Ottoman Heavy Cannon (3D Art Week 15)

 It's been a while since I posted, but I've been catching up on my assignments and learning as I go to make a comeback. Right now I'm behind on putting the finishing touches on the cannon but this is a process that cannot be rushed and to which shortcuts don't exist- sculpting, baking, texturing, there is no easy way to do it. 

I took inspiration from an Ottoman Grand Bombard for this design (my third redesign of the cannon). I suppose I didn't feel strongly about the previous iterations and I couldn't find a style that would work to show off the sculpting I wanted to, so I settled on this. The Arabic accents and desert setting give the cannon both a recognizable aesthetic but also character since it is perfectly reasonable that the desert head and sands would erode the cannon to the point you see below. 

Here is a shot of the game res cannon, before UVing. It stands at 4800 polygons and has some smoothed edges so the baking information can come through easier. 

This is a shot of the high res version, standing at god knows how many polygons. I wanted to practice various techniques and methods while sculpting, with varied degrees of success. 

This is the evolution of my UVs as I was creating the game resolution model. It was very chaotic and jumbled at first, so after simplifying the model I was able to create more efficient UVS.

Here is the final bake that I have for this cannon. It managed to retain a good amount of detail and simulate the high resolution version very well. From now on, I'll be focusing on texturing and setting up an environment for my cannon to rest on.