Dualsense | Les Paul

My Demo Showreel 2024

PS5 Dualsense Breakdown

How to get started?

In this video, "On Mars 3D" shows his modelling workflow which consists in creating curves following prospective views of a sport car seat, and then attaching the surfaces's verteces on the them by a simple curve snap tool (which I didn't know the existence so far).

In this course, "polypaul" shows his workflow within the modelling phase, which consists in a 3D scanned mesh of the real controller (he used this 3D scan by "Kabliga"), used as a reference to create nurbs guides which he used to build all the different surfaces of the controller. So I decided to replicate his workflow, but moving it into Maya, following "On Mars 3D" video's tips, and doing the 3D scan mesh by myself as a personal challenge. Yeah, so fun! But I didn't know how to achieve that.

Seeking for 3D scanning process tips

I started to search for YouTube videos to get more informations about how to do an acceptable 3D scan of an object, and the following videos gave me a basic knowledge about what I needed to do to achieve that.

The most important things that I learned watching these videos about 3D scanning are:

1_Wait for a cloudy day to have diffuse light to avoid shadows on the object surfaces(or use a place where you can manage the light);
2_Keep your object still during the shooting process;
3_The more images you have, the more precise your scan will be;
4_Shoot images staying at the same distance and maintaining the same height of your camera during the 360 shooting around the object;
5_Preproduction steps are important as the postproduction steps, managing all pictures to have the same colors/exposure/contrast etc.

With all these informations, I started doing some tests, with a mug, inside my apartment, with bad lighting and using my phone as a camera.

This is what turned out taking 83 pictures all around the mug, just with a couple of turnarounds. Pretty accurate, isn't it? I used Reality Capture software to calculate the 3D model, and I was pretty happy with that, but to get the export you need to pay some money, so I searched for some other softwares that could help me without the need of paying money. I found Meshroom, a free license software that allows you to get 3D meshes from pictures. It was time to do some product shooting!

How to do a Dualsense 360° shooting?

Yeah, this could be a reasonable question, but I quickly solved the issue of holding the controller still by using some everyday life item (more or less).

Maybe not the most professional setup, but it worked quite good for my purpose. I started taking pictures with my phone, I did different shootings, but everytime I finished the process I needed to wait until I could finally see if my effort was enough or not. I did the process again and again, and the results were always bad, because of the bad light, the focus of the camera was always changing, post production gave low quality images.
So, I decided to do something more, and I started using a medium-low price professional camera to take pictures, and the things started getting better, but still no any good results were coming out. I was a bit discouraged, but then I noticed something:

for every output model, the most precise and accurated scanned part was always the back, the text and logos area to be more precise. So I understood that maybe I needed more reference points on the controller, and I suddenly thought about actors motion capture, which consists in placing some dots on actor's face to help the animation process.
So I basically followed this idea, and I putted some paper tape pieces all around the surface of the Dualsense parts, drawing dots on every piece, like so:

I repeated the shooting process once again, and this time I achieved my purpose:

This is what have turned out using Meshroom as the output software, giving him 287 images, postproducted using Lightroom. Not a perfect result, but that was enough to me to start the modelling phase.
Just for my personal curiosity, I wanted to use the same images to see what Reality Capture was capable to give as an output, and this is what I got:

A completely different level of quality, even with textures. It seems the same of the pictures, even if with some little artifacts. But, anyway, it was time to do some modelling!

Modelling Process

First of all, I imported the rough Meshroom's output mesh inside Maya, and started creating some lines to build a sort of exoskeleton of the shapes and volumes. I did so by putting the rough mesh as a "live surface", which gives you the opportunity to snap anything to the surface of the mesh in this status. So I snapped every curve point to the mesh and then I arranged their position in order to create this "cage".

Along with the curves, I started modelling the first surfaces, trying to match the proportions of the reference mesh, since its quality was not perfect. I just created half of every surface, since I could have mirrored them lately, except for directional and triangle/circle/cross/square buttons.

With half controller modelled, I just mirrored the black and white body surfaces, obtaining the entire controller. I just modelled a couple things more: PS button, holes for buttons, glass parts for directional and triangle/circle/cross/square buttons. As a final step of modelling phase, I extruded all flat surfaces, giving them a thickness (especially for black and white body surfaces).

Now that everything was modelled, I was ready for UVs, before the textures phase.

Texturing Process

I exported the entire controller mesh, with UVs done, and imported it inside Adobe Substance 3D Painter, getting started with some texturing, but soon I faced one of the first problems: how to achieve that white body pattern on the back side of the controller?

For those who didn't know, this is how the back white body part of a PS5 Dualsense looks. A huge amount of these tiny triangles/circles/crosses/squares is creating a texture that you will never notice just by touching them, but if you look closely, you will notice them! And this is amazing! (I found the above image here)

But, going back to my problem, I jumped into Adobe Illustrator, trying to figure out how to create a pattern like the above one.

I created this pattern, using "Transform Each" tool, which helped me to randomly rotate every single symbol. Then I created a pattern, with the Object > Pattern > Make tool. After a bit of manual modifies, I obtained the following pattern:

After that, I exported the white body's UV from Maya, I imported it in Illustrator, and make a couple of tests, in order to get a result that matches with the real one:

Another problem I was facing was the stick's pattern, the one you can see on the border of the stick (I found the following image here).

