Seth Thomas Mantel Clock

This was my final project for my 3rd term at Think Tank Training Centre. This asset is based on an antique 1890's Seth Thomas Adamantine Mantel Clock. Thank you to my supervisor, Patrick Kilcher, for all his help during my third term at Think Tank and throughout this project.

When I chose this project, I wanted to do something that would allow me to practice sculpting more in Zbrush. I modeled the clock feet, lion heads, and ornate face details of the clock in ZBrush, so it ended up being a great project for developing my 3D sculpting abilities. I re-topologized some of these more organic assets in Maya, but not others due to time constraints. I modeled the rest of the clock in Maya and added additional damages to these hard surface assets  in ZBrush. I used Mari and Substance Painter for the texturing. Rendered in Maya with V-ray.

The most difficult part of this project was getting the displacement maps and settings to work as I expected. I ran into issues with the hard surface areas that I had modeled in Maya and imported into ZBrush to sculpt damages. I encountered some puckering of my displacement map at some of the sharp edges. Since I was subdividing at render, the hard surface meshes that I brought into ZBrush had control/supporting edges, which I believe contributed to this issue. My supervisor helped me troubleshoot this problem and find a work around that involved adjusting my displacement maps in Nuke and using blend shapes in Maya. It was a great problem solving experience. Since completing this project, I've learned that applying crease edges before exporting the displacement map can help solve this common issue. But it doesn't always work the best, such as for curved hard surfaces. Also, through this process, I developed a much better understanding about displacement maps and subdividing at render time.

Again, I am grateful to Patrick for his immense help and for the support of my peers during my third term at Think Tank Training Centre.