Vespa Eddie

And with some time to spare I present Vespa Eddie. Super fun to work on and very satisfying to see in Iray renders. 

Process view, I played about with height settings to get a feel of Eddie just being in a small accident, leaving dents over his yellow parts, If I had more free time leading up to the deadline I would have investigated more into how to work displacement maps and play about with render settings more to try and make the chrome parts pop out of the base mesh. 

More renders from Iray, giving more angles of stickers and parts of the model I'm proud of. I spent considerable time making the bare metal parts look as industrial as I could, like real scooter/car engine parts. Using dirt cavity maps and overlaying bakes on a multiply player to add more shadows and depth, and playing around with masking to add some narrative within the textures. For instance the dents in the torso and worn metal paint on the hands and feet to indicate movement/ interaction. 

Day 2: In my time away from my job I began experimenting with combining different alphas to provide better chances at creating mechanical parts on V_Eddie using height maps and chrome materials.

To better help visualise the finished product I quickly searched for some images that I could use as stickers and embossed metal to help break up the large areas of free space on the models torso. I took extra inspiration from my all time favourite anime FLCL/Fooly Cooly due to its punk rock motif and iconic visuals of Vespa model scooters. I also made a mock up of an emblem to be placed on the front of Eddies face, combining the motorbike company logo from my research and the 'P!' symbol seen in FLCL. 

60/70% complete. Based colours and height maps are implemented, using an excessive amount of chrome to detail the models curves not unlike the original Vespa scooter. 

Now time to experiment with grunge maps and masking to add more realism and flavour to V_Eddie. 

Moodboard and basic blockouts, trying to keep the sleek design of Vespa models while adding raised pieces of chrome and metal onto the Eddie model. Trying not to add too many details at this stage, I want to keep grunges like rust and wear to the movement areas while keeping a 60/70% area of 'white space.' 

Playing about in substance painter, refamiliarizing myself with height maps. Baking with 9 Udims is so much easier with the newer updates, for now I'm working on 2048x for each tile.