The Core Competencies and Marking Criteria for Finalists:
To get myself back into 3D modelling I started watching this tutorial series by Elementza on creating a Wacom tablet and pen, this was really useful and I actually learned a few new shortcuts and techniques here, e.g. CTRL+E to extrude CTRL+B to bevel, G to repeat a previous action, etc. I also learned a bit more about supporting edges and creating them quickly using the bevel tool.
After watching and practicing creating the Wacom Tablet and Pen, I wanted to use some of the new techniques and approaches to modelling on an actual design.
I wanted to mess around with creating simple objects at the start, e.g. a bowl using only quads since I’m still quite rusty and relearning at lot of fundamentals. However, this eventually turned into a recreation/study of a fellow competitor’s model, this cute octopus ramen design:
OctoRamen
This was good for getting to practice modelling organically as opposed to the previous practice of the pen and tablet which heavily focuses on hard modelling and accuracy similar to product design modelling. Although this model is just for practice and won’t be uploaded to sketchfab, I didn’t want to completely copy every element, so I decided to put a Japanese bathhouse twist on it, like the octopus was bathing in the ramen broth, hence the wooden barrel-like bowl he is sitting in.
My model and it’s UV layout (screenshot directly from Maya):
My model turned out well, I believe it has good topology, I made sure I changed as many tri polys into quads as possible and the overall mesh distribution is pretty clean. However, the criteria for this competition requires you to optimise UV space. So for any identical geometry I cut their UVS and then duplicated them around the scene so that they would be stacked. Unfortunately stacked/overlapping UVs do not bake correctly in Substance Painter and I am currently unable to find a way to correctly bake the AO mesh map. I tried offsetting the overlapped UVs by 1 but this didn’t help.
My final model with textures created using Substance Painter, using techniques (fill layers and generators) taught in Stylised Station’s course “The 3D’s Artist Colouring Book”.
Screenshots from Sketchfab viewport
Things I took into consideration for this model based on the judge’s feedback I received after the semi-final stage:
- Optimising UV space using repeated or mirrored uvs
- Using textured alphas for things that don’t need geometry (in this case the steam clouds)
- More accurate representation of PBR materials and them responding to light appropriately (in particular roughness values)
Things to improve on:
- Finding an alternative way to save on UV space – look into modelling techniques that use mirrored or repeated UVs – but not duplicated/stacked.
- Some of the other curved UVs could be straightened out more
- Better representation of wet materials/liquids/water, e.g. better materials for the octopus, egg white, seaweed also the noodles
- Use of normals/height to create the octopus suckers, looks ok but could be better represented
- The texel density of the seaweed should be higher, it looks too low resolution