Garden update!

I've been building mountains! It took a suprisingly long time, and I'm sure there must be some shortcuts to doing this kind of thing that I missed. The garden suddenly looks a lot more complete now, though: it's nice to not have a gaping void where the garden's exit should be!

The start of a puzzle....

Beginning to assemble my garden assets into something vaguely resembling a scene! I have to say, it's immediately exciting to see these assets come together, even though I think all of them need a little more work at the moment!

I've finished building my fence! I can't say I'm done texturing it yet though, as I'm not yet convinced about the wood texture. I've designed this to be modular pieces: each part joins neatly onto the next to create a more complex fence system. The idea is to be able to create instances of these rather than copies, in order to reduce memory time. I have to say though, I'm quite happy with the Zbrush sculpt. I was unsure about Zbrush at first, but as time goes on, I'm beginning to like it more than I like Mudbox!

Arches!

My arches have been modelled and textured! The smaller one (at the back) is going to be cloned dozens of times to make a tunnel. I'm looking forward to setting this up and seeing how it looks! These tunnels were one of the most striking sights I saw in Japan when I vistited, so I'm excited to how my own version will come together.

These arches are usually highly varnished, so there's quite a light spec map on here combined with a high gloss setting. I've finally settled on this version but it might be subject to change if the design of the overall level ends up needing a "softer" feel. This is also a clean version - I considered dirtying these textures up (scratching some of the paint off the wood at points, muddying and weathering the posts going into the ground etc.) but I think I'm going to leave it for the moment until I see the level of realism other members of my team are going for with their work. These existing textures can always be dirtied up later :)