Digital Tutors - Creating Game-Ready Chains, Ropes, and Vines in Maya and UDK

Duration 3h 45m

Difficulty Level Advanced

Project Files Included

Software used

UDK (2012-10), Photoshop CS5, Maya 2012, Ndo2, xNormal, ZBrush 4R4

What you will learn

Many modern games focus on environments that include chains, ropes, and vines. These assets can help to create

unique and believable player worlds.

In this UDK tutorial we will focus on multiple methods of constructing these assets and various software

workflows to make the most of texture usage, polygon counts, and artist production time.

Guest Tutor

Clinton Crumpler

1. Introduction and project overview 01:01

2. Modeling the high poly chain 11:13

3. Modeling the low poly chain 07:54

4. UVing the low poly chain 03:22

5. Baking chain normal map using xNormal 05:57

6. Baking chain normal map using Maya 05:32

7. Baking normals onto a plane 08:28

8. Importing meshes into UDK 03:00

9. Creating chain normal map using Photoshop 10:20

10. Creating chain normal map using nDo2 03:41

11. Creating whole chains on a poly plane 05:04

12. Chain preparations in UDK 05:36

13. Creating diffuse, rust, chrome, and cloud maps 10:34

14. Chain diffuse material setup in UDK 08:31

15. Chain specular material setup in UDK 04:33

16. Chain rusted version material setup in UDK 10:41

17. Chain creation recap 01:37

18. Modeling ropes 08:13

19. Generating rope maps using 3D models 01:29

20. Generating more rope maps 01:54

21. Creating gradients and patterns 06:01

22. Creating rope normal maps using only Photoshop 06:27

23. Creating the rope diffuse map 05:34

24. Adding detail to the rope diffuse map 04:52

25. Adding detail to the rope normal maps 07:38

26. Creating a low poly rope mesh 06:52

27. Setting up the basic rope material 08:00

28. Adding bump offset to the rope material 06:59

29. Adding displacement to the rope material 10:18

30. Creating advanced ropes with deformers and curves 09:57

31. Creating the low poly advanced rope shapes in ZBrush 13:21

32. Finishing the creation of the advanced rope asset 02:42

33. UDK Spline actors 05:37

34. Creating vines 07:58

35. Finalizing the vines asset 04:57