Props

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At this stage, I am quite happy with the main build of the house, it looks like it has some personality. However, it needs more details to look like it's actually a place where someone lives. I image the Baba Yaga to use lots of dry herbs for her mixtures, so one side of the house can be used to dry them. For the front of the house, I wanted to place something scary which will keep people away, so I went for skulls hanged on a stick, I also want them to emit some eerie light.

To create these props, I had to experiment with different types of modelling. Firstly I made a wolf skull and a stick. High poly for these was sculpted in ZBrush using mostly Clay Buildup and Move Topological brushes. The top and bottom parts are separate meshes as well as teeth and a stick.


  I am aware that all of these subtle details I've sculpted will not to be visible from a distance. However, this sculpt was made long ago and I was going to use it for a different purpose. I used an easiest possible way to create a low poly for this, by simply using Decimation Master plugin in Zbrush. The mesh created was made with triangles, but this object is not going to be animated, so I decided not to bother about the topology.
For the garlick and talisman, I used simple box modelling. These are really small compering to the house, so there is no need for them to be really detailed. I textured the low poly in Substance, then created a few different versions for talismans.

Last and the most complicated, in my opinion, was to make dry herbs. I was going to use the same method as for the roof, plane and alpha map, however finding the right texture was quite tricky. I downloaded multiple different herbs textures, it didn't seem to work too well. Just like with the roof, the photo texture was too detailed and it didn't match the rest. In this case, I decided to give it a try in Photoshop. I've just painted the leaves and created the alpha maps. I made 4 different types.

Next, I had to actually make the dry herbs models. For each one, I created a plane with a texture on it and then used a bend modifier and rotation to make a full plant.

Single plane with the texture 


Full model
I have placed all the props around the house to give it more personality. I was paying attention not to overwhelm the house with the details.




I think that all the details and a roof gave much more personality to the model. It finally looks like someone lives there and use it, but at the same time, it also feels like a character with a face.


I am still behind my schedule because I suppose to finish the whole model in the middle of January. I keep extending the modelling part, but I established the final deadline for the modelling to the end of January, so I will have February to create the rig, skin and start animating.
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