Week 9 - Thursday: Using 3D Scan Data to Create a Bust of Pallas

With the rise of 3D printing, high quality scans of real world objects have become increasingly easy for people to access. What this means for me as a 3D artist is that I now have a vast resource of detailed 3D models available to tap into.

I found this 3D scanned bust of Pallas Athena from the Altes museum in Berlin:

3D scanned bust of Athena.

I chose a bust of Pallas as a tribute to Edgar Alan Poe's The Raven. In that poem the bust of Pallas Athena represents wisdom, indicating the narrator was a scholar. I really admire when writers leave little clues that inform the reader about a character's personality. I am trying to do the exact same thing in a visual sense, so I wanted to pay homage by including a similar bust above the chamber door. Perhaps the former owner of my mansion also prided himself as a scholar?

In its raw form the model sits at over 600,000 thousand triangles. Obviously not feasible to use as a game asset:

The downloaded 3D model.

I created a low poly model around the high poly mesh and got it ready for surface transfer within Substance Painter:

The low poly variant of the bust of Pallas.

Baking and texturing the maps in Substance Painter was a fast process as I used a lot of smart materials to generate the dirt detail to highlight the bust's facial features.

 The normal map of the bust.

The fully textured asset within Unreal Engine.

It's a bit jagged but because it takes up such a small amount of space in the environment I don't think this will be noticeable. Thanks to the availabilty of 3D scanned assets I now have a wide selection of easy to make 3D assets for my game environment. I don't want to rely too much on free assets however because I am using this project as a demonstration of my own modelling ability. As such I will use this technique when I need to quickly create something that is not feasible within my current timeframes.

MY MINI FACTORY (2015) Bust of Athena at The Altes Museum, Berlin. [Online] Available from: https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-bust-of-athena-at-the-altes-museum-berlin-14041 [Accessed: 19/07/2008].

POE, E. A. (1845) The Raven. New York City: The American Review.

THE BRITISH MUSEUM (2017) A new dimension in home shopping. [Online] Available from: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/a-new-dimension-in-home-shopping/ [Accessed: 19/07/2008].