THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS I

Couple of months back I started modelling the Lucky 38 building seen in the game Fallout: New Vegas. But I put it on hold to complete a 3D asset pack I was working on (Diner Prop Pack - available now!). As of the start of November I've picked this project up again and there's no turning back baby!

(somewhat of a) blocking out

I started off this project by looking at some reference images​ on the old Google machine. Although a good start, most pictures were screenshots of the building from a distance and I needed to get some references that showed the minor details (I needed to get in close 🔎). Images from the world wide web were a good start for blocking out the model, but it was time to get down to the nitty-gritty.

I remembered that the PC version of Fallout: New Vegas included the G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) toolkit, which allows you to edit and create any data for use with Fallout: New Vegas. - on a bit of a tangent, I remember creating a new skin/material (texture map) for the 10mm Pistol in Fallout 3 with G.E.C.K., and I also changed the damage of the gun to something like 999999. Which was fun for a while, just running around with my custom decked out 10mm Pistol. Those were the days 😢 - So I opened up GOG galaxy on my PC and downloaded my copy of New Vegas.

Before continuing with this project, I had to boot up New Vegas just for old times' sake. Took me straight back to 2010 (simpler times back then...). Anyway, after helping the town of Goodsprings get rid of the attacking Powder Gangers (⟵ game reference), I quit the game and opened up G.E.C.K..

There I found a better reference to the Lucky 38 building... It was the Lucky 38 building itself! I took a ton of screenshots from all different angles, but being an in-game asset, some of the pieces were cut off/hidden/deleted. Pieces that were never going to be seen in-game by the player (some of the top section of the building for example).

A few screenshots of the Lucky 38 Building asset in G.E.C.K.

As mentioned earlier, some parts of the asset were missing (most of the roof pieces), and the top of the building differed from the top of the building from a level in the actual game (example in pics below). So, ended up just looking at the two assets and tried to put them together where they made sense.

Lucky 38 'outside' asset variation

Presidential Suite level from inside the Lucky 38.

modelled asset

The rest of the model was created just by looking at the reference images, and then modelling it in Maya, while listening to Spotify Daily Mixes and Discover Weekly playlists (which by the way, seemed like I was listening to the same songs over and over, So I switched to a Jukebox Jives playlist to switch things up a bit and then I proceeded to do The Twist 🕺.)

Current state of my model

Currently I'm still modelling pieces of the model (still got to do the front gate and stairs, as well as the smaller details, like the railing near observation points and whatnot.), then try to cut down the polygon count as much as possible for the Low Poly model as well as correct the UVs for texturing.

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Image References
G.E.C.K. screenshots taken from the Fallout New Vegas G.E.C.K. toolkit