SKYRIM PROPS
When it came time to learn Zbrush, I wanted to do it in a way that took me through an actual production pipeline resulting in useable game assets. I set about making some weapon and shield mods for Skyrim, forcing myself to do all the core modeling in Zbrush alone. Maya only got tapped for retopology and UV’s. This was before Substance was a thing (and game PBR, for that matter), so bakes were done in good old XNormal. Texturing used baked data along with more traditional compositing methods in Photoshop. I got them in the game and working (replete with crafting recipes) and they’re actually still pretty popular on sites like Nexus Mods.
DOTA 2 ARMOR
I later took a spin at making some character armor for DOTA, using a samurai theme. It took me out of my comfort zone, and I learned a lot about weighting assets in a character system. This one never really took off (in retrospect I should’ve done more market research), though I was pretty satisfied with the result.
