Guest Speaker Notes (hard surface modeling)

 Eric MgGinnis notes:

- works in military simulation

- modeling in Blender is better (UVs are better in Maya)

- References for modeling, texturing, presentation

- Remember scale reference 

- Keep booleans on a separate layer in maya

- bevel odd numbers (delete every other one for retopo)

- UVs: first bake with quick UVs to test

- An edge that doesn't have a seam on it should be soft! (UV seams only on hard edges, hard edges always have UV seams)

- If you need to keep an edge soft - add fencing

- If there are a lot of triangles on a plane - set the (outside) edges to hard and cut it into a separate UV shell

- Duplicate small details after UV unwrapping them

- Use exploded mesh for baking (duplicate a objects and separate all parts)

- Check the bake with glossy material

- Average normals - usually turn on (turn off for baking details on a flat surface, combine two maps at the end). Marmoset - let's you do that in one bake 

- Substance (use Tomocco Studio, Post effects on, anti-aliasing on, sRGBf color profile)

- Overlay blending is good for adding new details

- Use paint masks for wear/scratches to not make it uniform

- Maya: turn on highlight border edges (display polygon settings), use Shelf Editor, make custom hotkeys

- Maya - connect tool (under modeling toolkit)

- ZBrush: Polygroup by UVs (auto groups with UV) - use Mask by Features and Polish edges

- Polish - bevel, Polish by Features - holds a tighter edge 

- Use colors to paint in hard edges - polygroup from polypaint - polish by features (circle open), polish (circle closed) (creates a hard edge on the polygroup borders)

- Taper boolean pieces

- Exaggerate bevels

- Eugene Petrov (texturing tutorial on flippednormals)

- Jason Ord (substance painter tutorial on artstation)

- Look at Eric's presentation