@AdePar I absolutely adore your stylized prop, you did incredibly well making it feel cartoon-like. I would love to see if you can add some wood highlights/edgewear on some edges to distinguish some parts, though this critique is very much just a style preference. Some other wood shades blended in would complement the piece as well! Good job.
These are my finished renders of the stylized prop. This was modeled in Maya and then I went into substance painter to hand paint all the textures. This was my first go at hand painting and making a prop look cute and stylized, so I'm really proud of how it turn out.
Here is my version of the Leather Maker. I made it look somewhat older in years to give it some history and a great story to tell. This was really cool to work on and light up. This was a great challenge and cant wait to see what the future holds for everyone that participates in these. Please feel free to give me feedback as that's the only way we can grow. Here is my Art Station for future references https://www.artstation.com/ryanross7
Good job on this Aunesty. I can see you put some time into this. The colors really pop to give the scene a lot of vibrance. The only thing i would change, and this is a very small nit poick, is the color of the paint on top of what looks to be a stoll. It's a little "loud" and something more earthtone or nuetral would look really good on it. Great piece overall!
Here is my poly count prop, due to work and other projects, I could only due the bare minimum, I did enjoy this challenge and hope to do more in the future.
This is my attempt at this project. It was very texture heavy and I experimented in Substance Painter trying to make everything look a little more stylized. That was my main focus of this project. Please leave me any feed back that you feel would make this project even better. I would love to come back to this project in the future to make it look perfect. It was rendered in Marmoset.
@Cruckz , amazing work on the stylization of your piece! the wood has nice edge wear and the colors pop. it is tricky though creating the water pouring over the bucket. I do think that the top two rolls could be more round than square.
Late to start but I really wanted to tackle this as my first fully realized stylized prop. I was always super intimidated by stylized art, but I knew I needed to stop waiting and just dive in and try it out. Learning a lot as usual and having a fun time figuring stuff out!
Here is my finalized model for the challenge. I did most of my work in Maya and I used substance painter to texture my model (due to the concept I went for a more stylized look for my model). Afterwards I went into UE5 to render my model. I'm open to any feedback to make my model look better! The more the better to make improve.
Here is my finished styled factory building. It was very fun to learn how to paint in a cartoon style. I started in maya and then I did some more detail in zbrush and then painted it on substance. All of the renders is in Marmoset. The polycount is 18398 tris. I am happy to hear any feedback.
This is the finished prop set for the loom. Put through Substance Painter for texturing and Marmoset Toolbag 4 for rendering. It was a fun challenge to take on!
Here is my finalized prop. Finished the polish in maya and then took it into substance painter to give it detail and color. Then I rendered it in Marmoset Toolbag 4.
Nicely done! The materials work really well. If your gonna be adding this to your portfolio, id recommend adjusting the samples on your render so it look less grainy and so you can really make those shadow and reflection pop
Wow, impressive to see so many Interpretations of the concepts 🤓
Took a jab at the factory prop too, mainly to look into the animation aspect. Animated result from Toolbag:
still render:
As I expected, getting the animated conveyer belt-like element out of Blender proved the most challenging.
In Blender, a plane with segments was deformed using the curve modifier, then moved along the curve by simply moving it on one axis. A weld modifier welded start and end vertices together.
Transferring this conveyer belt motion to a bone animation proved to be to much for me and I have to try again at some point :P It took lots of bones to get a somewhat smooth curvature, which I imagine might be a limitation for a mobile game asset. I constrained empties to a mesh moving along the curve, then constraint bones to those. In the end the mesh skinned to the bones didn't deform as expected, and making adjustments to all constraints without knowing what I was doing was too much of a pain. Should have made a smaller test first.
Next attempt was to export the file as alembic, which was pretty simple. Problems that I couldn't get rid off when uploading to sketchfab were a jittery motion on the conveyer belt-like fabric and a new material per object. Another consideration with this option might be that the resulting file is fairly large in comparison.
Finally, I settled with animating in Toolbag. For the conveyer belt-like fabric the UV offset was animated, for other elements simply rotation and scale. Thanks to the marmor viewer export, I could embed the animated model into the project on artstation.
Looking through the entries, I believe a common challenge is transferring the proportions from concept into 3d (at least for me it is 😝). I'd recommend deconstructing the reference before or during the modeling, e.g.: What individual elements are used for its construction? Elements size in relation to each other? Prominent features in the silhouette? This sort of breakdown also helps to estimate the amount of work. If one wants to stay super faithful to the concept, setting up a camera with reference image to trace the with the blockout can help.
Then, while working, frequent breaks are useful to reflect on what was made and subsequently make iterations. I think during the creation process imperfections add up, and the energy spent on the later stages (sculpting, texturing, lighting, animating) might be on something with fundamental flaws. But obviously, time limits prevent redoing the same thing over and over again and becoming crazy. Good breakpoints to step back and to evaluate the model might be after a sub task was completed, like after blockout, modeling, sculpting, baking, texturing,... .
