During class we downloaded the hard surface model object and learned how to upload it with the different settings in Sketchfab. Such settings include having ground shadows with baked AO, importing the textures from Substance Painter, screen space reflection to make the metal parts reflect the colour of other parts, adding vinette which makes the background slightly gradient and adding bloom to blow out any highlights. We also learned that we can change the environment background to what best suits our model, although I’ll most likely stick to industrial lights as it suits pretty much any model.

Once class was finished, I got started on making my treasure chest and chest lid have more details. My step-by-step process for modifying the chest lid is shown below:

• I modify chest lid in maya by selecting the faces in each corner and increasing their heights
• I add extrusion on the top of the lid between each corner to give it more shape
• I bevel these extrusions
• I moved the top faces of where I bevelled outwards to further sell the shape
• I selected the faces in each corner, hit extrude, and moved the faces outwards
• I extract the corners as new objects as they will be a different material (metal) from rest of chest (wood)
• I adjust pivot points of corners
• I bridge holes in chest where I extracted corners
• I increase width of lid so that it mostly fits inside the corners
• I increase scale of corners and move them so that they mostly cover any gaps
• Adjust vertices of corners to remove the rest of the gaps

In hindsight, it was a bad idea to extract the corners as new objects because it was very, and I mean very, complicated trying to put them in the right place again to cover all the gaps and make sure nothing is sticking out. I spent hours doing this and was too proud to give up as I didn’t wanna have to do the corners from scratch again. If I were to do this assignment again I would instead duplicate the corners instead of extracting them that way there wouldn’t be any lid gaps for me to try and cover up with the metal corners, or alternatively even creating new objects to be the metal corners and placing them there.

I decided to expand on the pirate idea and include a skull for the front of chest, as well as adding more gems than I had initially planned including different types of gems that aren’t diamonds/diamond shaped. I also decided to forego the idea of using a lock like Michael suggested last week as I reasoned that the skull would take the place of the lock, plus it also reflects that even though the chest doesn’t have a lock, it’s still heavily guarded by the dragon who will burn anyone who gets near it to a crisp and the skull could reflect the danger someone would be in if they approach the chest as it looks like a warning to stay away.

Since I had more ideas for the chest, I needed to find more references to help me model the gems and skull accurately. These new references are shown below:

My step-by-step process for modifying the chest box is shown below:

• I modify chest box in maya to add gems by selecting the face on the left of the chest and scaling it down
• I move the scaled face slightly
• I extrude and scale the face down then extrude and scale that face down to create top of gem
• I move small face at top of gem a good bit outwards to create the gem shape
• I extract the gem as a new object as it will be a different material from the chest
• I add edge loops to top face of gem to keep it square
• I adjust pivot point of gem
• I bridge hole left in chest where I extracted gem
• I duplicate gem and place it in same position as right of chest

With the side gems done, I moved onto modelling the skull. My step-by-step process for the skull is shown below:

• I make skull model using a cylinder
• I scale the vertices to make them fit skull shape
• I delete the faces of the back half of skull since I won’t need them
• I move vertices to make them look like side of skull
• I select the vertex at the top of skull and bevel it
• I connect the vertices at top of skull using multicut tool
• I select vertex at bottom of skull and bevel it
• I connect the vertices at the bottom of the skull using multicut tool
• I select back edges and bridge them
• I select back face and bevel it
• I extrude the back face and move it inwards a bit
• I connect the vertices at the back of skull using multicut tool
• I select vertex at bottom of skull and bevel it
• I connect the vertices at the bottom of the skull using multicut tool
• I selected faces where the eyes should be and scale them to be smaller
• I extrude and move these smaller faces inwards to create the empty area where the eyes should be
• I selected faces where the top of nose should be and scaled them to be smaller
• I extrude and move these smaller faces inwards to create the empty area where the top of nose should be
• I selected face where bottom left of nose should be and scaled it to be smaller
• I selected face where bottom right of nose should be and scaled it to be smaller
• I scaled them separately so that there would be an area between them that would remain where it is and not be a part of the bottom of the nose
• I selected these smaller faces and extruded and moved them inwards to create the empty area where the bottom of the nose should be

The skull was definitely one of the most challenging aspects to model so far as the initial first attempt didn’t go so well due to trial and error. As it turns out, it is not very good idea to delete the bottom half of the skull including the teeth because it was too big and try redoing the teeth as it ended up being way too much effort to try and fix it and the end result didn’t even look that good so I had to start over from scratch. There’s one part of the first skull attempt under the corner of one of the eyes there’s this random extra smooth part and I couldn’t even tell you what happened to it to result in it looking that way so it ended up being a good thing I had to redo the skull as I couldn’t figure out how to fix it so it didn’t look like that.

