Hello! Some time ago I finished a project and thought I’d make a breakdown of the whole process from start to finish. This is not a detailed tutorial for every step but rather an overview over the process that I hope will help people (especially beginner 3D artists)  get a better understanding of how the pipeline works. This is not the only way to go about things of course, just an insight into one of the more common pipelines.

This project was made for a community challenge and there was a set of requirements. It’s important to read those carefully because it will dictate the technical limitations. Ask questions if something is not clear, this will save you time down the line. 

The challenge task was to model and texture the Walker’s Razor Slim Earmuffs (photos of the exact model were provided) and also to get creative and come up with an additional paint job. Final model should have one 4k texture set and the triangles budget was estimated at 20k. 

If you make a project for yourself, it’s also important to set the scope and requirements, as well as deadlines, from the beginning. This will (hopefully) help you stay on track.

The next day I took a fresh look at this and fixed some mismatches in proportions, refined the shape of the headband and the ear cushions and added blockout shapes for the volume knob and some other details that were missing. Taking a short break really helps because you reset your brain and eyes.

During the blockout stage I try to work as non-destructively as possible, using lots of intersecting shapes and primitives with modifiers. This gives me flexibility and a really easy way to adjust and move things around. The goal here is to get the proportions right, not to make beautiful topology.

4. Making the Highpoly

There are different methods of creating the highpoly. The most widespread are: traditional poly-modelling, subd modelling, remesh/polish method, CAD and sculpting. CAD especially has found its way into the game-asset pipeline with tools like Fusion 360 and recently Plasticity. Also, the option to use a bevel shader is becoming more popular. Sculpting is usually associated with characters but is often useful for props as well, e.g. when you need  to do a damage pass, bend/deformed panels, or like in my case here - folds on fabrics. Or anything organic looking in general. 

Which method you choose is up to you. They all have different use-cases and up- and downsides. Important is the outcome, so basically whatever gets you a good looking highpoly. Combining them together is also a good way to be efficient. That said, in an actual work environment you might be required to use a specific workflow and software to be able to work within the studio pipeline. 

For a game-asset, the topology of the high-poly (usually) doesn’t matter, the only thing that’s important is that it shades well. The reason for that is that the highpoly is not your final asset, it will only be used for baking down the texture maps which you need on your lowpoly for texturing.

Because of this, the remesher workflow is quite popular since it gives you an easy and comparatively fast way to get good hardsurface highpoly shading. The idea here is to make your base highpoly mesh using poly-modelling and mainly booleans. Then, use a remesher (remesh modifier in Blender or Dynamesh in ZBrush) to get a very dense and even topology. The final step is polishing, where you smooth out the sharp edges of your model in order to get the nice bevels required for baking. 

When it comes to polishing (or highpoly bevels in general for that matter) it is recommended to make the bevels softer than they would be in real life. Reason for that is that it will produce better bakes and create more pronounced highlights, which in turn will translate into better readability of your asset.

I recommend using a shiny/very reflective matcap on your highpoly during modelling to catch shading artifacts. It is much easier to notice things like pinching and bad shading with a proper material.

For this project, I used a combination of the methods listed above. First, I modeled the base meshes in 3ds Max using poly-modelling and subd. Next step was moving everything to ZBrush to do a dynamesh/polish pass (example part illustrated above). Last step was to sculpt folds on the fabric parts of the model and on the ear cushions. I wanted to start learning sculpting so this challenge was a great opportunity to dive into ZBrush. 

You also need to decide what details you want to add during the highpoly stage and what details are better done during texturing. For example, I could have done the stitching on the headband as geometry, but decided it would be easier and faster to do during texturing. Also it would be non-destructive, allowing me to adjust the stitching lines as I go without having to redo the highpoly and subsequently bakes. Those kinds of decisions are based on experience mostly and will vary depending on the model, details and project. Here is how my final highpoly model looked like:

The second important point after the silhouette is the shading. To prevent errors during the bake process, your lowpoly has to shade reasonably well. I say “reasonably” because the normal map will be able to compensate for small shading errors, usually caused by lack of geometry on curved surfaces. But it won’t be able to just magically fix terrible lowpoly shading. To achieve this, it is sometimes needed to add additional loops to contain the problematic areas or use hard edges. 