Back in Adobe Illustrator once again, I drew the basic shape of 1 of those 3 point stars, with a gradient that would give me the result needed for a good Height effect once I got back in Substance Painter. Before this, I used Photoshop to give this pattern a circle loop, using the "Polar Coordinates" tool, discovered watching this YouTube tutorial by "Helen Bradley".

Last thing that took a bit of time was the white body back side's text. I needed to find all the logos to draw them correctly, so I used Google Lens to do that. Simply by taking a picture of each logo, one by one, I've been able to find them, taking a screen of them, put them inside Illustrator and using the "Image Trace" tool to get a pretty accurate result. I changed them a bit, just not to be the same (to avoid any copyright problem). I putted also some different text compared to my controller, just to personalize it as I wanted. You will find a comparison between my controller original text and logos, and the digital ones I made below (with a couple Easter Eggs).

Rendering Process

I exported textures from Substance Painter, and then I created the controller's material in Maya, connecting each map to the correspondent knot. After that, I started creating a render setup, placing some lights, some cameras, and I started doing some animation tests. The following renders are frames of the final animation (which you have seen in my Showreel at the beginning).

The End

And so this was the process behind my recreation of a realistic PS5 Dualsense. It was a long, sometimes tedious journey, but I think this gave me new skills to insert inside my bag, which is becoming bigger with every project I make!
I am really proud and happy about the outcome of this one, since I was really determinated to do something cool, and I think I did my job. Let me know your thoughts about it, I really want to hear them!

All rights about the design of the Dualsense are reserved to Sony and PlayStation. This was just a fanmade project to push me beyond my limits and become a better 3D artist.

Rights for the music in Showreel video goes to Alessandro Bertaccini.

Thanks for your attention and see you in my next projects!

Gibson Les Paul Breakdown

How it started

I began this project in my final weeks at BigRock School in august 2023. I aimed to faithfully replicate the renowned Gibson electric guitar model "Les Paul", striving for realism. As first thing, I started to search for references, in order to get as much details as possible for every piece that this model is composed by.

Modelling process

I found a blueprint image, that I used as reference image inside Maya. I imported it twice, for both Top and Front view, in order to follow the shapes, taking care to perfectly adjust their position and size. And then I began to draw the main body, then the pickups and the bridge.

I continued with the modelling, following the blueprint for the main shapes, and using my gathered references to model smaller parts such the knobs or the strap buttons.

As you can see on the previous images, I started modeling the first string, but it was a nightmare to me because I modelled it starting with a cylinder, and then I continued by extruding again and again its edges, from the tailpiece all the way up to the string tuning post, but this was taking too long. So I looked for a solution on the web, and I found an answer: creating pipes by curves.

I understood that I just needed to create curves that was going from the tailpiece, to the bridge "hourglass" piece, straight up to the string tensor, then a couple of turns around the string tuning post, and as a final step, inside its hole. I did like this for all the 6 strings.

To do the final turns around the string tuning posts, I used the "Live Surface" tool, and then I draw curves all around them, then I turned the "Live Surface" off, and I ended the curves passing them through the hole.

In addition, I would have loved to do the beginning piece of all the strings, even if they would not have been seen. So, using the Create > Polygon Primitives > Helix tool, i created these hidden parts (just for my personal skill growth).

Soon, I faced another problem: since I modelled the main body and the guitar neck as separated pieces (like they are in the real life), it turned out this weird thing.

So I decided to go back and I merged these pieces together, in order to avoid this issue and to have a continuous surface (as it seems in real life guitars).

With modelling phase finished, it was time for some UVs.

Texturing Process

My first thoughts about textures didn't change throughout the entire process: I wanted to create an aged guitar model, with some imperfections, trying to give it a story to tell. That's why I collected some grunge references, in order to understand how an electric guitar used for years could have been looked. 

That is how I worked for the entire texturing process: adding little imperfections, especially for the rough channel, as you can see in the following turntable.

Below you will find some of the alphas I created using Illustrator, to add details in the texturing process.

Rendering Process

Exported the textures from Substance Painter, I did all the steps to import all the maps and connect them to their specific material shader knot. Then, for the rendering setup, I looked for some online inspiration, seeking for somebody who shooted any guitar model in real life, just to figure out what kind of things were import to keep in mind.

I found a couple of interesting and helping sources:
1_In this video, photographer "Rodion Kovenkin" helps "8Bomb Custom Workshop" on how to photograph some guitars;
2_In this webpage, photographer "Karl Taylor" explains his guidelines on how he takes amazing guitar pictures.

Following these sources tips, I started setting up the render scenes, as you can see for the following example.

After the rendering phase, I imported the render passes inside Photoshop, where I postproducted all the best shots using "Camera Raw Filter" tool, and adding some DOF. Below you will see the Beauty exported from Arnold, compared to the final render postproducted.

This is the same process I followed for all other shots I made.
Here they are.

The End

This was the breakdown of my Gibson Les Paul project. There were several difficulties along the way, but I'm glad they pushed me to challenge myself, grow and achieve what I am proud and very satisfied about today. I will continue to study to grow and improve my skills.

All rights about the design of the Les Paul are reserved to Gibson. This was just a fanmade project to push me beyond my limits and become a better 3D artist.

Hope you like it!

Conclusions

Thank you all for your attention! I hope my breakdowns to be as much understandable as possible. Any question about them would be answered by myself in person! Can't wait to read your comments about them.

I want to say "Thanks!" to all The Rookies's stuff and the judges to gave us the opportunity to partecipate to this amazing Rookie Awards 2024.
Good luck to all partecipants!