Fortunately I didn’t have a repeat of the extra smooth part of the skull, although I did encounter the same first issue where the lower half of the skull was too big on the second skull attempt but learned from the mistakes of the first by instead moving those vertices upwards to make that area smaller instead of deleting them as the only thing I would be affecting is where the vertices are located in that they are now closer together instead of gone completely and now the skull looks a lot better as a result. The two skulls side by side are shown below:

A minor mistake I caught in the second skull attempt happened when I was connecting the vertices where I accidentally didn’t select one of the vertices and instead made another vertex right beside it which was what ended up being connected, and I only realised something was wrong when I noticed a slight hole in the skull in smooth preview and when I inspected the area I found the hole in I saw the two vertices with a small amount of space between them. I deleted the problem vertex and reconnected the correct vertex which managed to fix the problem okay.

Next was making the teeth at the bottom of the skull. My step-by-step process for the teeth is shown below:

• I select faces on outer edge at bottom of skull and extrude and move and bevel them one at a time to create teeth
• I select the teeth faces and extract them as a new object as it will be a different material from the skull
• I adjust pivot point of teeth
• I bridge holes in skull and teeth where I extracted teeth
• I connect vertices at bottom of skull because extracting teeth removed the previously connected vertices
• I move teeth to make them fit inside the skull
• I adjust pivot point of skull with teeth
• I scale down skull and teeth group and move them to front of chest

The front of the chest still looked rather empty even with the skull present, so I decided to add gems to the front too instead of just the sides. My step-by-step process for the front gems is shown below:

• I create a new gem using a cube
• I select the front face of cube and scale it down
• I move the scaled face slightly
• I extrude and scale the face down then extrude and scale that face down to create top of gem
• I move small face at top of gem a good bit outwards to create the gem shape
• I delete faces of rest of cube so only gem remains
• I add edge loops to top face of gem to keep it somewhat square and different from previous gems I created
• I adjust pivot point of gem
• I move gem to front of chest on the left beside skull
• I duplicate gem and place it on other side of skull

With the chest box covered in a few gems, I decided to bedazzle the chest lid with even more gems to make it more shiny and attractive. My step-by-step process for the lid gems is shown below:

• I create gems for lid of chest using a cube
• I rotate cube so that it is diamond shape
• I scale bottom vertices outwards to create a longer point of diamond
• I select top and bottom faces and scale them down to create front and back of diamond
• I move these faces outwards to create diamond shape
• I add edge loops to diamond to keep it square
• I move diamond to front of lid on the left
• I duplicate diamond and place them around the lid

Even though there are now loads of diamond-like gems around the lid, it still felt like something was missing from the lid as the top was completely barren. I then decided to model a big gem for the top of the lid as I had only been doing relatively small gems up until that point and I wanted to show that I can model big gems and not just small gems. My step-by-step process for the big gem is shown below:

• I create big gem for top of lid using a cube
• I scale cube so that it fits on lid
• I select top and bottom faces and scale them down to create front and back of big gem
• I move these faces outwards to create big gem shape
• I add edge loops to big gem to keep it simultaneously square and round
• I move top and bottom faces outwards to give big gem more shape

With all of the objects for the chest and lid modelled, it was time for some final touches:

• I group everything in lid together as ChestLidNew
• I adjust pivot point of group
• I rotate x -29.66 degrees to have the lid appear like it’s open.

Since I had already modelled and UV mapped the 4 coin variants, all I needed to do was duplicate them and place them in the chest. My step-by-step process for the coins is shown below:

• I duplicate coins and move them to fit the chest and give illusion of depth
• I group coins as Coins
• I adjust pivot point of group

After making several adjustments and deleting a lot of the coins because the pile ended up being too big for the chest, I managed to gather an amount of coins together that wouldn’t show any gaps where the bottom of the chest can be seen as that would ruin the illusion of depth I am aiming for as I didn’t want to fill up the entire chest with tightly packed coins if most of them won’t be seen anyway.

With the coins now added in the chest, I freeze transformations and delete history of the objects. I UV map everything using camera based and unfolding while also cutting areas when necessary. I would also scale the faces so that they have roughly the same size of squares on the checkerboard pattern.

Once I finished UV mapping I created different lambert materials in hypershade and applied them to the objects which I can use in Substance Painter to texture them. The materials are LidWood_Mat, MetalCorner_Mat, LidGem_Mat, BigLidGem_Mat, Coins_Mat, ChestBox_Mat, SideGem_Mat, FrontGem_Mat, SkullHead_Mat and SkullTeeth_Mat.

My whole treasure chest with the added details is shown below:

I textured the models in Substance Painter by doing the following:

BigLidGem – I bake mesh maps. I used the Glass Visor smart material since I couldn’t find a specific gem/crystal/diamond one so I used the closest thing to it. I changed base colour of the smart material to green.

