I decided to start with the candle for my high poly model as I believed this to be the hardest and most likely to go wrong.
I started by placing a cylinder and mirroring it to keep the topology even. After offsetting the top and extruding downwards, I then went into vert mode and used soft select to manipulate the top part of the candle.
I was quite pleased at how it turned out. It had a candle shape and the dip in the middle gave the impression that it had been used a lot.
However, once I closed the software and returned the next day, this is what I was greeted with. As you can imagine, I was very shocked. I tried to deduce what the problem was online and saw someone mention that not deleting the objects history can cause this.
So, I remade the candle, this time making sure to delete the history before I quit the program. Honestly, it was almost a blessing in disguise as this candle is much better and more realistic. I made the dip in the centre less deep so that you could view the candle wick from certain angles. Furthermore, the edges are less thick which, when looking at references, is a problem my previous one had.
Now that the candle had been created, it was time to make the staff. Like the candle, I started with a cylinder. I then placed two other cylinders on top of it using vert snap (CTRL+D+V to snap the pivot to the base and CTRL+V to snap the cylinder to the other).
I then extruded the top cylinder to make the handle shape, knowing that when smoothed the handle will be a nice smooth curve.
I then added the two larger cylinders on top, increasing their size by 0.3 each respectively.
However, it was at this point when I realised making the staff out of separate cylinders was not such a good idea. This is because when smoothed, they don’t smooth as one whole object and instead smooth separately. I tried using the combine feature, which didn’t work. I then used Booleans which did combine the objects but distorted the mesh in certain areas.
Therefore, I made the decision to restart the staff. Time had not been wasted however, as creating the new staff was ridiculously easy. I placed a single cylinder and used wireframe mode. From here, I could use vert snap to snap to the existing cylinders, pressing “g” each time to reuse the extrude tool.
The staff now smoothed as one whole piece, apart from the two larger pieces on top which are separate anyway.
I began to add some edge loops to refine the shape of the staff. This was a good start, however it was still curving in slightly at the end of each section.
To fix this, I selected the face of each cylinder and used the extrude tool to offset it slightly inwards. This creates an edge loop on the face of every cylinder and gives a nice sharp but smooth appearance.
Now that the staff had been completed, I turned my attention to making the bowl that the candle will sit in on top of the staff. I achieved this by using NURBS curves. I had learnt when doing the bowl for the NURBS task that you have to wrap it back around in order for the faces to show on both sides.
I then converted it to a poly model, choosing for it to have 400 polygons.
Once the bowl was finished, I scaled it and vert snapped it to the top of the staff.
One thing I wasn’t happy about was the way the candle looked when placed in the bowl. It looked as if it was just floating there. As a result, I decided to make a type of candle holder which will sit in the bowl and support the candle. This wasn’t part of the original design, but I honestly believe it elevates the asset to another level.
I used the candle as a reference for the size of the holder. Once I was happy with the size, I added edge loops around the entire model. This helps keep its shape when smoothed.
The candle fits perfectly inside the candle holder. It is much more realistic for there to be some kind of support structure to hold the candle in place, instead of it just magically floating on the plate.
Originally, I had set out to make a knife that accommodates the staff. However, due to time constraints I would rather make one high quality model than two average ones. Despite this, I believe adding a spike to the bottom of the staff achieves a similar end goal. The point of the hidden knife inside the staff was to portray the fact that people were sacrificed for Khonsu. Now, the staff itself is used to sacrifice others with the deadly end point – which may honestly be better.
Now that all of the pieces were assembled, I created a group and called it Staff_Cage. I then duplicated this and called it Staff_High. I named all of the pieces in the high group appropriately (as this is important when it comes to Substance Painter) and smoothed the entire model.
This how the final high poly model turned out. Overall, I am very pleased with it as all of the topology is even. The next step now is creating the low poly version.