Water VFX: Week 3 Wednesday

On Wednesday I unwrapped the lowpoly and exported both versions into marmoset as .OBJs to bake.
I made sure that the unwrap was packed tightly by using Pack Normalise and then further optimizing the used space by hand. This also helped to ensure that each item had a consistent texel density. I made 3 maps, one for the pump, one for the bucket and one for the water. I also used flatten mapping to create a light map:

(islands temporarily moved to show multiple unwraps at the same time)

I chose marmoset instead of substance painter for this as marmoset has the option to paint edits onto the cage in the viewport and to live update the maps at any point in photoshop. It's also easier to seperate bakes so that they don't print onto unwanted sections:

I placed the normal map onto the base colour in the material editor so that I could check that the copied planks weren't obviously repeating (two of the same planks next to eachother), then I started making the hole for the small bucket. I added some swiftloops, cuts and insets until I could delete planes in the shape of the hole that the water would go through while being careful not to distort the bake.