I created a series of low-poly landmarks for a naval navigation training simulation. Made in Unity, and rendered in real-time, the assets needed to have a low performance cost while remaining easily identifiable. I obtained references and measurements using Google and Bing maps, although I often had to infer angles of which there were no photos online. I then identified the key shapes of each building to form the low-poly model, adding detail by modelling a high-poly version from which I could bake both a normal map and an ID map. In the example below, the low-poly version comprises of 242 vertices, while the high-poly version comprises of 6130.
Thanks to the ID masks, I was able to add most of the details in Substance Painter, taking advantage of the 'mask with colour selection' feature. I created generic smart materials for textures, such as roof tiles, and windows (shown below), which repeated across many of the landmarks. This minimised the amount of manual work needed for each asset.
Using this technique, I was able to deliver lots of assets in a relatively short space of time while meeting the requisite poly count and visual quality. Below is a selection of some of the assets that I created. They can all be found around the Firth of Clyde.
And here are their corresponding ID masks. I actually think some of these look cool by themselves!
