My biggest gripe with this is how the textures have some noticeable white patches. I think a lesson here is that I haven’t properly scaled down the wood texture to make those patches subtle, so I’ll keep that in mind for next time.
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