ChestBox – I bake mesh maps. I used the Wood Ship Hull Nordic smart material. I changed base colour of the smart material to something less dull, however I didn’t really like that it still looked dull so I changed the smart material to Wood Acajou. I changed first base colour of smart material gradient to be brighter with a higher value and the second base colour of gradient to be darker with a lower value. However I couldn’t figure out how to make it reflect light less as it looked very metallic and nothing changed even after I turned off the metalness in each layer. The same problem occurred when I changed the smart material to Wood Chest Stylised so I went back to Wood Ship Hull Nordic, changed base colour to make it a darker brown and managed to find a way to make it look good by turning the visibility for dust and white stains off which was what made it look dull originally and then exporting the rest which had their visibility on.

FrontGem – I bake mesh maps. I used the Glass Visor smart material like with BigLidGem. I changed base colour of the smart material to pink.

LidGem – I bake mesh maps. I used the Glass Visor smart material like with the previous gems. I changed base colour of the smart material to a lighter blue.

LidWood – I bake mesh maps. I used the Wood Ship Hull Nordic smart material like with ChestBox. I changed base colour to make it a darker brown.

MetalCorner – I bake mesh maps. I used the Chrome Blue Tint smart material and thought it looked great as it was so I left it as it is.

SideGem – I bake mesh maps. I used the Glass Visor smart material like with the previous gems. I changed base colour of the smart material to red.

SkullHead – I bake mesh maps. I used the Bone Stylised smart material. I changed base colour of smart material to off white and dirt base colour to light grey.

SkullTeeth – I bake mesh maps. I used the Creature Teeth smart material. I changed base colour of smart material to off white and turned off visibility for dirt and damage, plaque, gunk, scattering and tooth texture since I’m doing human teeth and not creature teeth. I probably could have just painted the teeth myself instead of using the smart material since the base colour is the only thing that’s left that I didn’t turn off the visibility for, but at least I’ll know for next time instead of using the smart material and turning off the visibility for almost everything.

Coins – I had to re export them to include all of the coins in the UV map. I bake mesh maps. The first thing I did after baking was the same method I used last time which was selecting a gold colour to use for the gold coin and the gold and silver coin and gave them 1 metalness each for that colour before doing the same with the silver colour for the silver coin and the top and bottom of the gold and silver coin and finally finishing with a copper colour for the bronze coin. Unfortunately the colours kept on overlapping with the other coins and every time I would go and fix it the same thing would happen again so I had to assign each coin its own lambert material (CoinGold_Mat, CoinSilver_Mat, CoinGoldAndSilver_Mat, CoinBronze_Mat) and export the UV maps for each coin such as all of the gold ones separately instead of having them on the one UV map. I ended up having the same issue so I went back to having one of each coin on one UV map, repeated the texturing method and hoped beyond belief it would end up texturing everything.

The textures were looking promising so far as I didn’t encounter any overlapping issues like the previous texturing attempts, so the next thing I did was to get a slightly darker hue of each colour which I could use to create the markings on the coins using the stencil and used the height of 1 to make them appear 3D. The stencil I used was one with crossed bones with dots and I thought it was an appropriate fit for the treasure chest, as if the treasure was originally hidden away by pirates and is now guarded by a dragon. Thankfully once I did export the textures, they textured all of the coins since they all had the Coins_Mat material assigned to them. I also improved on the look of the coins from the original as now parts of the coins look more faded and less metallic than others by lowering the opacity of the stroke to 50 instead of 100 to reflect their age and how long they could have been in the chest for.

I bake these with the following settings:

I export these with the following settings:

My textures for everything are shown below:

I upload whole treasure chest model to Sketchfab. The links are below:

https://skfb.ly/6Z9FO

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/treasure-chest-d90296c6d9e64d038b966b6b87027f35

I’m proud of how my chest and treasure turned out, although I don’t think it uploaded correctly since nothing is smoothed. I’m wondering if it was an issue because I only had the objects in Maya in smooth preview and not actually hit the smooth button to make them smooth as I assumed that when exporting the objects as a FBX they would be exported as the smooth preview versions. I’ll have to clarify that with Alec during my one to one tutorial tomorrow.

Something I’m also looking to add is the dragon in the background, and thanks to the deadline extension we were given to Sunday 7^th March instead of Friday 5^th March this makes it more feasible for me to do. As soon as my tutorial with Alec is over, I’ll get started on working on the dragon using a cylinder for the body and possibly using the bend deformer tool to have the body curling around the chest, although that would make adding the limbs more complicated so I’ll most likely stick to having the dragon laying on its belly behind the chest and most likely only using the bend deformer tool for the tail, neck and bending the legs to a resting position on the ground.

References Of The Week