Kerosene Lamp
Introduction
Hello to all readers. My name is Serhii, and I am 33 years old. I'm from Ukraine, but the circumstances are such that I've been living in Great Britain for a year.
I am very grateful to this country for accepting me and supporting me as I needed an operation on my hand and time to recover.
I am a technological engineer by profession, but I have always had various creative hobbies, such as sculpting from plasticine or clay. I devoted all my free time to realizing my dream - mastering 3D Modeling.
Project
The purpose of my work “Kerosene lamp” was to create a project for a portfolio.
The object was chosen specifically – it had to be a combination of different types of metals and glass. I wanted to get as much practice as possible with texturing these materials.
References
The first step is to find references. Most beginners neglect this. I have come to the opinion that high-quality and interesting references are half the battle for a professional.
It’s better to spend a whole day looking for references than to constantly return to this stage during the work.
Blockout
I did the blocking and drafting in Maya. My recommendation to all beginners is to pay attention to the silhouette of your object – it should attract the attention of the viewer.
Sometimes it is better to move away from realism and slightly increase the small details.
Modelling
Then I export the project to the ZBrush program to create high poly and detailed sculpting. This is another no less important stage (although there are no unimportant stages in good works – every little thing is important).
I import the high poly into the Maya program and create a low poly in it. Then I do UV mapping in Maya and RizomUV programs.
The task was to fit the lamp into one 4k texture set at a high texel density. Thus, the texel density is 70 px/unit. This is personal work for the portfolio and not for the game, so I did not optimize the grid.
Texturing
Normals are baked in the Marmoset program. Unfortunately, Substance Painter did not provide the quality and customization I needed for this stage.
I created the textures in the Substance Painter program. This stage took most of my time. Many masks were drawn by hand using alphas. Stencils and alphas are a separate story.
For quality work, you need to constantly search for them on various resources, often create them yourself, and maybe even buy them.
Conclusion
To be honest, at the final stage of “Render,” I was in a bit of a hurry because I wanted to publish the work as soon as possible. The render was created in Marmoset. I ran into a problem with the rendering of the glass – I had to redo it several times. But thanks to this, I now have a good experience that I will use in my future work.
By the way, my mentor – a professional 3D artist Yaroslav Lohvinov (https://www.artstation.com/yl_art), helped me make a big leap towards realism, providing excellent feedback and not letting my hands go down.
Today I’m looking for ideas for a new portfolio project. I am actively studying English, and shortly, I plan to send my resume to a company in the game dev industry.
So now I’m open to suggestions. I wish everyone creative inspiration and thank you for your attention.
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