Mushroom Revolver

Software

• Blender – Blockout and UV Layout.
• ZBrush – High Poly Model
• 3DCoat – Retopology
• Marmoset Toolbag – Baking and Rendering
• Adobe Substance 3D Painter – Textures
• Photoshop – Color correction.

Goals

In order to successfully complete the test assignment, I needed to create a weapon in 5-7 days, respecting the restrictions of 10k triangles and one 2k atlas. It was quite a test of my speed.

References & Concept

The concept of this weapon came from, Wardogs CEO & Creative Director, Jade Law.
(Concept is copyright by Wardog Studios – Used with permission)

I also searched for more revolver drawings to get a better grasp of the parts invisible in the concept art, such as the drum and the barrel. I also created 2 versions of the reference art:

1. A blacked-out version. This helps when modeling and sculpting, by giving you a clear and sharp outline for your future model. It also helps preserve proportions.
2. A blurred version. This allows you to get primary colors for texturing. Also makes it easier to grab the right color from the image.

Blockout

During blockout I decided to make a few leaves separately, to save time in the future. This allowed me to save space on the UV layout and optimize the model. I mostly focused on the barrel during this step, and left most of the work with the organic parts for ZBrush.

High Poly

I’ve spent about 2 days doing high poly work. This step is always difficult for me personally and takes a lot of concentration. I didn’t want to be too hasty and ruin something.

Roots, as expected, were the toughest part. They always turned out kinda plastic-y and seemed to blend together. Here, Tim from the Polygon Academy YouTube channel came to my rescue. I can recommend his video on wood sculpting both to beginners and to experienced 3D artists.

As you can see, in the end, my roots started to look a lot more like roots, rather than a piece of molten plastic. At this point, my time began to run quite short and I decided to move on and work on details. Barrel patterns and plant spikes were made using Extrude.

I also added a few more leaves and a butterfly for some variety. The drum was made in Blender, with details added in ZBrush.

The model was asymmetrical, according to the reference and I followed suit with my model.

Low Poly

I always do retopology in 3D Coat. It’s a nice program and can run on a potato.
Here roots again became an issue and I’ve spent quite some time on them. I also had to keep the poly count restriction in mind.

Retopology is the most relaxing part of the process. You just get to make some tea and enjoy the process. Now I understand it a lot better and can give a few pointers, which I myself missed before starting work:

1. Try to make all of your polygons roughly equal in size, without any awkward jumps. This is important as it makes UV Layout and Baking a lot easier. A clean model means a clean layout and a clean bake.
2. Don’t create extra polygons, when it is not necessary. A simple example:

UV

The layout was done in Blender with a few add-ons: Texel Destiny, Magic UV, TexTools, UVPackmaster2 and UV Toolkit.
Since the model was stylized, I tried to minimize the cuts by working with Display Stretch – Angle.

This was the result:

Now I moved on to using RizomUV, since it is more convenient and can cut and smooth out even complex geometry very neatly.

Blender can also be used to make good layouts, so it’s mostly a matter of taste, but if you want a better understanding of how the process works, I recommend trying RizomUV and seeing for yourself.

Baking

I always use Marmoset Toolbag for baking everything but Position maps, since it doesn’t always work for me. I use Substance Painter for Position baking.

In this model, I also use Alpha Mask for the butterfly wings and leaves. I divided the model to avoid baking additional Ambient Occlusion and to give myself a better view of some objects from all sides.

Artifacts were fixed using Offset and Skew, as well as Photoshop for some particularly stubborn ones. Also, don’t forget to triangulate your model before baking – it’s important.

Texture

Finally, we get to the texturing. I’ve put the leaves I have created in place, using Blender, and did some light geometry editing. I have created flat, slightly bent and heavily bent leaves beforehand.

After that, I moved the model to my texturing software and set up the scene. I often use  Environment Map – Studio Tomoco, and sometimes Mondarrain 3.

For best results, use neutral lighting and high Anti-Aliasing. I changed the shader right away, added an opacity channel, created a separate layer for that channel and added the pre-baked Alpha Mask to that layer.

This is what it looked like in Substance 3D Painter + Bake before texturing:

First of all, I added color and separated materials into folders: wood, leaves, metal and so on.

If you work with ID masks, you have probably run into the problem of material transitions being too sharp.

Here’s one solution:

Add a Blur filter with minimum values to each material layer and adjust the Level until the line looks neither too blurry nor too sharp.

Mask view works best for this process.

This is how the result looks like:

I used the Base Color channel for my color work. This allows you to see the clear color without getting distracted by glares, roughness, metallic and so on.

Sometimes you have to deviate from the reference and add some brightness, saturation, or contrast by yourself. You should avoid over-relying on the color picker, as it can make your model flat-looking and boring.

After finishing with the materials, I added some post-processing.
This usually includes AO, roughness, lighting, sharpness and other small things, which make your model brighter and more interesting.

Outro

I’ve spent 6 days on this revolver. My work got the approval of my colleagues and I passed the test. After I added it to my portfolio, it also received many great responses.

Thanks to Game Artist Team for their interest! Now I feel like I’m moving in the right direction, and will continue doing so, as well as telling you about any interesting 3D techniques I discover while creating new works for my portfolio.