Pirate Coin – Normal maps practice

This week the challenge was to create a coin using normal maps on a plane. No high poly geometry, no normal map baking, CrazyBump only! To be honest, I tried using CrazyBump, but decided to go to NDo and use only the most basic functions it offers. 

For the coin, I decided to create some kind of coin that a group of pirates made by pouring gold inside their victim’s sliced bones. Sounds super violent, I know, they were savage!

It was super tricky, and I think the reason was that making organic shapes in Ndo, straight from a painted layer in Photoshop, is pretty time-consuming. For this kind of things, I suggest you sculpt the high resolution mesh and bake it into the plane. For this challenge it was alright to check different techniques.

 

 

In the end, I wanted to add something a little bit more pirate-related stuff to it, so I added a tangled algae and some drops of water.

Algae still needs some work, right now they are looking like plastic, but I thought it was fun to add them.