In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hi, I’m Bastien Genbrugge, Motion Designer at Bagaar & Bagaar Studio in Antwerp.
4 years and a diploma of biology it took me to realise that I wanted be in a more creative sector. So I decided to try graphic design at the Academy of Antwerp. You know, just one year, to see if this was getting me somewhere. I wasn’t really a computer guy a the time, so most of the software (PSD, AE, Flash, Illustrator, …) was new to me. But anyway, I liked it, passed the first year and continued the second year. That was the time Cinema 4D was introduced. I had never heard of it and… my god… that was it!! Forget biology! 3D animation is so much cooler! Anyway, needless to say I found the motivation to finish the degree and soon after I started my job at Bagaar.
In the three years I’ve been working for Bagaar, I mainly got challenged in 3D animations and 3D visualisations. We continuously create 3D visualisations to push our 3D skill boundaries and to show our clients what we are capable of. And, just to make it more fun, we try to add a nice story to each image. Keeps the imagination going, you know. During this particular series we came up with the idea of the ‘Revenge of the classic toys’.
The first obvious step was to do some research about the shapes and how they fit together. So we bought a wooden T-Rex toy model and started playing with it. I instantly felt like an 8-year-old again.
The next step was drawing the dino. I drew out each piece and converted every one of them into splines in Cinema 4D.
With the extrude object I gave each piece a volume, making them look like “tangible” objects. And then came the fun part: laying out the entire puzzle and trying to compose it into a dinosaur all over again.
Yay! The dino was born. But, … it didn’t look alive, it was too static. So, I decided to add some bend tools to give it a more organic and dynamic look.
Check! The mesh of the model was ready. Next was of course the texturing and the lighting.
Lighting: I kept the lighting quite simple. I used a sky object with an HDRI image. This, together with GI (global illumination) would render the necessary soft light for the scene. So, no lights or softboxes were used. Additionally, I added some ambient occlusion, just to add some depth and contrast to the model.
Texturing: Over the years, I’ve collected a decent texture library, so finding a suitable wood texture wasn’t too hard. Next to the color, I also added a bump map, and some subtle blurry reflections. Afterwards a second texture was added on the border selection of each piece to give it the multiplex effect.
Okay, almost done.
I just had to insert the playstation and a pile of wooden blocks and the scene was ready!
Well, for the Cinema 4D part that is.
In order to add the model to Sketchfab, there was one more (optional) step to take: baking the object/texture. I grouped color, ambient occlusion and lighting/shadows in one texture and once the texture was baked I just exported the model with the new texture as an FBX file.
I had to reopen the .fbx in Cinema 4D so it would generate a new file with the textures and next I compressed the .fbx together with the textures in a .zip file and uploaded it to Sketchfab.
Last but not least, I did some final tweaking on the model with the Sketchfab settings. I disabled the lights, because the textures were already baked with shadows. I added an environment for some subtle reflections. Next, I gave each texture a bump/normal and a specular map.
Finally I played around with the post processing filters. I added some grain, DOF, bloom and so on. Here you can check the setting I used:
Aaaaaaand done!
If you like this kind of work or if you’re intrigued by our Bagaar Studio, feel free to visit the website: bagaarstudio.be. We would be happy to give you a tour around our studio.
Best regards,
Bastien
Find me here!
About the author
Seori Sachs
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