Another point I want to discuss is optimization. The rule of thumb is: every edge should have a purpose. Edges and edge loops that do not:

can and should be deleted/collapsed. This will reduce the tri-count of your model by a lot. 

There is the unfortunately very wide-spread misconception about topology and triangles. “Triangles are bad!” “Good topology has to be all quads” “Avoid triangles at all costs, they cause bad shading!” You probably heard or read some form of those statements. People tend to just regurgitate what they heard or read online without actually understanding or fact checking. And so this keeps coming up despite being incorrect. 

Triangles are totally fine and even needed to be able to optimize properly for game-engine use. Furthermore, every model will be triangulated when it is put into a game engine. Without getting too technical, your GPU can only render triangles. Every quad you have in your model is technically just 2 tris and you can see the triangulation when you turn on that option in whatever 3D software you are using. So please use triangles for your game-ready lowpoly meshes.

Ngons are also a very common topic which is riddled with misconceptions. While they definitely have their place and use, for beginner artists I recommend avoiding them. Basically if you need to ask yourself if it’s ok to use an ngon in a certain situation, it most likely means that you don’t have the experience and technical knowledge needed to use them correctly, ergo avoid it until you have a better understanding of that topic. 

Also for the final lowpoly, it’s better to avoid ngons because of possible triangulation issues. Every polygon is being triangulated and it’s always better to have control over it than just hope that the algorithm does it right (more on that in the “Baking” chapter). 

Topology in general never exists in a “vacuum”. Asking if something has good topology without context makes no sense. It depends on the use case for the asset. What is considered “good topology” for a game asset is usually pretty bad topology for film/VFX and vice versa for example. Or 3D printing for that matter. Context is key. 

Here is my finished lowpoly:

There are lots of different programs, plugins and tools for unwrapping, but some general rules apply across the board.

For this project, the technical requirements specified that the final model should only use one texture set, 4k resolution. This means I didn’t need to think about separating the model according to different UV sets, everything should be unwrapped and packed together in one. 

The lowpoly consists of different meshes, like the ear shells, head band, cables, etc. I usually work part by part, making base unwraps for each of the objects and then finally packing everything together. 

An important rule to follow during unwrapping is: every hard edge has to be a seam. Otherwise you will see nasty artifacts during baking. This also brings us to my preferred method of unwrapping. Every program offers some way of marking seams by using your hard edges. Doing that, then adding some additional seams to objects and parts without hard edges (cylindrical shapes that need to be cut to be unfolded properly or parts where UV distortion becomes an issue) and then unfolding usually gives you 85% of an unwrap. Then it’s just a matter of straightening the edges and aligning the islands either perfectly vertical or horizontal (to avoid artifacts related to anti-aliasing).

It is a good idea to get a checkermap material and apply it to your lowpoly in order to see if there are any spots where UV distortion is very apparent. Sometimes after unfolding a UV shell you will need to manually relax it  in order to get a perfect unwrap and get rid of distortion.

Here is how I usually do the unwrap demonstrated on one part of the model:

It is almost always worth it to cut those long thin circle shapes and straighten them. You will get a much better packing result, since the long strip will take up only a fraction of the space the circle shell would. Yes, this will introduce some distortion to the UVs but the benefit of saving so much space and avoiding AA artifacts greatly outweighs some minor distortion. 

When every piece is unwrapped, it is time to pack everything together. The automatic way of packing UVs has improved a lot and most programs will do a decent job. That said, the best result is still achieved by spending some extra time and manually adjusting some things. Scaling some small parts up to fill the space better for example. Or grouping things together to help the packing algorithm achieve a more optimal result.

