Starfish Photogrammetry

 I approached this fossil differently than the others by choosing to model this asset. Because of the simple shape, it seemed like more effort to use 3DF Zephyr than to model it myself in Maya.

I started by grabbing an image from above the fossil to recreate the face that would contain the fossil itself. From the orthographic view I could trace the shape with my model.

Most of the edges on the fossil were cut relatively straight so could be left as they were but some required the fossil to be inspected to find any variation in the edges not captured from above

Creating this fossil this way meant the poly count was very low compared to a photogrammetry scan and, subsequently, UV's were very easy to produce.

I simply used close-up photographs of the 6 sides of this cuboid-esque fossil to create the texture on one image. The UVs needed some adjustments to better fit the image I took but nothing too major.

After inspecting the fit of the texture I realised that I wanted the starfish to pop a bit like they do on the actual fossil but for that I needed a normal map.

I found this online normal map generator. It had a few very basic settings to play with and allowed me to upload an .obj of my model so I could see it on the asset. After playing with the sliders and various settings I found a balance between the roughness of the rock and the pop of the starfish. (Unfortunately the renderer on the website made everything very shiny)

After seeing the model in the museum, I was very pleased with the speed I produced it and the quality added by the addition of the normal map. I also tested 3DF Zephyr with this fossil after I finished it and I found what I expected to which was that photogrammetry softwares sometimes struggle with small assets and this starfish fossil was indeed too small to be scanned. Now knowing I made the right decision by modelling it first, I am very happy with the quality of the asset.