Bald Cypress
Bald Cypress is part of my Swamp project. The basic mesh with big branches was sculpted in Zbrush. The bark material was made in Substance Designer. Branches that were used to make cards were textured in Substance Painter. I used 2k resolution maps. Final presentation was made in Unreal Engine.
To make the bark I followed a tutorial by Peter Sekula: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AgJ1V
Here are some basic meshes that I used to build the leaves and small branches. I didn't initially plan to have this many needles, but I realized that the ones I applied were too thin at the bottom so I made a new set and combined it with the old one.
Before starting to build the leaves and branches I UV mapped all the assets as I would later use them for texturing. Here it was crucial to build chunks of needles and try to duplicate them.
I like to create variation by duplicating thick branches and making them more thin.
High poly branch which consists of both the branches made in Maya as well as the big branch sculpted in Zbrush.
Final high poly
Basic cards
Cards combined together and bent. The cards that I presented in the engine are even more bent than these.
Normal map
Base Color
Base color for the bark
Normal map for the bark