Introduction
Hello, I’m Pablo Fuster López, I’m a Junior 3D Props and Environment artist and right now I’m about to finish studying my Master's in AAA Video Games at Florida Universitaria.
Goals
The main reason for making this asset was to improve my texturing skills, I wasn’t looking for a piece with great difficulty in modeling, but at the same time it did have a great potential for texturing, I also wanted to achieve a good piece in my portfolio.
Software
To model I used 3D Max, the textures are made from Substance Painter, the bake and the renders are Marmoset Toolbag 4 and the post-processing was done photoshop and finally, the table was taken from MegaScans.
References
You have to do some preliminary research before starting to model, I was inspired by a model that I found on ArtStation from the portfolio of Eloi Farriol. Once you have some decent concepts of the model you are going to make, you then look for real references of the model and its proportions to be able to start modelling something realistic.
Blocking
To start the blocking you have to have the main reference to begin making the shapes of the model with good topology and correct proportions. In this case, I divided the asset into two parts, handle and edge, this was simple modeling, however, when I make weapons with many more pieces I like to have everything well organized so that at the time of the bake it is not a waste of time.
Highpoly
A good distribution of polygons is very important for the turbosmooth to work properly and to use a similar distance in the support loops edges on each piece. In video games, the edges of the pieces are made a little smoother than in reality to facilitate the baking and to notice the smoothness at a greater distance.
Lowpoly
The optimization of this hero asset is not the most optimal as it will be a part of the portfolio and must be shown with the highest possible quality. When it comes to making the low poly model, the most important thing is to keep the proportions and the silhouette, otherwise, it will give you errors at the time of the bake.
In AAA games, when it comes to optimizing, you have to take into account the size of the parts, the smaller the detail the less geometry, as can be seen in the picture with the cylinders.
UVs
It is essential to have good straight and well-cut UVs so that you don’t get problems with the normals and lose information. When I finish the UVs I use the subtool TexTools tool and Smoothing Groups by Uv Shells to remove gradients from the normal map.
Bake
Using the program Marmoset toolbag 4, I bake at 4k to extract the maps of normal, curvature and ambient occlusion to help texturize.
I used some floaters to simulate geometry in the poly low as it was a pain to try and skew the normals to project the directions correctly.
Texture Substance painter
The blade is made of stainless steel and the handle is made of nylon.
We’ll start with the handle, the first thing I did was add several layers of height to give the resemblance of the nylon until it looks good, I did many variations.
I then put wear at the level of macro detail and micro detail so that it looks good at both distances, I’m going to show some of the dust so you see what I mean. I also did this to the wear and tear at the time.
On the metal, I used two different metals one for the edge and one for the other part, I put a variation of color RGB and variation of roughness.
Lighting & Rendering
First, I try to square the camera angles to see what the renders are going to look like. For rendering the floor I use one or two lights to illuminate the scene and a light rim for the asset to have a good presentation, I usually work with the same HDRI Studio Tomoco in Marmoset as in Substance to build a similar appearance.
Conclusion
Mainly, I made this asset because I wanted to get a good level of realism and skills in Substance Painter and I was quite satisfied with the result.
I hope you liked the article and that it has helped you in some way.
Finally, thanks to Florida Universitaria and especially to Jose Manuel Guevara for giving me feedback towards the end of my degree, also to Eloi Farriol for his modelling workflow techniques, he has helped me a lot. Finally to Kike Tordera for his wonderful tips on Substance Painter, thank you very much.
I’ll put their ArtStations here for you to take a look.
Kike Tordera: https://www.artstation.com/kikito225
Eloi Farriol: https://www.artstation.com/thunderhawk_ibz
Jose Manuel Guevara: https://www.artstation.com/jmguevara
