Crunch to Completion | From Sculpt to Submission

     This past week was a crunch to get a finished render out before the deadline of the ECGAs. I was given a lot of feedback that helped. I did experiment with a lot of the methods recommended to me. 

    It was recommended to me that I use the booleans in ZBrush to get the etchings in on the prop. I did try this but my machine kept crashing.

    So I ended up carefully subtracting at a 4 radial symmetry on the base and top. I was told how to achieve straight lines and it worked quite well. I quickly pivoted with the rationalization that texturing would bring the piece to completion. The show had the prop picture perfect like a commercially marketable toy. If this was an ancient relic then it would be imperfect.

    Next I exported the sculpted high poly models and double checked that they were on top of each other so that it would easily bake while texturing in Substance Painter. From there I combined them into one mesh and exported out a low and high poly.

    The texturing component took the longest as I wanted to ensure that it took advantage of ambient occlusion and proper dirt build up. The inner elements at the top I left pristine and other worldly as it is. Honestly I was really happy with how the etchings baked onto the piece. The marble look on the handle was very difficult to get the way I wanted: close to the show prop but more realistic like the gold accents. 

    Now because I broke each part into their own material so I could give them each a 4k texture map loading all 50+ textures into their respective slots took quite some time. Somehow Marmoset did crash halfway through the first attempt which was quite upsetting. Luckily, the second try didn't crash. Next was a matter of playing with the render settings. I had a significant amount of time prior to the deadline so I cranked the settings up to maximum and had a very, very large render churned out after a considerable amount of time. The minimum was 1920 by 1080 and it was recommended that we go above that so the final came out to 7680 by 4320. 

    Since my PC had to suffer rendering the image I chose to include the image at the original size to show its magnificent size and beauty. I got a subtle lens flare on the center and I was very happy with the final render. I don't expect to win anything but I did enjoy the process of completing this in such a short time and making it my singular focus.