My Stapler

miamigator09

UPDATE:


Creating a photo-realistic stapler, showing the steps as I go. SO far this is all hard surface box modeling in Maya. I'll probably down rez it a little and bake down the details, since it's already over 3k.

Planning on taking this sculpt into ZBrush to add some surface noise/scratches, then texture using Quixel materials.

Not exactly sure what poly range to shoot for as a finished piece though, since after all it's a stapler.

Brian "Panda" Choi

Are you baking maps for this?

miamigator09

I'm planning on adding surface details so yes- I'll most likely make a base mesh based off this current one and bake down some of the details to reduce overall polycount (not sure what triangle count to aim for though).

Still working on the details for now before going into ZBrush

Brian "Panda" Choi

Okay. I was just confused about why you're not allowing Smooth Mesh Preview do most of your highpoly work.

miamigator09

Question: when UV-mapping a hard surface object, is it better to reduce the number of seams (like I would do on an organic character) or is auto-UV acceptable?

I have seen people breaking down UVs to hundreds of islands and I'm not sure what the best course of action is.. here's an example of what it looks like after auto-uVs, and some minor stitching.. not sure whether I should be making larger UVs to reduce seams or not.

WarrenM

You have to have a break everywhere you have a smoothing break. After that, it's up to you.

Bear in mind that every UV island adds to your vertex count.

It's a balancing act. You don't want to have so few breaks that you make texturing problematic ...

Brian "Panda" Choi

Good normal bakes from hard edges require a crap ton of islands as needed. It's ok to have islands.

miamigator09

Ok, thanks for the tips guys.. I searched 'smoothing break' and found this thread by EarthQuake:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=107196

What I've gathered is, make the UV edges based on the hard edges, and use an 'averaged projection mesh' when baking, but apply the map to the hard-edge model.

miamigator09

Alright, I went ahead and wrapped the rest of the project up pretty quickly.
After baking down some of the details using XNormal, I created a quick color ID map and added some preset materials (Noisy Plastic, Rubber, Chrome, Steel, Dust). There were a couple other layers I used as well to add grime and asymmetry. Some final touching up in Photoshop, and rendered out in Marmoset.

[SKETCHFAB]65a08cb5309e4a7585faed315b241932[/SKETCHFAB]



Here is the full breakdown:
https://www.behance.net/gallery/23147301/3D-Swingline-Stapler

Kaine123

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHHZBmF8mk4[/ame]

miamigator09

That'll be greeaat thaaaaaaaannkkssssss

In all fairness I should have made this thing in red.. guess it's back to the drawing board.