[Relz] Hlaalu interior kitset

Hello everyone! I just noticed i have not put together a thread for the Hlaalu interiors! I will try update this regularly :)

First off, the textures are made by Robbinsmoth, Tedesignz and Ravanna, so thanks guys for the awesome stuff!

I'm going to try make these posts informative and detailed so that people may learn some of my workflow for modeling and texturing the large amount of assets that i have to make. So this First post will be on referencing and how i am going about speeding up the texturing process.

Referencing is a term used in maya for having a mesh 'Linked' to an external scene, This is normally used by animators to keep rigs out of scene files so they do no accidentally break things, And also so that the artists working on the rigs can easily update it without making the animators wait for a long time to start animating.

Im not using it this way, I will be using it to speed up the texturing process, Since textures and UVs are things that are bound to change over time, going through an entire scene of 48 seperate meshes that are largely the same just to change one thing would be a huge hassle. So to make this go faster I am modeling each piece individually, Then using a process called 'Kitbashing' to put together the halls of Hlaalu.

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The Kit so far

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My folder of assets

Once i create the piece i need, i will export it, then re-import it into my master scene using Mayas 'Refrence editor' This allows me to reload the asset from the file it originated from, So one handy thing i can do is have multiple instances of Maya open, Allowing me to easily spot problems and update them on the fly.

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Reference Editor

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Crazy mess of screens

Once i have the reference in the maya scene, i like to use a handy function called 'Duplicate special' This creates an instance of that particular mesh, This means that whenever i reload a reference, the instanced mesh also updates. Thus updating my entire scene!

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There is a lot to Hlaalu

All of my pieces have the transform points (The origin of movement) in the bottom left corner, This allows me to snap everything to one point on the mesh, making the process a reliable way of keeping everything matching so that it will tile correctly.
Another challange that this has is to keep it looking 'Hlaalu' without messing with it too much, There are still heaps of small details to add, but Most of the base work is done.

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Transform Point

That's about it for this post, If anyone has any questions then please ask away! Workflows are one of my favorite things to learn about.

[edit] I just realized that this would make an excellent blog post.

As a side note to all 3ds users.

From what i have found, you can use a method called 'FBX Linking' and then use one of these methods to instance the mesh. http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/3ds-max/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/3DSMax/files/GUID-9F0E9AC3-FAE6-46A6-83F3-591084220B12-htm.html