90's vibes

Hi everyone, after almost two months, the deadline has come to an end and here, at Skyup Academy, we have thoroughly tested the 3D modeling module.

During the module, I faced the challenges presented by 3D photorealism, committing myself to the faithful reproduction of the assigned reference.

Below you can explore the entire creative process.

.1 Reference study

I started from in-depth research and study of the references and individual assets contained in the composition.

This allowed me to immediately have a clear idea of ​​the shapes, dimensions and above all the size ratio between the different assets so that they could help me and facilitate a correct modeling process.

.2 Blocking

With the beginning of the blocking phase, I immediately encountered difficulties in correctly reproducing the original perspective of the image.

This pushed me to try to study the real composition of the image in a better way so that I could get as close as possible to the real composition

Once I found a good compromise, I started to create a first blocking that would allow me to create the main volumes correctly.

Only at the end of the next modeling process did I go back to refining the camera match.

.3 Modeling

During the modeling phase, I started modeling the individual assets from scratch, trying to keep in mind the volumes given by the previous blocking phase.

While the scene was taking shape, during the modeling phase I had to deal with correct management of the latter taking into account the topology of the individual components and the total final polygonal count.

In particular, I had to create, for the floppy pattern below, a more low poly version, compared to the hero floppy in the foreground, which however did not lose the silhouette and the main elements of the floppy itself.

This allowed me to better optimize the scene drastically reducing the total poly count.

And after having taken care of detailing the assets at 360°, also modeling the components not visible in the camera, I concluded my modeling phase.

Here are some details.

.4 UV Mapping

Subsequently, in the UV Unwrapping phase, I worked on optimizing the management of the UVs and Udims of the scene to then import into Substance Painter.

We worked with a 2K UDIM resolution (2048 x 2048)

.5 Texturing

During the texturing phase, I operated on two distinct files in order to exercise more precise control over the individual components of the scenes. Initially, I focused on texturing all the main elements of the scene in the first file. 

Subsequently, in the second file, I dedicated myself to texturing the underlying floppy pattern.

This approach was adopted to avoid alterations caused by the base glass on which the entire scene rests. 

In fact, I limited the intervention on the texture of the glass using Substance Painter to the "roughness" channel only, subsequently, I replaced this texture with a V-Ray mtl specific for glass, connecting the "roughness" channel exported from Substance Painter to this.

One of the parts that most amused me in the creation of the textures was creating the original overlay present in the monitor, what I tried to create is an approximation as faithful as possible to the reference, trying to decipher the content of the screen taking into account the low image quality.

I hope you liked it, thank you!