Honda Cub Mecha

This is my personal project made at SkyUp Academy during the photorealism module. The goal was to recreate in 3D a concept that was assigned to each of us.
Mine was a miniature created by Hair_Chira, a sort of mecha, where the upper part is a Honda Super Cub and the lower part are the legs of a Mechatro WeGo.
The whole modeling process was made in Maya, the figure on top of the mecha was sculpted in ZBrush and then baked on a low poly model, textured in Substance Painter and rendered in V-Ray 

Reference Study

First of all, I've gathered as many references as I could. Fortunately, I've found the artist's portfolio with different views of the model, which helped me figure out how the mecha was built and all the different parts that compose it. Then I did other research to study and analyze the legs and the structure of the motorcycle.

Modeling phase

Making a model blockout at the very beginning is a crucial part of the entire process, so what I did at first was to roughly identify all the main volumes and put them together.

After that, I started focusing on modeling properly the various parts, from the legs to the main body.

UV

In the UV phase, I tried to optimize the UV layout as best as possible,  working with a resolution of 2048x2048.

Texturing phase

Once the modeling and the optimization of the UV were finished, it was time to export the model in Substance Painter for the texturing.
My goal was to recreate a texture really close to the reference and give the feeling of an hand-painted figure, with all the brush strokes and imperfections.

Rendering phase

When everything was finished, it was time to set up the lighting and render finally.
I've opted for three renders. One is similar to the reference, the others are from different views to highlight and show some details.

Turntable

Here a little turntable animation to inspect the model from different views and see how the light reacts.