MODELING A STAFF
I love some fantasy and magic, so an arcane staff was a must for me to model for this assignment. I went on a hunt for some inspiration for a design on Pinterest.
IDEA SKETCHES
I looked at angel designs, stained glass windows, baroque florals to corinthian marble pillars. One of the staffs is also based on a Chinese talisman while another is a more shaman-styled staff with elk and crow skulls on a wooden stick.
It was a hard decision to choose between the shaman, baroque, stained glass, and angel staff. However, I ended up choosing the 2nd design. I looked for reference images of biblical angels as I think they are a very fascinating subject. I love the uncanny look of a mass of wings, eyes, and rings, something hard to understand.
FINAL DESIGN
I went to Photoshop to create the final design to give myself a reference to look at while modeling. I have this star shape with the blades, a ring holding it together, giving it a nice and symmetrical structure. There are diamond-shaped holes in the blades which give the staff a lighter and more sophisticated look. I added chains for extra design interest. The eye in the middle and on the ring refers back to the eyes in the images of the angels. Instead of having a bland straight rod stemming from the top piece, I decided to include some extra details emerging from it, and for an extra zing and to complete the angel vibe, 6 wings. I call this the ‘Eldritch Staff’
MAIN STAFF
I placed the drawing into the scene and used it as a reference layer so it couldn’t be moved. I elongated a cylinder using the vertex tool and scale. I also used a ptorus to create the ring shape. I used the radius and section to have a thinner and larger hoop and also copied and pasted it to create two smaller ones in the middle. I inserted a sphere and a disc rotated, that has been extruded, into the center. More ptoruses were used to create the 4 chain starters. I took cones and reduced their segments to create blade shapes and then combined them to make them diamond-shaped. They are positioned in a star formation around the center. So far so good.
I continued adding extra details to the rod by using cylinders, using bevels, and vertex selection. I used the multi-cut tool to separate sections to form the shapes I needed. At the bottom of the rod, I added another detail but this time I manually went through every other vertical row with shift double click and extruded them downwards to create this appealing geometry. Then I used a rotated cube to use a boolean through the blades and the ring to look seamlessly forged and detailed. It is not normally recommended to use booleans as they can be unpredictable but I fixed up the vertexes and faces and the holes were good to stay.
WINGS
The challenge of the wings finally approached. I tried using cylinders and the bends but they were warping in ways I didn’t expect so I tried using a ptorus again. I cut half of its faces and used the remainder as the base of the wing which I also flattened. I used a disc that I extruded and put a bevel on it. I cut more shapes from discs and used them as the parts for the wing. I created 2 sets of the same resting wings and then one set of extended ones for extra structure and interest. Then I moved on to create the chains hanging from the middle blades and the chain holders. The ptorus proved useful again, I decreased its segments to 8 both ways and then cut through the middle and bridged the empty holes from a further distance to create a chain link. Then I simply rotated one to the side and copied and pasted the original two to keep linking them until they reached the blade. After that, I just mirrored it by copying and pasting and some rotation. Those wings are only supposed to be a rough design before I refine them.
When I had my 1 to 1 with my tutor, he suggested I should isolate the old design from everything else and make it a live object, then use quad draw to create a new shape. This proved a very useful piece of advice. I used this separately on each section of the wing to have a layered and more organic shape. I made the mistake of extruding them at the beginning, so adding feather cuts in the ends with the multi-cut tool proved to prolong the amount of time on the wing. I smoothed the wing out and sealed the top sections.
Maya at this point decided to stop working and deleted my wings twice in the span of one day. But after the advice on how to fix the issue, I recreated the wings again. This time I realized it would be faster to not extrude until I got the feathers cut out and I could just slot in the different thicknesses of the layers of the wing into one. I beveled the edges for a more organic look. And then positioned the wings into a spread-out pose it was in the drawing.
I disliked how the sides of the ring suck out beside the diamond-shaped holes so I used the vertex and scale tools to make them seamlessly merge with the blades. (This is a divine weapon so I want it to look perfectly forged). 
For cleaner UV maps and to ensure there’s no texture clipping I removed the inside faces of the whole staff. As well as that I fixed the ngons on the blades with the target wield tool to keep four sides on the shapes and to avoid unusual smoothing. I deleted all the history of the objects, combined the wings, the middle eye, and the rest of the staff separately, I froze their transformations so there wouldn’t be any warping and would be ready for the UV maps.
I used the layout option in the UV map editor and all the meshes were neatly distributed. I checked each face so they wouldn’t be overlapping in each object. I created some textures that I thought would be helpful for the wings and eye.
SUBSTANCE PAINTER
I changed the file into an fbx format and loaded it on substance painter. I grouped the materials by name in Maya so it really helped me with the organization. I painted the respectable parts with gold. Added scratch marks for some wear and tear (the model looks cheaper if it’s too perfect). I also used a height brush setting to add some engravings to make the staff fancier. I used a plethora of brushes to try out what looks good and what doesn’t and a slight stain design of swirls really suits the gold. Instead of using the feathers and eyeball in Maya, I decided I will just paint them in the software, and turns out it looks better than the Maya textures. Something that wasn’t an idea from the beginning was adding gold to the base of the wings. However, I believe they look amazing that way instead of just white wings. I enjoyed using substance painter as it felt more creative.
FINAL PRODUCT
FINAL THOUGHTS
I think it looks pretty close to what I envisioned it to look like from the start, glowy, divine, magical. It was a pleasant journey of creativity, problem-solving, and learning. I am very happy with this project. To think that in such a short time from the start of the year to now I went from knowing nothing of how to use 3d software to know how to model, texture, use UV maps, problem solve and create an object that could fit in a video game or animation. I started off with simple things such as a vase and a table which were a great way of introducing yourself to the world of 3d modeling. I learned all the basic tools and got used to navigating through the software. Learning this was exciting as it’s a whole new skill that is being used by professionals. Overall, I thought I was improving at a steady pace as I was getting a hang of the UI and tools, apart from some times where I needed advice from tutors or peers if I was unsure of how to fix something or just overall modeling techniques. I am pleased with my project and strive to keep improving in the future.
SOURCES