On Monday I added the small branches and ribs that connect the plant to the main branch. This was an extremely time-consuming process and I got quite frustrated trying to remember which tools and controls to use. Luckily, after a few messages from Henry, I was able to convert them to curves out of the edges of the ‘Leaves’ polygon and then created a sweep mesh. I then selected ‘Start to Finish’ mode and adjusted to my liking. I duplicated one leaf and placed them around all the berries of the model.
(Left: Issue, Right: Resolved)
I repeated this process for the structure of the lantern and the rim of the hilt. I wanted to do this as a finer detail to the structural integrity of the lantern, as I knew that since the lantern paper would be slightly see through, I wanted to include the wooden structure within the lantern to make it more realistic (same goes for the hilt).
(Lantern Structure)
On Wednesday evening, I attempted to get my UVs sorted, by unfolding everything and laying everything out. I was quite confused here and through that I had to lay each UV in a separate box but after trying my model in SP, I could tell I had done something wrong. I asked Henry about this, and he told me that I was over complicating the process and after a tutorial with him on Thursday, he helped me get my layout correct. He also said I could assign each part of the model that shared the same material the same lambert and name them accordingly to help make it easier when is SP.
From this point, I spent Friday till Saturday evening texturing in SP till I was satisfied. Since I’m quite a perfectionist, I spent a good amount of time figuring out what exact materials I wanted to apply to my textures and looking out for the finer details. I will say that the process was both satisfying and frustrating at the same time. The hardest part for me was remembering how to create the opacity mask and I required a lot of guidance and direction but once I got it was extremely rewarding and it looked how I wanted it to. To do this I had to add an opacity channel and import an alpha texture of the leaf pattern that I wanted (I grayscaled the image and then adjusted the contrast and inverted the image) and then added a black mask to a new layer on my ‘leaves’ lambert. Once I applied the alpha onto the opacity chancel I could now see through to the berries. All I had to do after was adjust the scale and offset and it gave me the desired look.
I then carried out the same process for the tassels, drawing my own ‘hair’ texture in procreate, with the hair in white and the background black then importing it as an alpha texture in SP. This took a few attempts, but I was able to get the right scale after some trail and error. However, there were some issues with the yellow lantern tassels intercepting but Alec later told me that I would be fine after importing into Sketchfab. At this point I realised there were a few model issues, like part of the rim on the hilt wasn’t connected to my model and that the alpha textures were projecting onto the bottom faces of the red tassels because I didn’t delete the bottom faces of their polygons in Maya. I started to panic and thought that I may have to redo all my textures, but Mike reassured that if the UVs don’t change those changes could be made in Maya and then all that had to be done is to select ‘configure project’ with the new file and the textures would remain and applied to the model the same. This worked really well for me, and I didn’t have to change anything after configuring.
(Left: Leaf Alpha, Right: Applied with opacity mask)
(Hair texture Alphas)
(Before fixing tassels)
The last detail I added in was the Chinese characters on the lantern. This was a last-minute addition as I wasn’t sure if I would have the time add in some form of print onto the lantern, but I knew I had to as it looks quite plain on its own. So, I to the character “福” (Fú), which can mean fortune, good luck or blessing in English. This word is often printed on lanterns and calendars in gold to represent luck. I thought this was perfect, so I quickly drew out the character in a style of writing I liked and imported it as an alpha once again. I added it as a mask layer and set the base colour to a dark yellow and adjusted the roughness and metalness settings so make it look like gold foil and finally the height to make it stand out.
(Print Alpha)
(Opacity mask applied)
(Final Substance Painter Model)
Finally, on Sunday I imported my Maya model into Sketchfab and imported all the textures as well. Since I had all separate lamberts for each material, I had to set each setting onto all my lamberts it took me a while but once it was done it looked good. I did some quick research into adding lighting and found a video on how to add an emissive layer to a lambert in SP. So went into SP and added an intense emissive layer over my berries and Lantern light and brought it back into Sketchfab. Once it was lit, it still looked very lack lustre and just as I was about to lose hope, I found the bloom setting in ‘post processing filters’ and adjusting this gave the exact look I was going for.
Emissive Tutorial for Ref:
I tweaked the environment and lighting as well, choosing a low-lit exposure to make my staff really pop out. I can say that I’m extremely proud with the result of my staff and it really captures the image I had in my mind.
Final Model, fully rendered in Sketchfab:
