With the sculpt of the 3D model completed, it was now time to move on to unwrapping and mapping the UVs in Autodesk Maya, which will then lead on to the texturing phase in Substance Painter and the rendering phase in Sketchfab.
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Before I did anything else, I quickly froze the transformations on my model to reset the coordinates to 0, and deleted the type history of the model. With that done, I opened up the UV Editor and decided on an order to things. All I needed to do for the quad spheres and tori was unfold their UVs, the sides were already sewn together and it was only a single face, making this a fairly easy process for these shapes in particular.
The cylinder shapes weren’t that much more difficult, only the middle section had to be unfolded, and then all that was needed was to resize and layout the faces together. In the case of the pole of the staff, the top and bottom faces that were obstructed from view by other shapes were cut and didn’t need to be included in the UVs.
The most complex element of the UV mapping process was the winged ornaments at the top of the staff. Because of their more organic nature, I needed to start by selecting all the divided faces on one side of the shapes, and use the planar feature to separate each side of the shape. While repeating the process for each side, I had to be aware of what direction the side was facing, and change the axis point in the planar feature before applying it’s effects. Once that was done, I would move and sew any viable edges together, and then rearrange the layout of the UVs.
With all of the UVs individually done, it was time to select all of them and use the layout tool to place them all onto the same grid. I took the liberty to rearrange the original layout to keep all the faces of the same shape close together for ease of comprehension.
With my UVs done, the next step was to export my model as an FBX file and import it into Substance Painter, but I would end up struggling at this section a lot more than I first expected. In my first attempt at adding colours to the UVs, I only had knowledge of the paintbrush tool, and no matter if you’re using the UVs or working directly on the model, the brush will overlap with the ones next to it on the model.
I was initially frustrated with this, and didn’t know what else to do, until I did more research and discovered the existence of the Polygon Fill and was able to use it effectively to lay down the flat colours for my model.
And with the flat colours done, I took time to experiment with different materials to use on each coloured segments of the model; the gold areas were given a golden gleam with “Gold Pure”, the white gems were given a texture consistent with the reflective nature of pearls with “Steel Bright Layered”, and the blue of the staff was given a subtle rough coarse looking texture with “Coated Metal”. I did this by using black masks on these materials and singling out the sections they would be used for.
It was at this point in time that I learned a couple of different things; mainly that I should’ve already baked my mesh by this point so I went ahead and did that, and that there were some key steps that I didn’t know to take during the 3D modelling process to help get a translucent object on my model.
At that point, I took some time out to research exactly how to create a translucent object in Substance Painter, and by asking for some help in the Animation class Discord server as well, I jotted down what I had to do.
I needed to go back into my Maya file and once selecting the specific object I wanted, I would right-click and assign the “aistandardsurface” material to it. I’d then export the new model and re-import it into the Substance Painter file, which would then have the assigned object as a separate material in the texture set. All I needed to do from here was adjust the shader settings from “PBR-Metal-Rough” to “PBR-Metal-Rough-with-Alpha-Blending”, go into the Texture Set settings and add a new channel for Opacity, and I’d be able to create a translucent effect on the diamond shape on my model.
With that, I felt satisfied with the results of my texturing work, and went to export the textures as png files into the “sourceimages” folder of my Maya project. It’s from here that I went to upload my model and textures to Sketchfab. All it took was selecting the FBX file of the model, adding the textures to the correct places for both materials, and adjusting the lighting around the model, and I submitted my final model onto Sketchfab.
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And with that, I have successfully completed work on my very first 3D model!
I am very happy with how the final product turned out, and I have learned a great deal about the 3D modelling process that I wish to improve upon in the future.
The designing process was very enjoyable, as I felt freedom to indulge in aesthetics and concepts that appealed to me, while still being able to decide on a design that wasn’t too complex for my capabilities.
The modelling process was a very new experience for me, but once I got into the swing of it, I was able to also find enjoyment from sculpting my own design point by point and bringing it to life.
The UV process was short and relatively simple to complete, but I took time to make sure the layouts of the UV worked in my favour.
The Texturing process was at first quite daunting, especially as I came up with a few tasks that I struggled to figure out myself, which led me to gaining more knowledge by researching tutorials and asking advice from fellow students, which got me back on track.
And the Rendering process was also simple to adjust to, as once I had everything else done, the pieces just fell into place.
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