Travis Cogburn
Travis Cogburn
Game Art & Design
The Art Institute of Austin, a branch of The Art Institute of Houston
What was the inspiration for your artwork?
The inspiration for this artwork came from my drive to want to create artwork to test my skills and to improve upon them. What drives me is the hope of getting better and better with each piece that I do. Most of my artwork is either made at home or for class.
How did you create these pieces?
In the pieces shown, you are seeing 3D digital art. Starting off on each of these projects I sketch a concept for them in Photoshop to determine the look that and finalize the project idea. Once the concept is complete I move over to Zbrush, where sculpting begins and blocking out the main forms with digital clay starts. After the anatomy and overall proportions are complete detailing begins to bring life to the piece and make a high quality digital sculpture. Once the high resolution model is complete I move the project into Topogun to start getting some low polygon geometry ready for the in-game mesh by tracing quads over the high poly mesh. By using the high poly model as a reference I can get a very accurate game ready mesh through this retopology process. After the model has a new low poly it is sent over to Autodesk Maya to unwrap the UV‘s of the model into a good UV sheet. While working on UV’s I always ensure that a checker pattern is being used for the material so that I can see if the texture work will be smooth and equally distributed throughout the model without issues. Next comes the baking process where, using XNormal, the high poly details from your sculpt are baked onto your low poly model with the UV’s. Once baking is complete the low poly mesh now has a normal map, which is a texture that will give the illusion of the low poly mesh looking like the original high poly mesh. The more detailed the low poly mesh is in the correct places the better the hi res bake will be. And after successfully baking all the appropriate maps it is time for my favorite part—texturing.
First, I sent the low poly model and normal map over to Substance Painter where the rest of the texture sets are baked out using the normal map created earlier, and once all the maps are ready with the mesh it is time to texture the model. When texturing a model I like to have fun while painting it and making it look the best that I can, and using the baked maps to add all sorts of detail like dirt and grunge and apply it to the lower parts of the mesh to look natural as if they had been running through a field. Once the texture is complete rigging the character in Maya comes next, and giving it a skeleton and bones in the correct joint so that the model can properly be animated. This takes time and patience to get correct. After the model is rigged and animated it is time to send it to the game engine where you can see your work in motion and watch it interact with the rest of the game and the environment. When it is all said and done that is my overall workflow in developing game ready assets.
How can people find out more about you and your artwork?
https://www.artstation.com/artist/traviscogburn
The inspiration for this artwork came from my drive to want to create artwork to test my skills and to improve upon them. What drives me is the hope of getting better and better with each piece that I do. Most of my artwork is either made at home or for class.
How did you create these pieces?
In the pieces shown, you are seeing 3D digital art. Starting off on each of these projects I sketch a concept for them in Photoshop to determine the look that and finalize the project idea. Once the concept is complete I move over to Zbrush, where sculpting begins and blocking out the main forms with digital clay starts. After the anatomy and overall proportions are complete detailing begins to bring life to the piece and make a high quality digital sculpture. Once the high resolution model is complete I move the project into Topogun to start getting some low polygon geometry ready for the in-game mesh by tracing quads over the high poly mesh. By using the high poly model as a reference I can get a very accurate game ready mesh through this retopology process. After the model has a new low poly it is sent over to Autodesk Maya to unwrap the UV‘s of the model into a good UV sheet. While working on UV’s I always ensure that a checker pattern is being used for the material so that I can see if the texture work will be smooth and equally distributed throughout the model without issues. Next comes the baking process where, using XNormal, the high poly details from your sculpt are baked onto your low poly model with the UV’s. Once baking is complete the low poly mesh now has a normal map, which is a texture that will give the illusion of the low poly mesh looking like the original high poly mesh. The more detailed the low poly mesh is in the correct places the better the hi res bake will be. And after successfully baking all the appropriate maps it is time for my favorite part—texturing.
First, I sent the low poly model and normal map over to Substance Painter where the rest of the texture sets are baked out using the normal map created earlier, and once all the maps are ready with the mesh it is time to texture the model. When texturing a model I like to have fun while painting it and making it look the best that I can, and using the baked maps to add all sorts of detail like dirt and grunge and apply it to the lower parts of the mesh to look natural as if they had been running through a field. Once the texture is complete rigging the character in Maya comes next, and giving it a skeleton and bones in the correct joint so that the model can properly be animated. This takes time and patience to get correct. After the model is rigged and animated it is time to send it to the game engine where you can see your work in motion and watch it interact with the rest of the game and the environment. When it is all said and done that is my overall workflow in developing game ready assets.
How can people find out more about you and your artwork?
https://www.artstation.com/artist/traviscogburn
