3D Digital Literacy (Assignment 1-Final Presentation-Week 6)

When I was finally happy with my completed 3D model in Maya, it was then time to transfer my work over to Substance Painter, add some colour and details to my wizard staff. I had drawn up a previous idea of what colours I would like to use on my model and was heavily basing the colour scheme off a picture of a lily which I had taken. The task now would be to find the right colours to match the vision I have for my wizard staff and what shade of pinks and purple would complement one another.

I had decided that painting the petals would be the most difficult part, as I was certain I would keep the centre of the staff a plain brown and a wooden texture and it was going to be the petals that would hold most of the colour.

I started by viewing all the colours, materials and textures that were available to me within Substance Painter and chose the material ‘Calf skin’, as the colour was a subtle peachy pink and I thought it would act as a good base colour for my lily petals. I tried to use the colour by covering the entire petal in the peachy pink, but when I referred to my reference photo. I noticed that the lily had more of a white background to its petals, so I then changed this to lose paint strokes on the petal and on top of a white background instead. Although I found using the brush to create airy brushstrokes was a nicer design, I was still not happy with the colour and design which I was creating and wanted to try experimenting within Substance Painter and find a design I was happy with.

I knew that for the middle staff part of my model I had the idea to paint in the colour of a dark brown with my ‘Artistic heavy Sponge’ brush and layer this with a wooden texture. This was the plan that I was happy with and when searching through Substance Painter for wooden textures, I had found similar to rough, tree like wood which is what I was looking for. I began to apply my first layer of paint onto my wizard staff.

During painting I also noticed that on certain parts of the staff I was accidentally painting the flowers I had just completed and was ruining the work. I forget now if Substance Painter has layer to which I could have just applied and smudged out the unwanted paint, however I wasn’t aware of this and instead painted round the flowers and ring designs on my wizard staff carefully and with precision. The next step was to select the texture ‘Wood Rough’, change the colour to a darker wood to match the previous paint I had just applied and to also compliment my flower with the pinks and purple in the middle. This was the easy part, however upon viewing the model in completed mode and ‘Sketchfab ‘after rendering, I noticed that the wooden texture was very subtle and almost too hard to notice. I am not aware if the texture just wasn’t working on my model or that during the rendering process, I affected the quality of my work by applying the texture incorrectly. Hopefully I can ask my lecturer this question and not have this happen in the future.

After my trial and error on the first painting of my petals, I decided to look though the artist brushes and to see what style of the brush I liked and wanted to paint my model with. The brush that I settled upon was ‘Artistic heavy Sponge’ and I had played around with the smoothness and opacity of it until it suited the design I was wishing to draw within. I firstly choose a light pink that was close to my reference photo and had the plan to build and darken my colours focusing them narrower to the centre as I developed my piece. I tried to match my reference photo, but also apply a little creativity and add in any colour or details that I thought would carry my art and make the model look magical and ethereal. When I completed my petals, I remember the process I had taken to create my first petal and I repeated this on another petal, changing a couple of designs depending on the petals shape. I also simplified my design for the smaller petals, to give them a simpler look and keep them colourful, but to act as a support to the bigger petals. To finish off my flower I randomly added in some white, pink and burgundy dots and splashes of colour, providing my flower with more dimension. I was then happy with my completed design after a couple of artistic trials and errors.

During the painting process I swapped around from painting on the actual model and turned to the UV map for more detailed painting. However, for the rings of my wizard staff, the UV map alignment wasn’t quite similar to the actual ring size. So, I thought it would be smarter and less time restraining the zoom in as much as I can to my 3D model and apply the paint with little error. At first, I was just going to paint the rings a slightly darker brown than the staff, to give a subtle yet noticeable change, but when I was searching throughout the materials and textures. I noticed a matter called ‘Silver Pure’ and trying to imagine how to silver would work with the wooden brown, I thought this would apply a nice striking contrast, highlighting each component.

Silver Pure really worked well comparing to the entire colour palette of my wizard staff and worked well and complimented the dark, wooden brown and the pink. The metal sheen appeared more that the wooden texture upon applying and even throughout all the software switching and the exporting and rendering within substance painter and Sketchfab.

https://skfb.ly/6QO98 My final 3D model

Final thoughts on my wizard staff 3D model, is that comparing to the struggle I was having with even the simplest tasks of Maya, like the camera angle or changing form Maya Classic to Maya Animation. I am proud to see what I have drawn, researched and created come to life.

I used the help of being able to ask lectures for advice when needed and the number of tutorials available to us through ‘Trello’ and online and it was good to just have constant instructions of what you are trying to complete on in the background and practice yourself, as something I had learned with Maya is practice really does make perfect.

Although I am proud for what I had tried and completed in Maya, I had held myself back from the creativity of a flower/nature themed sword and shield with ideas such as a flower shield. Only because I was nervous that the building of the model on Maya would be too difficult to do and that I wouldn’t have enough time to complete my work to a high standard. So, from this I learned to always strive and try your best and that Maya really can be enjoyable once you get the hang of it.