Metal Skull - Foundation Final Project 2023

Metal Skull - Foundations Final Project 2023

Foundations term at Think Tank Training Centre is done! 4 weeks of 3D wrestling felt a lot longer than a month, but I've never put so many consecutive days and hours into a project before, extremely proud and very tired. It would have been impossible without the guidance of my mentor Derrick Sesson, and the support from the discord crew!

My chosen concept was a sci-fi piece, created by the very talented Aleksandr Plikhta, please do check out his other work on Artstation.

The main focus for this piece was to really hone my hard surface modelling skills. Using a mixture of sculpting, polishing and panelling, I was able to achieve a mesh that (once textured) felt and appeared like proper worked metal.

The scene had lots of small working parts that required individual detailing. The jaw and lower face for exmaple was made up of small panels, each of which were subdivided and polished to ensure they all fit together in a manufactured way.

In terms of process, the majority of the initial block in was done very loosely in Zbrush, to get the general shape of the head and neck down. From there it was Maya, where I slowly built up and worked the forms until they fit the shape of the concept. 

It was important for the whole piece to look good from multiple angles and work in 3D as well as from the the side/render view. Once I was happy with the angles, I began polishing piece by piece, ensuring that important object history was kept, for a non-destructive workflow.

I placed lights in key areas inside and outside the mesh to understand how the model would react once lit, adjusting light source colour and then putting together some basic test renders.

When the bulk of the modelling had been completed, I spent a few days going through the model, tweaking objects that looked out of place and rebuilding if needed. At this point I added basic Blinn test materials for the metal (to spot any surface lumps or bumps), and glass for the cranium, tubes and eyes.

UVs were completed at a 4k map size, and the mesh was prepped and checked for texturing. Only the metals would get textures as the glass and secondary materials would be created in shaders.

In terms of texturing software I used Substance Painter, mainly so I would be able to dial in the metal materials relatively quickly, and go back and fourth into Maya to adjust. I find that the render engine within Substance Painter is also a useful way to visualize how textures are reacting to light and shadow.

UV layout

After the textures were in a good place, my final week was focused around setting up the scene and prepping the model for final renders in V-ray. I added the rest of the lights, and created a duplicate Maya scene just to render the volumetrics in the foreground and background, and the dust particles (using Arnold). This was to ensure that I wasn't working on just one very heavy scene, especially when fog is involved!

It was important here though, that the light sources between the main scene and the volumetric scene matched in both colour and intensity, to ensure continuity when it came to compositing the renders together in Photoshop 

With the layers combined, it was then time to blend the renders together and do some light image editing to achieve the desired look!

Final beauty render

Final render breakdown

Mesh: V-Ray

Volumetrics and particles: Arnold

Textures: Substance Painter

Lighting: V-Ray, Arnold

Image editing: Photoshop