Speeder Bike work in progress

Starting a new project

I moved from London to Seattle in end of Nov to start a new job. The transition, house-moving and settling-in took up most of my time. While I am still not completely settled, I can't wait to start my next project. Right now I'm thinking of creating the Star Wars Speeder Bike. It will be fun using Quixel to create those little details and the canvas at the back.

Tweaking the mental ray render

Exporting maps from Quixel for use in Maya Mental Ray

Having learnt how to use Quxiel NDO to create normal map and DDO to work on texture, I spent some time experimenting the export of various maps (Diffuse, Normal, Specular, Roughness) back to Maya for render in Mental Ray. This article has been very helpful: http://quixel.se/tutorial/suite-2-with-mila-in-mental-ray/.

Within Maya, the MILA material is used which is completely new to me. The render here is far from perfect but at least I am starting to get the hang on what the work flow is like. 

Here's where I am on my Rolleiflex project.

I have really enjoyed learning Quixel Suite's NDO, DDO and 3DO! This is where I got to so far. But I'm not done yet. Next thing to learn is how to bring the various maps back to Maya and render out with Mental Ray. Although there are a lot of improvements I can make, I'm happy with the results so far. 

Test render from Quixel

Quixel DDO work on the Rolleiflex model

Was very eager to get do the texture with Quixel DDO. This is the first past without any tweaking. Some imperfections on the buttons below. Will have to investigate the cause.