A Joyful Stroll

Final Renders

Summary

Here I have compiled the images from progresses, my 3d stager scene, model sheet, updated UV, and foliage.

behind-the-scene of my Substance 3D stager scene file. 

In terms of topology, I was not too concerned about optimizing the model because this project will mainly only be used for 1 frame renders and not used as a game asset. Therefore, I used the high poly version of the model throughout all stages. 

There were some adjustments that had to be made for the UV during the texturing phase, so this is the updated UV set.

When creating a robot, or anything hard surface. I really enjoy coming up with how the mechanism would work. Other than that, adding some sense of functionality also sells your model and makes it feel believable. Personally, I really love to imagine and create those mechanisms and would spend quite some time coming up with the design. That is why it's important for me to roughly draw out the design shape language and then roughly map the mechanism before moving to 3D. I usually procrastinate a lot if I do not go through those steps. ( if you can't tell by now, I really really love the process view)

This is actually my first time projecting foliage textures on planes. So I might be doing it wrongly, anyways, here is my process for creating foliage for the final render.

First things first, I browse through texture.com to find what I need, download the textures and then move to Maya. Here I created a polygon plane and apply a new material on it. I then insert the opacity map I got from texture.com and turn on the texture preview. then I start roughly shaping the geometry to fit the texture. Since the foliage that is shown in my final render is mostly blurred out, I did not spend too much time perfecting the geometry or UV shell.

Moving on, I then roughly shaped the geo to how I wanted it to look like. So lets say the leaf, I reference some real life leaf images and observe how it would bend and roughly shaped my polygon as such. For the grass, I wanted it to peak out of the drains and generally sprouting from the buildings. Therefore, the geo was slightly bent outwards to create that effect.

Here is where the fun begins, there is 2 ways to go about this, you can start layering the grass in Maya or export out the geometries as shown on the top left image, and then move it to your render engine, in my case Substance 3D stager. There I start overlapping/layering the grass so it creates a 3D illusion. The foliage would not work, if I had only used 1 of the geometry, it will inevitably look too flat.

Foliage texture links:-

https://www.textures.com/download/3DAtlas0218/133430

https://www.textures.com/download/3DAtlas0409/138192

Overall, had a great time working on this project and can't wait to work on more stuff. Down below are my artstation and instagram if you're interested.

https://www.instagram.com/two.obj/

https://www.artstation.com/chris11choong

Texturing

For the texturing of the robot, sticking to my initial idea, since the robot is living in a post-apocalyptical world, I would imagine that it had already gone through a lot. Therefore, during the texturing process, I would put the base material first, then gradually add layers to wear it down.

In the process view above you can see the initial phase of the texturing, and then gradually adding wear, damages, rust, dirt and dust. For most of the joints, I used brass and some iron textures, and aluminum for the antenna. As for the body plates, it is painted metal.

Look Development

Since I have my render setup ready since the last couple updates, I would generally export my textures and then jump to Stager to check on the textures and what I would want to tweak. Its a whole lot of back and forth, but it's better than rendering the model in Substance since that won't be the final setup for your renders, and would be inefficient. Some things that I have added into the scene is a simple background I modeled and tweaking around the lights and camera one last time.

Alright, getting back to the robot, generally, the robots lower body will be more dirty, from walking past mud and etc. As for the upper body, the paint has peeled off and it has generally gone through a lot but still happy to be around. I also took the feedback I got from Alwyn Hunt and Pablo Gomez adjusting the pose of the robot right hand and leg. Thank you for that :D

Since the beginning I had always imagined that the final render shot would have overgrown roots, plants around the area. So, for the next couple of days I will be populating the scene with foliage.

Thank you.

Hello again, a little update for the project, I have completed UV Unwrapping, and set up a look development scene and will be moving forward to texturing & blocking the environment.

Below I will be covering the progress that I have made this couple of days.

UV Unwrap

UV Unwrap is done in Maya. For the Robot, I have utilized 2 UV space. One for the upper body and lower body, with a texel density of 40 & 50 accordingly in a 2048 map size.

Posing

After UV-ing is completed, In Maya, I proceeded to roughly frame the final render and then started posing the robot. Since I did not, and don't plan to rig the robot, during the modeling stages I had already properly planned out how to group each polygon and therefore could pose it without much difficulties.

Look Development

In Substance 3D Stager, I have updated the scene with the latest camera angle, with a 24mm focal length and Depth of Field in the center of the Robot. I picked 24mm focal length to create motion in the composition.

Other than that, I added a HDRI that I got from polyhaven (Link below) and a rim light. I will be using this lighting to judge the texturing and progressively work on the look development of the project.

Credits
https://polyhaven.com/a/venice_sunrise

The image above is rendered in Substance 3D Stager. 

Hi there, a small progress update this week. The model is almost complete, I will be doing some adjustments before moving on to UV-ing.

Since my plan is to render the model in Stager, I went ahead and started testing out the software... Currently, I am using GPU to render, and so far I'm liking the result.

Coming up the plan will be to UV, pose the robot, and block the environment.

Little update here, blocked the overall look of the robot. Spend most of my time modeling and thinking about the mechanism of the legs... I went thru a few variations and ended up with this, pretty happy with what I have right now!
Will be moving on with the rest and will start posing it once I have a more solid model.

The idea came from imagining what it would look like in a post-apocalyptical world where sentient robots roams around abandoned cities... and that's where this sketch came to be. One of the alternative ideas for this is that little robots will follow like little ducklings. Well, if time allows, that might be added in.

Because I will be busy the following month, I limit myself until the end of this month to finish up this project, so this will be a fun challenge.

In the past working on my own creations, I generally struggle with starting or make significant progress when I do not draw out my ideas, thus, I making a habit of doing rough sketches so that I can quicken my blocking stage. Changes on the design will be made the more I progress into this project.

Since I limit my time to complete this by the end of the month, I didn't want to overcomplicate the design of the robot. I went for a jock-like shape language but a robot with a innocent-like personality. That being said, generally when I say I try not to overcomplicate things, is always when I will most definitely overcomplicate things. haha. Anyways, thanks for reading, and have a good day.