Edwin Teoh
Project Introduction
The objective of the project was to learn about the workflow and methodologies used by game artists to produce art assets for games. This included 3D modelling, UVs, texturing and lighting before rendering into a final product.
​
The softwares used in this project are 3Ds Max for modelling and rendering, as well as, Substance Painter for texturing.
Reference Images
I chose to model the Outbreak Perfected from Destiny. The Outbreak was an iconic weapon in Destiny and its fame carried forward in the later expansions of Destiny 2. It had a good amount of complexity as well as symmetry such that a beginner like myself would not be overwhelmed by the complexity of the model.
Although not shown here, one important element was that the prop had an abundance of images from different angles supplied by various members of the community.
​
I could then use these images to my advantage when modelling to ensure that the prop is not disproportionate.
I used this technique for the front and back of the gun.
Blockout
The first stage is to blockout the large shapes present in the gun to get a sense of proportion and understanding of scale within the prop. The modelling is done within 3Ds Max.
The first stage is to blockout the large shapes present in the gun to get a sense of proportion and understanding of scale within the prop. The modelling is done within 3Ds Max.
​
Given the symmetric nature of the gun, in some areas such as the area around the trigger of the gun, spline curves are drawn and a base shape can be created by extruding from that curve. Any further modifications are performed by editing the position of the vertices of the curve which in turn modifies the geometry of the model. For any holes or indentations, the pro-boolean modifier is used.
Midterm
After blocking out the estimate shape, I had more confidence to model the rest of the details such as pipes or indentations within the model. During this stage, I also took some time to relook at the model to fix and redo any parts that I was not satisfied with.
​
The end result is shown below.
UV Unwrapping and Texturing
Once the gun has been modeled to a comfortable stage, the UV process can begin.
​
As I wanted to utilize UDIM in the texturing process, I had to approach the unwrapping in a different manner. I split the weapon into several sections to unwrap before combining all the split sections together to form the final udim. Although one could use 3Ds max's "Unwrap by polygon angle", it does not yield the best results and often will lead to any obvious stitching seems in the UV. Though time consuming, doing each part individually would give a result that I can control.
​
UDIM allows me to have much better quality by using more than 1 UV square to lay the texture on. For the size of my model, 2 UDIM units is sufficient.
I used a multi-material channel to tag specific polygons of my model that should have a certain material.
​
I would use this tagging system to quickly apply a material on all surfaces that have a common tag tied to it.
​
A breakdown and some screenshots follow.
Moving on to texturing, I exported the model into a fbx file format and then brought it into Substance Painter.
​
Aside from the texturing, there was also a technique I learned in this project about baking normal maps using Substance. By having a high and low detailed mesh, we could imprint the details on the high mesh onto the low mesh as a normal map.
​
We can see from the example below that the white circular spots and some of the pipes have been imprinted on the gun like a shadow in some sense. This is the effect of the normal map.
The rest of the texturing techniques revolved around picking the most appropriate material and finding the PBR equivalent of it. Textures.com and its large repository of textures came in handy for this.
​
Having an engineering background gave me a little of a creative edge in this area since I would know certain keywords to use instead of the standard "metal" or "plastic" that one would use to find materials. I searched with keywords such as "Carbon Fiber", "Thread Plates" or "Polypropylene" to look for a suitable material to texture the gun with.
​
I used polypropylene and carbon fibre for the textures in a PBR format. Using PBRenabled realistic surfaces that would give a real look when rendered with Arnold and 3Ds Max.
I then exported the textures in a PBR format and brought those textures back into 3Ds max to be rendered
Final Render
Quite frankly, I need to work more on the lightning but I am satisfied with the final product.