Research Assignment

Substance Designer - Aging Bronze Tilable Material

Substance Designer Aging Bronze Tutorial

3D Class S3 Week 042 SR-71 Blackbird - Final Renders

S3 Week 042 SR-71 Blackbird -  Final Renders

   Whelp. All good things must come to an end. I'm happy with all that I've accomplished thus far in my time at FIEA. I've learned so so much. My professor Nick was absolutely instrumental in my growth as an artist over the past year, and I really am so very thankful all that he's done for me and my classmates. Speaking of classmates, I've met some really incredible people over the past year. I'm even lucky enough to call some of them friends. Having such a supportive, enduring group of individuals going through the hard times was really the one thing that kept me going. This past year was pretty brutal; we all definitely saw some shite. Hehehe. Just kidding on that last one.
   Or am I? O_o
   Anyhoo, here are my final renders for my Blackbird. I'm really happy with how she turned out, though I know she's not perfect. I still love her though, and I'm proud to have her be my last project, and the culmination of my hard work at FIEA this past year.

 

   Whoever reads this -- I thank you. I appreciate you putting up with my shenanigans and taking the time to look at my work :)

   

3D Class S3 Week 041 SR-71 Blackbird - Texturing

S3 Week 041 SR-71 Blackbird - Texturing

   Capping off the final work week of this project, I prepared my high poly for the bake, and pushed it over to Substance Painter. Not too much to say on this one. A lot lot of work went into getting the Height info in, with the grooves and paneling the major component in detailing. The texture job after that wasn't too crazy - getting the roughness and a fine level of dirt on there to break up the color helped. I made some custom alphas to help with the grooves near the medial parts of the Blackbird, and also for the decals. All in all, it was a lot of fun and quite frankly, very little stress. Here are my shots of the texture job, with final renders to come later this week!

Until next time!

3D Class S3 Week 040 SR-71 Blackbird - Finishing the Low and High Poly

S3 Week 040 SR-71 Blackbird - Finishing the Low and High Poly

   Since this project is a bit shorter, I really had to up my ante and push to complete the model this week. I almost got there; I just have to look over the geo, check the high poly compatibility, and UV before heading over to Substance Painter for the texture. That being said, I was happy that I was able to get a decent interpretation of the wheels. And let me tell you, it was not easy. Figuring out where and how the hell the SR-71 Blackbird hides it's wheels inside it's belly--it was mind boggling. At least in terms of how the orthographic references showed it. For such a sleek plane, it certainly does not waste space. Anyways, here's the low poly completed!*

*Still need to do final check on geo

   After the low poly was completed, I worked to hold edges, convert smooth preview mesh to polygons, and export over to ZBrush for some polish and small fixes. Overall, not bad of a result

   Woo! Super excited to texture this bad boi XD

3D Class S3 Week 039 SR-71 Blackbird - Modeling the Low Poly

S3 Week 039 SR-71 Blackbird - Modeling the Low Poly

   So to kick off this project, I decided to use the Curve tool to get the shapes I wanted. The first thing I noticed about the reference was that the Blackbird is a super sleek plane, and the traditional method of modeling was going to be a more frustrating version of tedious. Though using curves is tedious as well, the results are really clean and very good at achieving low poly numbers. I still have a bit to do, but the bulk of the work will be done in Maya, with just a couple things done in ZBrush. I still have to do the wheels, the cockpit, and some smaller details, but all in all I'm in a comfortable place. Here's what I have so far --

Next week the low and high poly should be done, and ready for texturing!

DECLARATION! Second Project of Semester 3

  For the final project of the semester, I've chosen the SR-71 Blackbird. I wanted to pick something that exists in real life, but was still pretty cool and interesting to model. Since I did the Normandy last semester and really enjoyed that, I gravitated towards doing a ship again. Deferring to my father, essentially an expert on all things metallic that flies in the sky, I asked him to pick out a plane, and he chose his favorite one for me to work on. So for the next three weeks, I'll be working to replicate this pretty bird as closely as I can.