Uff, that turned into lots of text, hope it makes somewhat sense 😅 To all the new people, I'd also suggest to check out the wiki and dig through other parts of the forums to learn of different workflows.
Anyways, congrats to everybody who made something! Keep it up 🚀
Here is my finished prop! Had so much fun doing this and will definitely be trying more stylized things in the future. Looking forward for what comes next!
Disclaimer: The following text is partially written with chatGPT. I first wrote my forum post manually and later asked the AI to write what I wrote but better. I am not sure where the moral boundary lays with the ethical use of AI so I figured I'd be upfront about it.
I'm happy to share that I have completed the asset's preparation for painting using the Blender plugin ZenUV.
Though it took me a while to understand the basics of the plugin, I had an "aha moment" leading me to unwrap the model. It is not perfect but hopefully good enough for the paint pass in 3d coat.
While I'm still working on improving my skills with the plugin, I decided to go for an automatic pack this time around. I plan to explore more advanced unwrapping techniques in a future project.
I'm pleased with how my UV has turned out given the little manual work I had to put in, and I'm hopeful that I can now import it into 3D Coat. This software is new to me, and I'm excited to dive into texturing, assuming that everything I've done up to this point is correct.
A little workflow related sidenote: To speed up the unwrapping process, I removed all the parts of the mesh that can be mirrored later. This allowed me to unwrap the model more quickly and efficiently.
The meshes that are not split in halve will have unique textures that would look bad when mirrored.
personal note: I am trying to use the little bits of free time here and there to set up a little working area which has proven difficult this month in particular. Depending on how uni picks up I will be able to do a little sprint in the next week-ish to finish up the entire project.
Don't feel hesitant on providing feedback if you see things that are off. Either in my approach or model. I am here to learn.
That's all for now. I'll be sure to keep you updated on the progress of the texturing process.
@Fronk3D UVs could be packed more efficiently to maximize use of space. Thin loops along the belt could be unwrapped to strips too, which would make packing easier and prevent artifacts along the edges. But you might be already aware of that and just want to move forward.
This is still valuable information even though I want to move forward with the project so thank you for sharing.
So far I managed to port it over into 3d coat and apply the base colours using the image colour picker. For more depth I added an AO, baked in substance as an overlay to serve as a guide for painting later.
The deadline in 3 days might end up being a little tight to get it animated as well so I think I will leave the mesh static on the 28th and then animate it after the deadline.
I also redid the UV and unwrapped the sides of the cloth to be straight but the overall UV is still far from being good.
It is at this stage that the little mistakes made in the process start to feel like they are adding up, even worse is seeing the great execution from other people in this thread making me want to redo it from scratch but that is just a natural part of the learning process I guess.
Also when writing this post I realise I mirrored the top cloth segments which I will definitely need to make unique as the patterns would otherwise looks weird.
As always, thanks for reading and feel free to make any remarks on what you see.
I am digging this style so much! As someone else mentioned, if you want to go a little further you can add in some edge highlights for wood cracks and such to get those nice edges pop ( you done that on the asset with the blue pants logo which makes those details really pop).
Here is my finished prop. It was my first time making a stylized prop. I used Substance Painter to create the textures. I then imported into Marmoset for the render. It was fun and I learned much throughout the process. I am open to feedback. I would like to keep improving my work.
Here is my finished prop model! I modeled it in Maya, then import it in Substance Painter to texture, and finally rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 4. Any feedback will help me improve my skills!
Your prop came out amazing. I like the detail in the wood materials that you added. Maybe adding more edge wear detail to the wood would add a nice touch to the props.
Excellent work to everyone who participated in the challenge! The fan favorite definitely seemed to be the stylized prop this time and it was great to see the different methods people used and tried in order to achieve the final result. For anyone still working on their pieces, please continue and keep us updated! It's always great to see everyone make it to the finish line regardless of when it happens.
With that said, a new challenge is underway! Everyone is welcome and it's always open to even those who aren't planning to participate to provide encouragement and feedback to those who are. Hope to see you all there!
Replies
@AdePar I absolutely adore your stylized prop, you did incredibly well making it feel cartoon-like. I would love to see if you can add some wood highlights/edgewear on some edges to distinguish some parts, though this critique is very much just a style preference. Some other wood shades blended in would complement the piece as well! Good job.
These are my finished renders of the stylized prop. This was modeled in Maya and then I went into substance painter to hand paint all the textures. This was my first go at hand painting and making a prop look cute and stylized, so I'm really proud of how it turn out.
