TGIM...finally got some work done

So after a very restful weekend, I woke up and immediately started finishing up those few pieces left in the library. At first I thought I had finished quickly, but noticed that two particular pieces had Ngons *gasp!* So I had to take care of that before continuing.

Pohatu's UV map

I then proceeded to put Pohatu together and was pleased to find that everything worked out and successfully mapped him and put down a base texture, similar to what I did with Hafu. So far I'm really liking how these are coming out, even if the maps are incredibly busy, I can at least know around where everything is since they're grouped by piece. After the optimization of the library, Pohatu has been reduced from 17,000 to 14,140 polys. For a major part in the piece, I am very satisfied with how he came out.

Onewa will have to wait until Wednesday because tomorrow will be a rather busy day for me. Until then, I've rendered a few pictures of Pohatu with his base texture.

Pohatu Turnaround

After I get all of the actual figures completed in the project, I'll be putting the entire model into Zbrush, adding small blemishes and extra details so that they aren't so bland, and making much more refined maps (especially the specular). This project is rapidly progressing and I hope it continues that way. I'm expecting that Onewa will take only 2 days and Tahnok will take around 3-4 depending on how hard I work on this. Each mask takes roughly around 4 hours or so and I have 6 more to make.  

However, this project isn't only about the models. That is actually the least ambitious part about the project. What's going to boil down to be the hardest and most time consuming is making Po-Wahi/Po-Koro. I've been playing through MNOLG to get some inspiration and idea of how I want to portray the landscape. In the game, you are very limited to what you can see when in reality, Po-Wahi is quite large. In the episodes with the Toa Nuva, Po-Wahi was actually a vast desert. The entire area won't be explorable, but I need to portray the vastness of it as well as keep the important landmarks well defined, like the Quarry and the gates of Po-Koro. But, I'll get to that later.