[WIP] Horizon FW prop: paper cutter
Hey polycount!
For my next project, I'm looking to make a simple clean prop to keep practicing on modeling and texturing as clean as possible a realistic asset. Seeking for props, I've found this cool concept by Glenn Van Driel of what seems to be a... paper/metal sheet cuter (?) for Horizon Forbidden West :
I really like the forms and textures of the concept, I though it'd be a good practice for making details textures that tells the object story.
This is a rought blockout I made in blender, trying to get the main shapes right and prepare everything before sculpt:
The rivets/screw are placeholder, I'll use a custom brush in zbrush to blend them better later on.
I'm really open to feedback on this one, at any part of the process !
Moving on to sculpting next!
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Finally took some time to get to sculpting:
I took some time to figure out what should be sculpted and what will be added by the texture. For the wood especially, I took a bunch of textures from texture ninja and made some stencils from them:
I then tested those stencils on a dummy wood plank to see what I could do with them and what wouldn't require sculpting.
From this test, I became confident that I could only sculpt details that would impact the silouette (larger cracks, torn up wood edges...) and keep most surface details for the texturing.
For the metal parts, I mainly moved and trimed some of the edges. Looking at my references I figured most of the details would come from the texture.For the rivets though, I sculpted a quick geometry in Zbrush, baked its heightmap, made a few adjustments in phohoshop and exported it as an alpha to make a brush:
I had a hard time deciding what kind of wood I wanted for this piece. After a few research on usual woods used for workshops and tools I decided to go for oak, with a soft grain. A bit like what you have on a cutting board, or almost polished wood: no large swirling patterns, directional veins, larger darker variations, sharp cracks, shinier part smoothned by the tool usage etc...
Next I'll cleanup my low poly and start blocking out my textures.
Alright, done with the low poly!
And made a quick high poly to low poly bake in Painter:
I managed to reduce it to 4.5k tris but, now that it's done, I wonder if I shouldn't go back and add geometry at some places that feel a bit low poly (see the red arrows).
The biggest question mark I had on this was the leather strip handle:
Either I keep the strip geometry, annnd it's a bit high poly for what it is but I can get a nice and complexe silouette out of it OR (and this is what I went for), I retopo the handle+the stripes as a single object which is lower poly but my silouette will be slightly less detailed.
Next, I'll start blocking out my textures!
I've watched your post since the beginning.Low poly seems fine to me besides the blade,that's where you should add more polys.Also in the area where wood bends,I wanted to do a quick Photosop overlay but I can't download your image for whatever reason.The handle with the leather I think you should keep at it is,because anyway leather will mold after the next layer,it's not stiff.And it has good silluette.Same with the wooden end.
Thanks for the feedbacks @andreygheorghe, I added some more polys on the blade, I really want to get the "wobbly effect " of the tip of the blade as in the concept.
I made some progress on the texturing and a quick render in marmoset just to get an idea:
As mentioned I've used my stencils to add details where I though it'd make sense giving the use of this object.:
Here's my textures and UVs (could be a bit more optimized looking back at it, I migth adjust this later and bake my final textures back to the new uvs) :
I'm quite happy with how the albedo turned out, especially for the wood and leather part.
Next, I think I'll assemble a quick scene in unreal with some quixel assets to make renders of the object in context.
Looks good so far!As for the blade "wobblyness",imagine it will have to cut some times hard objects so it will deform mostly left-right not necesarlly perpendicular.At least not after the enforcement.
Overall it looks good from close up but something seems off in the first image,I don't know if it's from the lighting or roughness,but the center of the wood table seems too bright to me.I think is the roughness after I've looked at the rest of images,old wood have it way lower.Also,as a suggestion,try to add more brown to the wood texture,make it look more like wood from the distance,now it's a little too washed up.Try to play with saturation and darkness.I realise you want to follow the concept as tight as possible but first it should come readability imo.
Anyway,good job and keep it up!
Thanks again for the feedbacks! I increased the wood roughness a bit to make it less shinier, also pushed up the wood grain a bit and adjusted my tint slightly to make it read more as wood. For the colors I went very subtly as I really like the color palette I have at the moment and don't want to mess it too much.
I made a quick UE5 scene to showcase the prop in an environment rather than just a solid color background ^^ (I used mainly quixel props and textures):
Here's the main render:
And the final mesh and texture (with my slightly more optimized uvs :p):
I'll still work a bit on it before putting it on artstation but I gotta say I'm quite happy with the way it renders!
I've been reworking this piece a bit based on some other feedbacks I've received!
Been working on the rendering in unreal and tweaked my roughness and metallic values a bit to have less harsh variations in the metal. I also lighten the metal albedo up a bit and homogenized the values between the different metal parts so it doesn't seem so different. I also cleaned up my topology a bit.
I feel like this is in a good enough place to let it off for a bit now! Here's my final artstation post for the showcase video, mesh and high rez screenshots: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/xYnWG2
It really looks good,nice work!
Thanks!
Great work and also thanks for your explanation.
I know I am way too late to give feedback for the progress, but I just wanted to say that it looks really good!
I sure as hell wouldn't mind more info or even a tutorial on how your texturing process looks.
If there is anything I would like too see added, it's those nice colors from the concept art (especially the mossy green on the handle). You already put some of the blue speckles in - in my opinion there could be more! :D
I assume you used painter and that that's a 4k Texture set? Did you put as much attention to the underside of the wood as well?
Hey @SimonKl ! This is a really good point, I'll definitely try to get back on it to add those nice color variations you pointed out, when I get the time!
Yeah it's a 4k texture set made with painter. By the underside of the wood, you mean under the prop ? If so, it has the same base material as the rest but I didn't do much detailing/stencil work on it as I assumed it wouldn't be much seen by a player.
I hope I can find the time to make a quick tutorial on my textures, if you feel that could be of interest. In the meantime, I can send you the painter files if you want to take a look :)
Hey!
Great to hear you will be re-visiting this.
That's what I meant by underside, yes. I usually have parts that are barely visible way smaller in the UV, so I got more texture space for the visible ones. In your UV it seems though as if the top and bottom take up the same amount of space. That's why I was wondering.
That would be amazing! If you really want to send me the painter files I of course would gladly take a look.
This is fantastic! I've come back a few times to look at it.