Environment - Asteroids

For the general environment of my space level it is clearly an important issue for there to be a number of asteroids to make up the general scenery. 

A rather quick technique of mass-producing these is done by utilising 3dsMax's modifiers.

As can be seen in the first image below, by starting with something as simple as a sphere with a standard 32 segments applied generates a model with <1k polys. (960 to be exact).

With the application of a 'Noise' modifier as seen below and the use of a unique seed on the model, it creates a fairly convincing base asteroid for use in my game.

 

  

And by creating copys of the original asteroid model and then by going through and giving each asteroid its own unique noise modifier seed, we now have a collection of unique-looking asteroid models that can be taken from 3dsMax and processed into zBrush to obtain a good set of UV co-ordinates, then to MudBox to generate the Noise and Vertical Displacement Maps, then its a case of texturing and finally getting them into UDK as part of the level!

Finally with a bit of scaling on each asteroid, there is now a collection of vastly different asteroids for me to populate my level with. The intention is for these "big" asteroids to make up a significant portion of the level and then by scaling down within UDK I can litter them around.