Homework Submission - Week 1 - Porch Stairs
@theluthier , 
blanchsb
Hi Guys, here is my current progress on the Porch Stairs. In my mind they are large slabs of rock rather than cast concrete.
Wireframe :
LookDev :
Reference Pic :
Had a few issues with building them solely from the reference pic, so I created a rough blockout from the blueprint images. It's currently constucted to a "Best Fit". Doesn't quite match the blueprints or the ref. pic. Hopefully I'll be able to be more accurate in week 2.
Blockout : 
Any feeback or advice is welcome. Thanks
ttat That is looking great for a block-out.
Proper size and location will be defined this week.
Homework Submission - Week 2 - Porch Stairs
Scupted the porch stairs as below. Probably still need to do some final touches and add more cracks. Tried to keep to style sheet and not wander too far off it.
@theluthier , blanchsb
Also had some thoughts about doing each side and step as a seperate object. Then sculpting and texturing all sides. This way I can use linked object data and rotate them to give different appearances to the stairs. Then using a lattice mod to skew and resize the stairs as needed.
I have also now uploaded the low poly stairs to my WIP file on shared drive.
Local file with the sculpting mesh is 1.2 gb.
(Currently 00:07 local time. It was before midnight when I started this post)
ttat that looks amazing! Great idea I think. Please continue to share your WIP and methodology. Everyone can learn from this approach.
Amazing WIP thread ttat! Very interesting to see your progress and ideas develop. Also your sculpted accents are 🔥
I think you're on a smart path for optimization by using linked duplicates. In fact I believe you can get away with only 2 unique objects: 1 step and 1 side. Since they're rectangular you could fully these objects from all sides equally and then have enough rotational options so each step and side appear unique:
Does that make sense?
Homework Submission - Week 3 - Porch Stairs
@theluthier , blanchsb
Hi Guys. Thanks for the feedback last week.
As suggested I used only one side and one step. So I finished sculpting all the details on the unseen side.
In my previous expiriments with baking I was getting quite a few artifacts because the low poly and high poly meshes were not matching and overlapping a lot in places. I quickly retopo'd the low poly mesh before UV unwrapping.
Then spent more time baking than Hovis.
Normal Map : I'm happy with this one.
Colour Map : Not 100% sure. I may have overdone it. Will probably revisit or redo depending on feedback.
(Looks better in updated material)
Cavity Map : For some reason I couldn't get anything from an Emit back, so I had to use Diffuse and run it through a ColourRamp to darken it. Will continue to try and resolve.
(This has now been resolved as below. Have no idea why this happened)
Feedback and suggestions welcomed.
Thanks!
Week 3 - Update 1
So I went to try and sort out the Cavity map issues this morning.
Changed absolutely nothing and it worked. Then I went to bake the second object and I got the same blank result as yesterday with the Emit shader. So reloaded the .blend and the second time it worked as expected.
The Blender Gods are fickle.
Made a few tweaks with the material, and overall it's looking far more subtle now. I am happier with the result, but would still welcome any feedback / advice.
looks really good. You would have me fooled in thinkging that this is the high res model.
I have my own issues to sort out with my cavity map. so hopefully the Blender Gods will smile upon me too later today. fingers crossed.
Fantastic work ttat! Your stairs look great. This means you're finished right?? You can kick back and relax for week 4 unless there's something you want to tweak.
You would have me fooled in thinking that this is the high res model.
I agree with George; the sign of a great HI poly to LO poly baking workflow 👍
Homework Submission - Week 4 - Porch Stairs
@theluthier , blanchsb
Overall a quieter week for myself.
I hadn't linked my textures correctly on the Google drive files so step one was rectifying that.
Then I added the Sun lamp and Spiceworld environment as suggested last steam, and moved on to finalising the material.
Did some minor tweaks to the colour texture, as I wasn't 100% happy with how it turned out. Smoothing areas out and making the highlights more subtle.
Old version is bottom left.
The online version on Google drive uses 2K textures.
Here are a few beauty shots of the final version using 4K textures. The background is a gradient texture using similar colours to Spiceworld environment.
And a quick turntable animation:
Overall very pleased with the result.
I've learnt quite a bit and it's been enjoyable working with everyone.
Thank you all for the feedback and help.
Excellent way to end the month ttat! Thanks for joining the project and contributing. It's been a pleasure working with you 🤝
Such a simple model but so nicely executed, and awesome attention to detail!
