[RELEASED] The Probe

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The Probe[link]
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The Probe is a spherical, unmanned vehicle capable of floating and flying and comparable to a drone in its autonomous or remote controlled operation.

This asset is quite detailed and created with an eye towards current and next-generation needs in the gaming, VR and real-time film spaces.

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While not specifically advertised as a modular asset, the probe is built from and provided as 4 basic mesh components:

• main
• inside*
• front(sensor)
• back(thrusters)

* The inside part is in fact 2 separate meshes - one on the front and one in the back.

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Each of those 4 main parts has its own texture-set and material.

Having the inside parts separated allows you to not render them, if you choose to have the front and back parts attached. This saves texture memory and avoids rendering unnecessary polygons.

At the same time it's giving you the flexibility to get more out of the asset as well as giving us the flexibility to potentially extend the asset in the future, although that completely depends on how The Probe performs on the asset store, so no promises.
In case you would be interested in extensions to this asset of any kind, we welcome your input and suggestions either here or via email at support@machin3.io.

Materials for The Probe are provided in form of substance .sbsar files, which contain procedural materials allowing for significant customization. Highlights:

• 2 main, plain material choices - painted metal and plastics
• a mix of both, where the plastic parts act as accents to the painted metal parts
  
• a 4th camouflage material
• emissive controls for each
  
• parametric dirt
• hero decal: use your own logo/icon on the model!

There's prefabs for The Probe in different assembly variations for substance materials as well es for default(static) materials.

OVERVIEW​

The following chart provides an overview of the specific settings available and demonstrates some of the variations that can be achieved.

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EMISSION​

No matter the material choice, you have control over the emissive strength, as well as the emissive hue.

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HERO DECAL​

The front part allows for the activation of a hero decal, which can be any 512 by 512 image you supply.

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DIRT​

Finally, you can add parametric dirt to the materials and have control over the intensity(dirt level), as well as the contrast and grunge amount. Notice, that the dirt is not evenly distributed and will in fact be more pronounced in crevices, which is achieved through the supplied AO and curvature maps.

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Painted Metal
Painted Metal (inside)
Plastics (without Sensor)
Camouflage (without Thrusters)


Polygons/Triangles

• 26K main + front + back
  
• 35K main + insides + front + back
  
• 18K main + insides

Textures sets​

• 2048x2048 main
• 2048x2048 insides
• 2048x2048 front (sensor)
• 2048x2048 back (thrusters)

Textures

• AlbedoTransparency
• MetallicSmoothness
• Normal
• Fluting (Normal)
• Emissive
• AO
• Curvature
  
• substance specific masks

All textures provided in .png format.

Materials

• Substance .sbsar (procedural)
• default materials* (static)

* if you want to use default materials, you need to manually set all normal maps to "Normal" texture type, instead of the default "Texture" texture type, which is required for the substance materials to work. A good way to do this is to select the appropriate material and use the "Fix now" button next to the normal input.




Unity 5.3 is the "substance parity" release, meaning it's visually consistent with what artists create in Allegorithmic's Substance products. The Probe will work in earlier versions of Unity too, but we'd advice you to use a GGX shader nonetheless to achieve the highest visual quality.











The MACHIN3 listens.

 

[The MACHIN3 reserves this post.]

 

Web Previews (on sketchfab) have just been added!



Painted Metal
Painted Metal (inside)
Plastics (without Sensor)
Camouflage (without Thrusters)

 

Looking really really good there! Incredible work! The asset store needs more of that kind of quality!

 

Thanks, that's very kind of you to say. The next asset is being worked on as we speak

 

The Probe has just been released, as always we welcome any input here or via support@machin3.io.

 

Wow, @MACHIN3 , these are brilliant. They remind me of 343 Guilty Spark from Halo, or Wheatley from Portal 2. Outstanding quality too. Very impressive.

 

Awesome work. Love the presentation as well.

 

Thanks Bagnol, both of these are quite iconic designs, so I appreciate the comparison

Thanks, presentation is key, even if its boring to do

 

This is amazing. I wish there were more assets with such a high level of quality.

 

The MACHINƎ is working on exactly that Thanks, much appreciated!

 

The Probe has been featured in the Unity 2017 keynote as "your little friendly neighborhood drones flying around". I like how they turned the fronts into lamps.

 

Final day to get the Probe for 20% less.

 

What a great asset. I used it as one of the key assets in my NEON Challenge, hope it's OK to show it here. https://connect.unity.com/p/homecoming

 

Hi,
I bought these assets (Probe and Starfighter) and went through the process of updating them as per the Substance videos. I have the latest version of the Substance plugin. I went back to 2017.4 and imported them and they look fantastic, just what I need.
As per the video I opened up the 2017 project in 2019.3 and got the screenshot above. I also tried exporting an asset from 2017 and bringing it into 2019.3 with the plugin pre loaded.
I'm going to guess the substances need upgrading?

Can anyone help? Cheers.

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