[WIP] Photogrammetry Bag Scene

stefanWilliams_C

Hello again, it's been a little while since I last posted!

So for this project, I'm scanning my good old Kånken bag and recreating a small scene using a photo I took last year as my main reference. 
My main goal with this one is to try out as much photogrammetry as I can, tweaking my workflow wherever it's needed. 


My PureRef is quite small at the moment but I'm still building ideas about how I want to have the ground foliage cover and what elements of the foliage I want to show off in the final composition. Right now Autumn colours seem like a great contrast with the deep green of my bag. 


Quickly bashed up a scene with basic composition in Blender using the current low poly of my scan. 
Below are some screenshots from RealityCapture (yay, it's free now!). The scan went pretty well I think, especially since I found a lovely grey day to shoot and the curbside provided good enough pixel edge contrast. 
The back straps are the messiest at the moment and I think will be hard to get perfect directly through RealityCapture, so I'll add that geometry in Blender instead. 



Excited to be starting up this project since I've been thinking about it for a while now! 
Would be great to get some feedback or tips or tricks when it comes to scanning and my scene idea  
Thanks for reading! 

stefanWilliams_C

Hello again! 
It's been quite a long time since I've added an update onto this project, but I am working on it just veeery slowly with all the busy-ness of life. 
As for progress, I've begun the texture cleanup/PBR generating and mesh cleanup phase. For now I'm in Painter adding a bit of patina to the material and cleaning up where things get a bit messy. For example, when it came to the Zippers, I didn't get very good results for the geometry so I decided to make that geometry myself. Did a bit of cleanup using that workflow for the bottom of the straps but I'm thinking it could be worth modeling the straps entirely rather than relying on the wonky scan. That being said though, I don't really plan to have the bottom of the straps visible in final renders  





So there it is! Next up will be better material definition on the zipper 'teeth' and testing more in Engine  
Thank you for reading and as always feedback on workflow or design choices is very welcomed! 

stefanWilliams_C

Time for another update on this project! 
Been focusing more on environment materials for the ground since my last post as I want to practice a bit of designer materials. Took some time over the christmas break to make a leaf generator using splines and shape splattering. This is the progress so far, but I think it would be nice to do a pass or two over the material to get the leaves looking more realistic. 



My idea is to have a snow material blending over the top of these leaves. Did some testing in Substance for quick results but for the final material, I'll be doing height blending in engine instead. The snow doesn't need to be so complex, so I'm putting that on the backburner for a bit now! 


And then here's the development of my scene blocking! 
Focused a bit more on getting the camera correct and got an HDRI in that can help with some subtle overcast lighting. The fore and background with the trees help get the depth of my original reference I think  


Thanks for reading! Let me know if there's any feedback on my materials. Would be nice to get some input on getting a realistic looking leaf/snow blend  

Eric Chadwick

Hey this is looking cool. I think your current render is looking a bit flat, the ground in particular is looking very low resolution.

Take a close look at your main ref, in fact it’s really good to put it side-by-side with your render, helps to identify where the render is lacking. 

The circular snow mounds are looking artificial, and the leaf texture seems blurry.

You might need a displacement map for the snow.

stefanWilliams_C

Hello again! 
Returning to this project again as I work on it whenever I have time 
I've done a bit of tweaking to the bag textures, making a mask for detail normals on the surface (excluding zip and logo etc.) and made a quick snow shader for more subtle snowfall on the bag. 
Also spent time with displacement for the snow and trying to get a bit more depth on that ground

Above are some leaves I found in my local forest that I'm planning to use as scatter meshes to boost the ground depth where there's leaves. Still deciding how much of the ground should be covered in snow and which should be leaves, so will explore that more for the next stage.

Added a bottle into the side pocket of my bag. Just a blockout for now but thinking it adds a bit more interest to the bag. 

Thanks for reading! 
Feedback on the bag, ground and lighting would be nice  

stefanWilliams_C

Hello again! 
Some more work going on into my project, so thought to just post a small update on what I'm working on here. 
Firstly, made a scan of a local birch tree using my phone which turned out suprisingly well! Right now since these are background pieces I don't want to set up anything too complex here, just a single UV sheet and basic PBR setup. In the future or if there's a need in this project it would be nice to grab some tileables from this scan and make it all a bit more modular  
I've reworked the ground leaves a bit so I can make more use of them in the final scene - using the scanned leaves I took a few weeks ago I've started on a nice tileable using those scans and a mix of procedural grunge. 
Alongside that, I've worked on polishing up the detail normals and put the bag through another UVs pass where I have a cleaner detail normal sheet and slightly more density for the bag surface details from my scan. 
Overall pretty happy with my progress! Next up is polishing the ground leaves, making more leaf piles and working on a nice metal flask for the bag. For the flask, I'm thinking some keychains and stickers for just a bit more interesting details on my hero piece.
 






Thanks for reading!
Feedback on the bag textures, lighting and general scene composition would be greatly appreciated  

stefanWilliams_C

Here comes another update on my Bag project! 
Had some time to work on the scene as a whole and I've been thinking more about adding more layers of storytelling onto this piece, as it's been feeling a bit strange to just have a bag in the middle of the forest for no particular reason. At the moment I'm umming and ahing around whether to have a used campfire in the scene just to add a bit to the storytelling, otherwise I'm thinking about ways to put some storytelling more on the bag/bottle instead. 
Up next will be more texture work for the bottle and potentially fleshing out the surrounding scene more...

Thanks for reading! Feedback on the above would be appreciated  

stefanWilliams_C

Dropping another update here for this project as I've progressed more and would like feedback as it's starting to look closer to finalized. 
Made a few test renders after building up the foliage, tweaking some post process values to saturate the scene more and added in a simple snow falling niagara particle system. 

Added a more close up shot of the bag surface too, but wondering also if I need to polish up my detail normals for something that close up. 

Feedback on the Lighting and Bag textures/Textures in general is what I'm looking for the most right now, as I've been looking at this for too long ;D

















Once again thanks for taking a look at my project, and I'm open for feedback on anything that sticks out! 

stefanWilliams_C

A small update from this project as I feel that I'm happy with the assets I currently have and general shots, compositions etc. 
The only thing I'm looking for feedback on at the moment is more lighting and post processing. Did a lot with tweaking and trying to boost the greens whilst reducing the red intensity of the bag logo.







Thanks for taking a look at my project  

stefanWilliams_C

I have tweaked a lot of the lighting and polishing touches for this piece and actually posted up to Artstation as I would like to drop this project and move on to more art for now  
Generally quite happy with this one and most importantly feel that I learned alot about scanning workflows and mixing scans with procedural work!
You can find the post over here: 
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/wrBX5g

Feedback is still welcomed of course! 


(and the rest of the images you'll have to find on artstation hehe)

Fabi_G

Hey, congrats on finishing the project! I think it turned out nicely, also cool to see the process

Looking closely, an aspect that could be improved in my opinion, is some sewing details/ cloth layering being perhaps too subtle / smoothed out. An example for that would be the handles, where they're sewn on, they visually become one with the body. If you wanted to address this, surely would be possible to tweak in texturing. Here is the area highlighted + a rough comp in test with a snipped from a product image:


Keep it up

stefanWilliams_C

Thanks for the feedback and paintover @Fabi_G! 
Yeah that's quite an easy fix that actually adds so much to the overall readability of that area of the strap. This is one of those details that got lost in the original scan I think