Vinyl Record Player

Topology

During this project I wanted to experiment with topology. The record player turned out to be a good challenge because of its parts in the middle, which needed a higher poly count than the outer case to appear round. As reference I used pictures of an actual record player from amazon, since that provided images from multiple angles. To reduce the overall poly count, I redirected the edge flow between the two areas (also visible in other images on the turning plate of the player):

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The vertices in the corner caused some shading issues, so I reworked these areas. I also tried to maintain the overall edge flow around the model, with a few exceptions on the outer rounded edges:

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Since this is a model that doesn't deform, I have now updated it to have a lower poly-count whilst simultaniously tweeking the topology by reducing quads to tris where it made sense (and left the rest for the engine to automatically split). I also tried to maximize the surface area of triangles in some areas and minimize the usage of pointy triangles in others to overall reduce quad overdraw:

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Texturing

When I started the texturing process, the first step was to bake the normal from a high poly, more detailed version of the model:

Since my Adobe license ran out, I used Blender's Ucupaint Addon to texture the model instead of Substance Painter. That meant I had to learn working with a new interface and some other changes and limitations, but the overall workflow was very similar.

Unfortunately, the texture resolution turned out to be a problem for the disk part of the normal map. I plan on further updating the model by removing the disk and adding animations.