Modeling & Texturing Student Reel

Bounty Hunter Spaceship

The "Bounty Hunter Spaceship" is a central asset I worked about six weeks on. I planned it for quite a long time since I discovered a really cool concept art of a “F-371 Halbert“ from the video game “Halo“. 

As Jakob Klauenberg, a classmate and aspiring generalist, told me he was planning on doing a space scene, we enthusiastically decided to  combine our two ideas. 

The blocking phase in Maya was the first stage of course and within weeks it went from a rough shape to a rather detailed one.

When the model and the UVs were done I was thrilled to start texturing and to see the spaceship with all its features.

I put the mesh in Substance Painter and started with the main colors and materials. The normal and height details followed and were integrated in the utility maps though anchor points.

I observed real jet planes and how the heat from the exhausters influence the near materials. To add a personal touch to the ship made the most fun. I made some stickers with the help of “Stable Diffusion“ (an AI application) and put them on the surface with a scatter tool Jakob build with Substance Painter. Additionally I designed a logo for the Bounty Hunter that I sprayed on the left side. 

Saad Hassan added the really cool exhaust effects, which completed the project. 

It is always fun to see the process of ones work getting further and further, but in this case it was especially satisfying. Saad Hassan added the really cool exhaust effects, which completed the project.

Cellar Bar Daytime

In my  interior bar scene I was responsible for all aspects.

The search for a fitting idea and concept definitely was the longest amongst all my demo pieces. I decided to do this small interior, because the amount of assets and their variety were perfect to show a great scale of my skills, even further than just modeling and texturing. It also allowed me to do some lighting and scene building.

The great thing about such a accumulation of assets is that I could completely switch between modeling, UVs and texturing in short amount of times.

The texturing of the jukebox was especially tricky, as most of them are colorful and are really bright. But those would not fit in this ambience, so I had to work with what I had.

I started to shade some textures to match it with the rest of the bar and experimented with some plants from “Quixel“.

When everything was rendered I stepped into Nuke and did a little color grading. Furthermore I added a chromatic aberration, a little camera grain, lens distortion and ZDefocued it.

The project was done in five and a half weeks. It took the longest to render, but the time I spent on creating the single bits felt like a few days. 

Hunting Archer

As I intended to create a modeling/ texturing reel, I knew I want to add a character with a balance of organic and hard surface elements.

As I am a huge fan of DC’s “Green Arrow“ and hooded archers in general (Robin Hood e.g.), it did not take long to come up with a fitting idea.

I collected many references and drew an original concept, to get my imagined character on paper.

I mainly decided to do this project first, because it was a group project originally. My job was the character modeling & texturing, while another student creates a forest environment, lights and poses the archer in the scene. Unfortunately I had to continue alone and make up a plan B. I kept sculpting the character in ZBrush and blocked the armor pieces. I set myself a time window of 10 weeks for the whole project to finish.

The first steps were to model the base of the character, especially the face and hand. I simultaneously watched a video course on anatomy before I started to sculpt every day. 

The armor was the next part, which I did in ZBrush and in Maya. It was completely new to me to do hard surface stuff in the sculpting program, but it was much fun.

In Maya I could define some shapes and could create a workflow with the strengths of both programs.

I also had to start with the cloth in Marvelous Designer, a software I just recently got familiar with. Luckily my clothes were not that complicated and I could go over to texture the skin in Mari quite quickly.

I asked Nicolas Mejia, a classmate who specialized in animation and rigging, if he’d like to give the character a little idle animation. From this point on, we worked on it together. He did an awesome job with it and also supported me in some other aspects with his expertise.

It went pretty stressful in the final phase of the project, as Nico and I had to compromise our time capacities, so we did the best we could to get a good result to present. 

This demo project was an educational experience. It made me make different plans and work according them. I learned a lot, not only about sculpting and texturing, but about much more as building a good pipeline and use multiple programs to get a good sufficient result. 

In the end I am happy with how it turned out and that I could keep my time schedule.