Introduction
My name is Ivan and I am a 3D Artist from Russia.
I specialize in creating photorealistic game props with the goal of achieving the highest level of realism in game assets.
Software
- Blender: Low-Poly Modeling and Rendering
- RizomUV: UV Unwrapping
- ZBrush: High-Poly Sculpting
- Marmoset Toolbag: Map Baking
- Figma: Creating Vector Icons
- Substance 3D Painter: Texturing
- Photoshop: Post-Processing
Project
Before delving into the breakdown of my new work, I would like to give a shoutout to the folks from the creative group PolyPlacers.
After observing the works of weapon artists from this creative group, I have concluded that working with textures will be the most crucial aspect of my development.
In fact, this is a rework of one of my first projects.
I decided that the asset was interesting enough to be remade and added to my portfolio. Initially, I encountered significant issues with the bake, and the texturing was quite unimpressive.
This time around, I decided to adhere more closely to the reference when texturing and also replaced the unremarkable standard microphone from this radio station with an Oktava II-MD-55.
Here is a photo of the reference radio station R-619 and the Oktava II-MD-55 microphone.
As this is a remake, I have both the old low-poly and high-poly meshes.
While I’m completely satisfied with the high-poly mesh, the low-poly mesh had too few polygons, resulting in poor baking quality and making close-up shots impossible.
Therefore, I slightly increased the polygon count in some areas to improve the baking results.
Tips and Tricks: Quick Vector Elements
To quickly create labels, diagrams, and other elements for the radio station, I used Figma.
It’s very convenient to export dozens of elements at once from Figma.
This is what my overall project looks like with all the alpha maps in Figma. To export them as separate files, all I need to do is select the necessary frames and click on “export.”
Overlapping
To achieve a high texel density for the wire, I divided it into equal parts and stacked all the islands overlapping.
Since the wire does not require unique textures, this is an obvious and important step in optimizing UVs.
Texturing
Try to incorporate as much information about the material as possible into each texture channel. This is important to make the material look diverse.
However, it is also important to avoid excessive contrast between details and the overall background. Too much contrast can make the asset look cluttered and unnatural.
Presentation
Usually, I try to set up studio lighting for my assets, but this time, I thought it would be an interesting approach to simulate a non-professional photoshoot on a wide-angle lens film camera. Therefore, I set up the only light source directly in front of the camera to simulate a camera flash and used environment objects from the Quixel library.
Afterward, I proceeded to post-process the images in Photoshop.
Post-processing
When post-processing my renders in Photoshop, I usually apply the following effects in this order:
- Camera Raw to adjust contrast, enhance details, and adjust highlights and shadows.
- Motion blur (with small values) to simulate a slight camera shake.
- I slightly stretch the image in width using one of the RGB channels to simulate chromatic aberration.
- I add noise to the image on a per-channel basis to make it appear more natural and to control the amount of noise for each color.
Final
That’s all! I hope the review of my work was interesting to you, and maybe you learned something new from it. Thank you for your attention, and I wish you creative success!
