Rookies Weekly Drills 057 - #HikingBoots

This morning I created a scene within Maya using Quixel Megascans. I then used Redshift volumetric scattering along with a HDRI setup within a Redshift dome light. I also enabled Optix denoising to help with rendering and reduce noise of the fog.

I then used Adobe Photoshop neural filters to configure a depth filter and some additional haze along with some colour level corrections to get to the final image.

I then tweaked the model and assigned materials to the relevant UV tile mesh so that I could create a Marmoset viewer on this profile page to allow exploration of the created maps.

Created a UV layout for this evenings update, I also spent a bit of time on the texturing to start heading towards a final result for review. Mixture of hand painting elements and using materials layered with smart masks. I also created an alpha for the logo embedded into the boot.

Tomorrow is the weekend (yay!) so will look to create more of a scene and make some texture tweaks / fixes for final presentation. My gut feeling is I will probably end up using Redshift instead of Unreal after doing some quick experiments.

We now have shoe laces amongst other parts of the boot all now tidied up. Was a fiddly job to get the laces to line up using a curve but patience and perseverance prevails :D

Finally starting to look like a hiking boot .... I think, really looking forward to trying to add some character when texturing. I had a quick play as you can see with the image above as needed to see some colour after all this modelling in grey!

Tomorrow I will look to finalise the UV layout and improve the low poly mesh to be a little more efficient. Then it is time to texture and add all of the stitching and other details.  The above was a quick test of a bake to fix any glaring issues with the mesh itself.

For final presentation current thoughts are to use Quixel megascans with Lumen in Unreal Engine to try and achieve something inspired by the reference images.

Started work this evening blocking out the start of this weeks drill of #HikingBoots, going for these cute pair of Danner Mountain Light Cascade Clovis hiking boots.

Also taken note to plan up front a little more on grabbing a few ideas of what I would like my final presentation to potentially look similar to.

Plenty still to do, need to create back leather piece, laces and add additional lace clips amongst starting to add a few more other details.