Here is my version of the Leather Maker. I made it look somewhat older in years to give it some history and a great story to tell. This was really cool to work on and light up. This was a great challenge and cant wait to see what the future holds for everyone that participates in these. Please feel free to give me feedback as that's the only way we can grow. Here is my Art Station for future references https://www.artstation.com/ryanross7
Good job on this Aunesty. I can see you put some time into this. The colors really pop to give the scene a lot of vibrance. The only thing i would change, and this is a very small nit poick, is the color of the paint on top of what looks to be a stoll. It's a little "loud" and something more earthtone or nuetral would look really good on it. Great piece overall!
Here is my poly count prop, due to work and other projects, I could only due the bare minimum, I did enjoy this challenge and hope to do more in the future.
Here is my finished prop! I did sculpting in Maya, ZBrush, baked in Substance 3D Painter and finished in Marmoset. Here is my Artstat
ion. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/lD1XEO
My prop is complete, there are spots that could use work but for one week I have learned so much and I'm excited to work on more hand painted props
this is my mesh for the challenge
this is my final turn in
This is half way done stylish prop with in the du date. I realize that the time management is really important after finish this prop.
This is my attempt at this project. It was very texture heavy and I experimented in Substance Painter trying to make everything look a little more stylized. That was my main focus of this project. Please leave me any feed back that you feel would make this project even better. I would love to come back to this project in the future to make it look perfect. It was rendered in Marmoset.
@Cruckz , amazing work on the stylization of your piece! the wood has nice edge wear and the colors pop. it is tricky though creating the water pouring over the bucket. I do think that the top two rolls could be more round than square.
Late to start but I really wanted to tackle this as my first fully realized stylized prop. I was always super intimidated by stylized art, but I knew I needed to stop waiting and just dive in and try it out. Learning a lot as usual and having a fun time figuring stuff out!
Here's my finished prop!
Here is my finalized model for the challenge. I did most of my work in Maya and I used substance painter to texture my model (due to the concept I went for a more stylized look for my model). Afterwards I went into UE5 to render my model. I'm open to any feedback to make my model look better! The more the better to make improve.
Here is my finished styled factory building. It was very fun to learn how to paint in a cartoon style. I started in maya and then I did some more detail in zbrush and then painted it on substance. All of the renders is in Marmoset. The polycount is 18398 tris. I am happy to hear any feedback.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8bWnqx
This is the finished prop set for the loom. Put through Substance Painter for texturing and Marmoset Toolbag 4 for rendering. It was a fun challenge to take on!
An updated / final version of my take on the loom! (Textured in Substance, rendered in Marmoset)
Here is my finalized prop. Finished the polish in maya and then took it into substance painter to give it detail and color. Then I rendered it in Marmoset Toolbag 4.
Here's my finished prop! I wasn't exactly sure of the materials so I took some own creative design but here it is!
Hello everyone,
I am choosing to try and create the stylized prop. This is my current WIP. I still have to block out some more of the items. I am using Maya.
Nicely done! The materials work really well. If your gonna be adding this to your portfolio, id recommend adjusting the samples on your render so it look less grainy and so you can really make those shadow and reflection pop
Here's my Prop Stylize model so far. I modeled it in Maya, then import it in Substance Painter to texture, and finally rendered in Marmaset Toolbag 4.
Wow, impressive to see so many Interpretations of the concepts 🤓
Took a jab at the factory prop too, mainly to look into the animation aspect. Animated result from Toolbag:
still render:
As I expected, getting the animated conveyer belt-like element out of Blender proved the most challenging.
In Blender, a plane with segments was deformed using the curve modifier, then moved along the curve by simply moving it on one axis. A weld modifier welded start and end vertices together.
Transferring this conveyer belt motion to a bone animation proved to be to much for me and I have to try again at some point :P It took lots of bones to get a somewhat smooth curvature, which I imagine might be a limitation for a mobile game asset. I constrained empties to a mesh moving along the curve, then constraint bones to those. In the end the mesh skinned to the bones didn't deform as expected, and making adjustments to all constraints without knowing what I was doing was too much of a pain. Should have made a smaller test first.
Next attempt was to export the file as alembic, which was pretty simple. Problems that I couldn't get rid off when uploading to sketchfab were a jittery motion on the conveyer belt-like fabric and a new material per object. Another consideration with this option might be that the resulting file is fairly large in comparison.
Finally, I settled with animating in Toolbag. For the conveyer belt-like fabric the UV offset was animated, for other elements simply rotation and scale. Thanks to the marmor viewer export, I could embed the animated model into the project on artstation.
Looking through the entries, I believe a common challenge is transferring the proportions from concept into 3d (at least for me it is 😝). I'd recommend deconstructing the reference before or during the modeling, e.g.: What individual elements are used for its construction? Elements size in relation to each other? Prominent features in the silhouette? This sort of breakdown also helps to estimate the amount of work. If one wants to stay super faithful to the concept, setting up a camera with reference image to trace the with the blockout can help.