   Breakdown of the project will go like this --

• Week 1 - Low Poly block out
• Block out as much as I can, getting in the major forms and the rough form of what will ultimately be the low poly

• Week 2 - Finish Low Poly and High Poly
• Finish modeling the low poly, and export to ZBrush for details that will be baked and overall polish to edges. Push back to Maya to confirm low poly compatibility

• Week 3 - Texture and Final Renders
• Export to Substance Painter for bake, and texture. Export to Marmoset for final renders

Here is my reference board for the Blackbird

Gonna try and finish strong!

3D Class S3 Week 038 Kartika Dagger Part 4 - Bronze Texture and Final Renders

S3 Week 038 Kartika Dagger Part 4 - Bronze Texture and Final Renders

   So for my final week on this project, I pushed myself and what I could do with these textures. I wanted to take my process a bit further, and in doing so, I learned a lot. As you can see below, I was able to create a system for the Bronze material in an attempt to create a semblance of transitioning different stages of its tarnishing, complete with different controls for customization. This will no doubt be the texture I write up my research assignment for this project. I'm super happy I was able to figure this out.

   From there, I was able to publish the tilable texture and bring it into Substance Painter, importing it in as a material, along with the controls I created!

   Once that was all set up and taken care of, it was then just a matter of choosing what version of bronze I wanted to bring into Marmoset for my final renders. I tweaked lighting overall from my original test renders from last week, but overall not a significance difference. 

   And with that, another project complete! I was so very happy with what I was able to accomplish, and better yet, what I was able to learn and figure out on my own  ^_^

  So there goes another project for the books! Onto the final project of the semester!

3D Class S3 Week 037 Kartika Dagger Part 3 - Gold Texture and High Poly Box and Texture

S3 Week 037 Kartika Dagger Part 3 - Gold Texture and High Poly Box and Texture

   Whew! I've got a bunch to talk about this status update!

   This week I focused on creating the tilable Gold texture. As with the Silver texture, there was some back and forth tweaking to get the texture right, but thanks to the both Substance programs and their painless pipeline, I managed to get it where I wanted it. I wanted to contrast the Silver texture quite a bit, rather than just have an arguably clean metal with a color swap. So to differentiate the two, the gold texture has some distinct roughness and wear, and even some weird green tarnish I've drew from in my references. As such, here's what I ended up with --

   Once that was squared away, I moved over to sculpting detail for the high poly of the dagger's box. Since the dimensions of the box I was referencing was significantly different from my own, I adapted the details as best I could. Primarily referring to the top of the box. Still, I don't think it turned out too bad :)

   Exporting that out, and readying the low poly version as well, I moved over to Substance Painter to get the bake done and texture what I could. I pretty much finished, but I still want to tweak some things. Overall, I'm right where I want to be in terms of my schedule. I even got started on my final tilable texture! (#Spoilers)

   Taking advantage of the time I had (let's be honest -- I'm a crazy person and I literally do not know how to take breaks) I started setting up my renders and doing some test shots in Marmoset. I'm still learning the interface and implementing techniques, but the test renders came out pretty decent. I just need to practice lighting more.

   Thus, the end of my progress for Part 3 of this project. See ya next week for the grand finale! ^_^

3D Class S3 Week 036 Kartika Dagger Part 2 - Silver Texture and Low Poly Box

S3 Week 036 Kartika Dagger Part 2 - Silver Texture and Low Poly Box

   So I got a bunch done this week, all thanks to the power of Substance Designer. But before I get to that, first off, I finished sculpting the detail to the kartika, and then switched back over to Maya to make sure the Low Poly fit with the sculpt. With that taken care of, I hopped over to Substance Painter to test the bake. Once that was squared away, I then went over to Substance Designer to start creating the tilable Silver Metal texture.

   Sure, I could have created a silver metal texture job in Substance Painter, but with my added challenge of incorporating Substance Designer for my research assignment, I was very happy with the result. With an easy pipeline established between the sibling programs, I imported over the texture maps to the silver metal to SP, and created a smart material to slap on as the base to my dagger. From there, I went in and added in custom details and hand painted touches. Here's the completed texture :)

   Switching gears, I decided to create a box to hold the kartika dagger in. I updated my reference board to reflect what I've made so far here --

   And there we have it! I'll see ya next week with the gold texture for the kartika, and, fingers-crossed, the box texture complete!