
This is a sci-fi crate I made in spring 2017. It has 1 098 triangles and is modeled in 3ds Max and Zbrush. The PBR texture is created in Substance Painter 2.
I was inspired by a concept art piece made by Colin Geller, but I wanted it to have a more realistic appearance so this was the design I ended up with.
I was curious to see how far I could push the use of normal maps to save polygons, so I chose to split the UV at every hard edge to achieve really smooth edges with the normal map. The other maps seemed to work well with the many UV seams so I am happy with the decision. However, fewer UV shells would have let me made a better use of the UV space and increased the resolution of the maps. But regarding the goal of this project, a better normal map with smooth edges was more important than a higher resolution texture.
