Colonial Havana Alley & Stylized Cuckoo Clock
Fascinated by stunning and cinematic historical environments as for cute and colored props. These works, of which I am very proud, are the reflection of my first step into the world of 3D done during my master's degree on Voxel School.
Hi to everyone! My name is Yaroslav, and I will be showcasing two projects I worked on simultaneously for a period of around 5 months during my master's degree at Voxel School. I started with little knowledge of 3D modeling and its pipeline, and I finished with two solid results: the "Colonial Havana Alley" and the "Stylized Cuckoo Clock".
Having learned a lot of techniques from scratch, I am now capable of handling any further modeling project as it would be done in a standard production. This experience was challenging but incredibly rewarding, I won't lie!
Without further ado, let's begin with the environment!
Colonial Havana Alley
The first step was to decide the concept art that I will use to create the environment. Because I'm an all time fan of historical times, I decided to go with some Golden Age of Piracy art, for that reason I decided to choose the work of Andy Walsh.
My goal was to make the scenario more realistic and more faithful to the concept, while also learning as much as possible since I had little knowledge about the 3D world. Additionally, I aimed to create an atmosphere that would transport viewers back in time and inspire them to imagine stories that could have taken place in the environment.
Furthermore, having photography as a hobby, I looked a lot forward on trying different lighting set ups with the intention of creating totally unique moods with the same environment.
Breakdown
Since this project had a time constraint, I decided to aim for a beauty shot. Additionally, due to the deadline, some last-minute decisions were required. That's why certain assets, including almost all textures and foliage, were sourced from Quixel Bridge.
However, it is important to note that not all elements were from the library. For the buildings, all assets had to be created from scratch. Furthermore, any assets used from the library had to be modified to maintain a cohesive scene.
For more detailed information, you can check the breakdown here.
Timelapse
In the video below, you can see the iterative process of the project and how the props and textures were modified as the environment progressed. Furthermore, you will notice that once the lights and camera were parameterized and fine-tuned, the scene improved significantly, making the imperfections that bothered me become meaningless.
Stylized Cuckoo Clock
As I mentioned before, this prop was created in parallel with the environment. However, this time I didn't have the freedom to use assets from a library; everything needed to be made by hand in 3D.
The design of the clock was based on the concept art by Sunny Li, and my goal was to be as accurate to the concept as possible. The main objective was to convey sophistication, elegance, and a sense of organicity that the original piece had.
The creation process was pretty standard but challenging as well. First, I made the blockout on 3Ds Max and later, by the use of splines, symmetry and TurboSmooth modifiers I ended up with a basic high poly model that later, with ZBrush, I added alphas to it. Finally, the last step involved texturing in Substance 3D Painter, relying heavily on the curvature sobel texture and gradients.
Final thoughts
I learned a lot throughout the entire development process of both projects. While there is always room for improvement, I consider these results to be quite good and a solid first step towards achieving professional-quality outcomes at the level of remarkable productions.
Hope you have enjoyed my work as much as I have, and I look forward to sharing with you more of my projects in the future!
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