Then, while working, frequent breaks are useful to reflect on what was made and subsequently make iterations. I think during the creation process imperfections add up, and the energy spent on the later stages (sculpting, texturing, lighting, animating) might be on something with fundamental flaws. But obviously, time limits prevent redoing the same thing over and over again and becoming crazy. Good breakpoints to step back and to evaluate the model might be after a sub task was completed, like after blockout, modeling, sculpting, baking, texturing,... .
Uff, that turned into lots of text, hope it makes somewhat sense 😅 To all the new people, I'd also suggest to check out the wiki and dig through other parts of the forums to learn of different workflows.
Anyways, congrats to everybody who made something! Keep it up 🚀
Here is my finished prop! Had so much fun doing this and will definitely be trying more stylized things in the future. Looking forward for what comes next!
Disclaimer: The following text is partially written with chatGPT. I first wrote my forum post manually and later asked the AI to write what I wrote but better. I am not sure where the moral boundary lays with the ethical use of AI so I figured I'd be upfront about it.
I'm happy to share that I have completed the asset's preparation for painting using the Blender plugin ZenUV.
Though it took me a while to understand the basics of the plugin, I had an "aha moment" leading me to unwrap the model. It is not perfect but hopefully good enough for the paint pass in 3d coat.
While I'm still working on improving my skills with the plugin, I decided to go for an automatic pack this time around. I plan to explore more advanced unwrapping techniques in a future project.
I'm pleased with how my UV has turned out given the little manual work I had to put in, and I'm hopeful that I can now import it into 3D Coat. This software is new to me, and I'm excited to dive into texturing, assuming that everything I've done up to this point is correct.
A little workflow related sidenote: To speed up the unwrapping process, I removed all the parts of the mesh that can be mirrored later. This allowed me to unwrap the model more quickly and efficiently.
The meshes that are not split in halve will have unique textures that would look bad when mirrored.
personal note: I am trying to use the little bits of free time here and there to set up a little working area which has proven difficult this month in particular. Depending on how uni picks up I will be able to do a little sprint in the next week-ish to finish up the entire project.
Don't feel hesitant on providing feedback if you see things that are off. Either in my approach or model. I am here to learn.
That's all for now. I'll be sure to keep you updated on the progress of the texturing process.
@Fronk3D UVs could be packed more efficiently to maximize use of space. Thin loops along the belt could be unwrapped to strips too, which would make packing easier and prevent artifacts along the edges. But you might be already aware of that and just want to move forward.
Keep it up!
This is still valuable information even though I want to move forward with the project so thank you for sharing.
So far I managed to port it over into 3d coat and apply the base colours using the image colour picker. For more depth I added an AO, baked in substance as an overlay to serve as a guide for painting later.
The deadline in 3 days might end up being a little tight to get it animated as well so I think I will leave the mesh static on the 28th and then animate it after the deadline.
I also redid the UV and unwrapped the sides of the cloth to be straight but the overall UV is still far from being good.
It is at this stage that the little mistakes made in the process start to feel like they are adding up, even worse is seeing the great execution from other people in this thread making me want to redo it from scratch but that is just a natural part of the learning process I guess.
Also when writing this post I realise I mirrored the top cloth segments which I will definitely need to make unique as the patterns would otherwise looks weird.
As always, thanks for reading and feel free to make any remarks on what you see.
Cheers!
I am digging this style so much! As someone else mentioned, if you want to go a little further you can add in some edge highlights for wood cracks and such to get those nice edges pop ( you done that on the asset with the blue pants logo which makes those details really pop).
Here is my finished prop. It was my first time making a stylized prop. I used Substance Painter to create the textures. I then imported into Marmoset for the render. It was fun and I learned much throughout the process. I am open to feedback. I would like to keep improving my work.
Here is my finished prop model! I modeled it in Maya, then import it in Substance Painter to texture, and finally rendered in Marmoset Toolbag 4. Any feedback will help me improve my skills!
@crazo97
Your prop came out amazing. I like the detail in the wood materials that you added. Maybe adding more edge wear detail to the wood would add a nice touch to the props.
Hey everyone! 😊
Excellent work to everyone who participated in the challenge! The fan favorite definitely seemed to be the stylized prop this time and it was great to see the different methods people used and tried in order to achieve the final result. For anyone still working on their pieces, please continue and keep us updated! It's always great to see everyone make it to the finish line regardless of when it happens.
With that said, a new challenge is underway! Everyone is welcome and it's always open to even those who aren't planning to participate to provide encouragement and feedback to those who are. Hope to see you all there!
https://polycount.com/discussion/232564/the-bi-monthly-environment-art-challenge-march-april-83