ZBrush work

After the blocking stage was complete and the necessary topology was set up, I could take the assets into ZBrush to begin detailing them and creating the high poly version.

I`ve decided to challenge myself a bit more and instead of the clean surface these bricks have, I aimed for an old, ruined like look instead. This allows me to look at the various effects that different brushes have.

I`ve started detailing the column:

I have used the Standard Brush and the hPolish for the column you see above. I`m really not happy with the result as the mesh looks to smooth and "fluffly", instead of harsh, stone chipped off look.
In one of the Environmental tutorials I have watched I remember a technique where the Clay Tubes brush was used to establish the main details and then the Blob Brush came into action with a small brush size to give the surface a bit of noise kind of, roughed up effect. As the last brush, the Flatten brush was used with a square Alpha to trim away the noise and establish that harsh, stone detail.

Here is the result:

I have found that this combination of brushes work much better than what I had used previously. Also, even though silhouette is absolutely the basic element to keep in mind when modeling, surface detail is also crucial. If your surface detail (modeled or illustrated via a texture)is not properly done, than your model might end up something completely different than intended. Some colors make the detail pop out a bit more. Because I have a greyish specular color at certain area, using a grey color when rendering the object is not the best idea. It will blend in with the specular and make all those small details almost invisible. I chose a different color for these second set of images and it really made the detail pop out a bit more.