PRODUCTION LOG 04

MED BAY AREA ASSETS

In this post, I will showcase the production process for the planned assets, and will focus on the steps and considerations involved in bringing the Med Bay area to life. The Med Bay is an important area in the bunker, serving as the primary location for medical care. This area will include several components, such as treating and diagnosis rooms, and various medical equipment and furnishing. The goal is to create a space that feels functional and true to the game's post-apocalyptic setting. 

Similar to the Hydroponics area, I will be creating a variety of assets, this time specific to a medical environment. Some assets will be used in multiple instances, so the aim is to create different versions of some of them, in order to avoid noticeable duplications. 

Patient Bed

For this asset I wanted to model a patient bed that had an authentic look, not just an improvised hospital bed, so I looked for more references online and found this model, created by Frederic Fouque, which was the most appealing to me.  Then, I started modelling the bed in Maya, using the reference image, and making slight changes, just to add my personal touch. The finished model has a total polycount of 11858. 

For UV maps and layouts, I used RizomUV, as Maya really messed up the UV shells when I tried to pack them. I used Maya to manually mark the seams, exported the model as fbx file, then imported the model with UVs in Rizom where I packed then in a nice and optimal map, as seen below.  

Patient Bed - Model (Maya) and UVs (RizomUV)

Patient Bed - Substance Painter (Top left - inspiration, Bottom left - final model)

Bedside Cabinet

The bedside cabinet was modelled similar to the workbench model. Because I used the same workbench model in both, Hydroponics and Med Bay areas, I wanted a consistent look, the only difference being the base colour. The total polycount for this model is 1848. UV map was done in Maya, as no issues were encountered. 

Bedside Cabinet - Model and UVs (Maya)

Bedside Cabinet - Substance Painter

Desk

As I mentioned above, this model is basically the same with the workbench made for the Hydroponics area. The only difference is the colour, as I wanted it to match the colour palette of the Med Bay scene.

Desk - Model and UVs (Maya)

Desk - Substance Painter

Medicine Trolley

The medicine trolley was inspired by a real-world one that I found while I was browsing for medical furniture references. I modelled it in Maya and I managed to keep its total polycount to 7345 even though it looks like a more complex model. When I worked on the UV maps, I encountered the same issue as I did with the patient bed, but RizomUV did a good job to pack all the shells into one layout. 

Medicine Trolley - Model (Maya) and UVs (RizomUV)

Medicine Trolley - Substance Painter (Top left - inspiration, Bottom left - final model)

Curtains

To create a curtain mesh was a little more difficult than I initially thought, as I was not very familiar with the process behind cloth simulation. I also watched a few tutorials to help me in the process. 

I started with a simple plane in Maya, to represent the curtain fabric. Added 100x100 subdivisions to ensure sufficient geometry for realistic simulation. Then, I applied nCloth simulation to the plane. In order to simulate the folds, I needed an additional object attached to the plane, so I added a cylinder, long enough to cover the whole width edge of the plane. The cylinder acts as a rigid body attached to the plane and simulates the hanging. Finally, I ran the simulation, adjusting parameters such as stiffness, damping, and gravity, to achieve a natural-looking folds. 

Curtain - Final Model and UVs (Maya)

As I was happy with the result, I paused the simulation at a point where I wanted the curtain to look like, then duplicated the plane with the simulated folds. I selected all the plane's faces and extruded them to add some depth and then refined the model to ensure smooth transitions and avoid sharp edges. The next step was to create UV map, which was done using a planar projection, and overlapped both faces to save space and get a higher texel density (number of texture pixels per unit of 3D surface area). Then, I exported it to Alembic Cache in order to import it correctly in Unreal Engine and maintain its shape, otherwise (if exported as fbx file) Unreal would import it as a standard plane, without the folds. 

The curtains will receive tileable material in the level editor.