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Press Machine

06th October 2026

Felix Klemenko

3D Artist

ArtStation

Introduction

Hi I’m Felix Klemenko, 3D artist specialized in creating master assets for games.
I had a pleasure working with various types of tasks, from simple visualization to game-ready tanks and their attachments.

Feel free to take a look at my ArtStation and LinkedIn page. For now, I’m looking for new opportunities and improving my skills.

Project Goals

The main requirement was to create a photorealistic pressing machine which should have clear signs of active use, but still be in good working order.

This asset had to be a fast but also a strong submission, with a special technical requirement which I will describe a bit later. It took me 4 days to do from scratch. So, basically, the task is to make the best result in the fastest time possible.

Tools

PureRef – basic application for reference gathering
Autodesk Maya – main tool for scene gathering, modelling, UVs, troubleshooting, etc.
ZBrush – for creating HP, sculpting and adding additional details for baking
Substance Painter – texturing/baking additional textures
Marmoset Toolbag – baking main textures and final renders for this project
Marvelous Designer – cloth simulation

Reference

As the main reference, I used a pair of images that I received as examples:

But I also gathered a few references for my needs. For example, for texturing and final visuals, and also, I wanted to model out the full mechanism of the machine, as I usually do in my portfolio, so it could be used as a real pressing machine in a game.

For this purpose, I found YouTube and other platforms extremely helpful. Also, it is good practice to have a couple of other people’s artworks as mood or quality references.

Modelling

The most important part of modelling is to make your model fit the reference as much as possible. So, the first step is blocking with simple forms to adjust the needed size and proportions.

This asset doesn’t have any exact metrics in the requirements, as some others might have. But thanks to the references, it is possible to understand its size relative to a human. I placed a base mesh with a height of 1.8m next to it and adjusted its basic size to around 1.6m tall.

After your basic size and proportions are adjusted, you can proceed with modelling. Before making an HP version, I do all booleans and bevels in Maya which will be reflected by the geometry, not baked. So, it can basically be called the “raw” version of the low-poly mesh of the asset.

This task required clean, well-built topology, without any holes in the geometry for Nanite, but was not strict on tris. I decided to make it quite smooth, with 16k tris in total.

Then the asset is imported into ZBrush, and there I do some additional booleans which will be baked later on. So, after that, I usually have the final HP version for baking.

If there are organic elements, such as wood here, adding a bit of edge damage on the high-poly with a DamStandard brush in ZBrush is quite enough. It is also possible to add some cracks, which wood usually has, but there is no need to add too much. These have to be only some eye-catching details, not the main focus.

You can also use scans of wood if you have them. That will give the best result in the fastest time possible.

UV & Baking

For UVs, I used packing and unfolding from Maya. Baking is a standard procedure, as always. The geometry was split into bake groups to avoid any issues which might occur if not baked separately.

I wanted to make overlaps in the UVs to increase texel density, so the bakes should be clean, with no signs of overlap. I baked the main maps in Marmoset, then made some clean-ups in Photoshop and then baked additional maps in Substance.

The decorative metalwork was added in SP. It can also be baked from HP, but to allow for some possible reworks, I decided to make it this way.

To increase the texel size, I overlapped some parts which could be tiled. I highlighted them in red.

And the final texel density was 880px/m on a 2048 map.

There was also a requirement to make a cloth piece on the machine, so I used Marvelous Designer to make a mesh, then retopologised it using Maya.

Texturing

Since this is a game asset with a “the sooner the better” amount of time on it, texturing was quite basic, but also had its requirements.

Textures had to be 2048 × 2048 in size, and no gradients were allowed in the metallic map (only 0 and 1), so it means the part should be either fully metal or fully non-metal. There are 2 main materials in this asset which I will break down separately.

Painted Metal

The metal parts have one base, since they are both painted with similar paint. The only thing that separates them is the base colour. Then I added small colour separations to make its colour look interesting but keep the model photorealistic.

The main work for me was on the roughness channel, since I cannot use the metallic map. I had to show metalness with roughness, but it also had to be recognisable as painted metal.

Wood

The main focus on wood is the base colour channel, so the major work here is to make colours look realistic and natural.

After I made the base map, I adjusted other additional colours and damage to the wood, so it looks more natural and belongs to this unique prop.

Lighting & Rendering

The last but not least thing is good renders for models. It is quite important to use a good HDRI map to make realistic renders, as well as correct settings.

I don’t usually have any presets. I like to build renders for every model from scratch. That will make them look unique.

For the required photorealistic look, it is necessary to use only one sky light from an HDRI, because real-life photos don’t have any additional light sources.

And I recommend not using a lot of colour contrast because, in real life, most things tend towards neutrality, but there should be some eye-catching elements. I would also recommend using references for rendering your beauty shots too.