This is the last stretch for my project. I have dived into the painting. I fixed some of little baking mistakes in Photoshop for Normal and AO maps. From here, having basic colours set I went piece by piece with my model, looking at the concept art I textured every bit. First taking care of the edges, then adding the actual texture where needed to avoid the simplicity.
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| Eye textured liek sea tutrtle eye |
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| Adding layers |
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| More layers, filters and masks |
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| adding dirt masks etc to improve the look of the corset |
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| Paint progress |
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| Details done |
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| My document had quite a lot of layers and adding stylized lighting added an interesting effect |
I was quite happy with textures, especially that I managed to use emissive and opacity map.
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| Adding emissive to hair, for the light, like an algae |
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| Opacity for membrane wings |
From here I was jumping between my 3D model and snow globe creation. I have finally painted the print. Although I wanted to do it with oils at first I decided to test it on the test coral print.
I painted a bit of watercolours and realised that painting second coat will dissolve first one, if I use water. Oil would be okay, but I would have to use turpentine, which I had no experience with, I was a bit concerned to use it now. Doing more research I found acrylics and waterproof acrylic sealer/varnish should work perfectly and give a nice shine for the figure. I used acrylics, and I think it was a good decision. Paints were easy to apply and sealed primer layer with second coat quite well.
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Coat 1
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| Coat 1 done: 4hrs |
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| Coat 2 done: 4hrs |
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| Details: 2hrs |
I enjoyed painting, it was my first miniature model and I learned a lot, it is a slow and tricky process. Perhaps if I would do more of those in my free time, I could train my eye for details more, which is quite useful. When painting was done I left it to dry completely, (as I did with every layer) and went back to the game ready model. Before that, I also have printed a cylinder to lift the model inside the jar.
I also realised, that the base was slightly too big, I did not check the jar properly and the bottom was slightly tighter once progressing vertically. I tried to sand it down, but I only managed to break the bottom of it. However, this made it more flexible, so I managed to push it into the jar: it was okay.
I had to go on, I exported all the texture maps:
And created the set inside Unreal Engine. I did mentioned at the beginning of my project, that I could use Marmoset, but now it was a bit too late to try new things. Especially, that I had access only to trial version. I chose the method, which I knew with the motivation, that i could at least use some new methods to learn. I imported my low poly model and texture maps, then made materials for it:
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| inside the engine |
I wanted to create underwater environment. Following one of the Youtube tutorials I made water caustics and place them through light on the floor that I quickly made it look like sand. From here I also focused on use of the slightly thicker fog, light shafts and bloom, to create this underwater feel.
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| Tutorial for water caustics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsufc5B6aS8 |
I did think of placing my corals and barrel etc, but looking at examples of good turntables, the character should be the focus. Also, since the 3D print was the goal of my project, I did not want to over complicate things, the environment was like an underwater beach, which examples of I found online.
Once I was happy with it I took high quality screenshots, made turntable and few other camera shots to later create a nice video.
Coming back to my print, I sprayed it with the varnish and left it overnight again. Unfortunately the varnish did dissolve some of the white paint, uncovering my mistakes of other colours underneath. I decided i will fix it with oil paint once the trash are ready.
Next day I dived into gluing 'trash' onto my model:
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| For nets I used net from onions pack. |
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| It was very difficult to hold in place. |
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| Trash are on! |
This was quite difficult. My next experiment was to test the glycerine, water and microplastics. I truly should have done it earlier. In first semester I did manage to test glycerine, paints and glitter, but should have done it with pieces of trash... trouble was not all the trash wanted to sink. I experimented more with amount of glycerin and even put the test jar into the fridge to cool the water done in order to decrease the density of it. Processing what I have done so far, I actually figured out, that having some trash on the surface will not be the worst, as it does reflect the situation in the oceans very well.
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Sadly pieces of plastics were easy to find around my flat.. so I made them smaller
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My list from last post:
- print additional base to lift the model in the jar
- paint the model
- accomplish textures for game model
- set up the scene in unreal
- finish the snow globe and needed bits: nearly there!
- edit the video of the process form all the material I recorder so far: in progress
- if there is enough time, pose the model: not sure about this one