It’s also worth noting that sometimes it is important to be mindful about the orientation of the UV shells. A good example are wooden objects, it will make texturing easier if all shells of the wooden boards have the same horizontal and vertical orientation in your UV space. That way, when you apply a wood texture to it, the wood grain/fibers will also point the same way.

The red UV islands are stacked/mirrored. That is a common technique to save UV space. You take parts of your mesh that are identical, and stack the UV shells on top of each other instead of packing them individually. It is not advisable to do that for focal areas of your model, where the re-use of the same texture will be very apparent. But it is a really good option for less prominent regions. In my case this was the inside of the ear shells for example.

As far as texel density goes, there is no magic number that your UVs should have, because that depends on a lot of factors. Texel density will vary a lot depending on the size of the object and texture resolution. Also keep in mind that portfolio pieces usually have a higher texel density than actual game assets. But regardless of the actual number, it is important to make sure that the TD is uniform across your asset. This is achieved by averaging out the size of the UV shells during packing. If you don't do that, then some parts of your model will end up having much more texture space than others and it will be very noticeable since the textures will look very blurry/low res in some areas and suddenly sharp in others.

7. Baking texture maps

Now we have everything we need to bake our texture maps. I’d recommend baking in Marmoset Toolbag or Substance Painter, both offer great tools for that and work very well. The setup for baking is fairly straightforward, especially if you took the time and managed the naming correctly during the modelling process.

By using affixes like _low and _high for the respective parts of our model, we can setup the baking groups automatically using the naming convention option. This effectively groups corresponding meshes together, e.g. earshell_low and earshell_high. This way objects that are very close together do not interfere with each other when the rays are cast during the bake process, because each bake group is handled separately. If you’re older, you might have heard of programs like XNormal and “exploding” meshes. This was the way baking was handled back then, basically all the mesh parts had to be moved far away from each other (hence “exploding”) prior to baking so they didn't interfere with each other. It's nice to not have to do this anymore. 

I recommend exporting a triangulated mesh of your lowpoly and use that for baking to avoid triangulation issues. Basically, your modelling software might have a different way of triangulating the quads as the program you bake in and the engine. This can lead to tangent issues and normal map artifacts. Exporting the mesh triangulated ensures consistent behaviour between different software packages.

Once you imported your high- and lowpoly meshes and checked that everything is correct (a simple typo in the mesh names can lead to wrongfully assigned baking groups), the baking can begin.

9. Presentation

Almost done, all that’s left is to present your finished prop!

It is very peculiar to see someones project, opening the description and reading how they spend hundreds of hours on it and now they want to “proudly” show it to everyone - and then you click on the picture and it’s a viewport screenshot with terrible lighting, pixelated, where you can barely see the silhouette of the model, never mind the textures. Cherry on top is if all that is a photo of the monitor the person took with their phone camera. 

Please don’t do that. You can be the best 3D artist there is, if you can’t present your work in a compelling way (or at least clear and visible), nobody will be able to appreciate all the hard work you put into your project. You’ve come this far already, done all these complicated steps to get here, just put in this last bit of effort and make a good presentation to actually show off your artwork. 

The most crucial aspect of the presentation is probably lighting, followed by shot composition. No amount of texturing and fancy materials can save a badly lit shot. A standard 3-point-lights setup will go a long way if you’re struggling with where to start. Experiment with the background color to get more contrast between it and your prop. 

I like to setup a few shots of my prop showing it from all sides. We’re making 3D here, so make use of it. A turntable animation can be cool as well. 

Showing the asset in isolation is fine, but I think it adds a lot to the project if you make a small scene as well. Megascan assets are a good resource here, you can get scanned props that can be used as a background for your asset. Experiment, come up with some cool ideas. Most importantly, have fun! Maybe your prop was a beautiful vase and you can place it on a nice tablecloth next to some glasses. Or maybe it’s an axe, and you set up a small forest clearing where it’s stuck in a tree stump. 

I made this outdoor scene with a snowy background, I think it gave a nice contrast to the materials of the earmuffs.