Art Spotlight: Sonic Screwdriver

About Me

Hi there! My name is Alexandr, I’m a 3D artist, born in the city of Donetsk, in Ukraine.

Since childhood, I have liked art, technology, video games, and I always had the desire to work at the junction of these activities. Eventually, I began to encounter 3D making-of timelapses on YouTube. I was inspired and decided to download Blender: I made a couple of mugs with tutorials, a wine glass and even a dagger. But this did not last long. Blender turned out to be too complicated for the 11-year-old me, and I was too lazy for Blender, and the games were much more fun.

A couple of years ago, I started studying graphic design at the IT Academy. A year ago, I took “3D Visualization”, in which I began to learn 3ds Max. Contrary to my expectations, it took quite a while to understand the logic of the program. It was hard, but I kept trying.

There was a cool teacher at the academy: he had answers to almost everything—it really inspired me and it’s hard to overestimate his contribution. But I still had to devote a lot of time to self-training, partly because we were engaged in visualization, and I wanted to try a gamedev pipeline. After about five months of study and practice, I completed the coursework—“Ural”. Now I see enough problems in this work and much can be done better, but at that time I still knew little.

After the course, I continued to study and improve my skills, albeit less intensively. I made some more models that you can find on my profile.

A lot of what I learned this year was thanks to the myriad videos, tutorials, articles, comments, and models on Sketchfab, so thanks to everyone.

The circumstances that led me to create the model are simple: I was just tired of “Subdivision Modeling” and wanted to try something else. The method itself is not bad, but when I model, I start to think not so much about the shape and object as about topology, quads, and vertices, and I stop enjoying the process. In the end, I came across a choice: “Sculpt high-poly” or “CAD Modeling”. So far, I have settled on the first one, since I wanted to learn ZBrush, too.

My inspiration is also quite simple: before starting to study 3D, I watched Doctor Who and I liked his screwdriver. I planned to do it at the very beginning, but I lacked the skills, and now I came across this plan again.

References

First of all, I start with references and recommend that everyone do the same. In truth, I even overdo it a bit and sometimes spend an unreasonable amount of time to understand what versions of an object exist, how they differ, how mechanisms work, and what the purpose of individual elements is. This is all in order to clearly imagine how I would use it, how to use it and how it wears out. I still rely mainly on references, because not everything can be predicted, and sometimes dings and scratches appear where they should not be at first glance.

Note: It is better not to use the blueprints, unless they are official (and, they mostly are not).

I would also recommend sorting and structuring everything, giving the correct names to objects, and the like. For example, if you are making a car, create separate folders for references: basic forms, parts, wheels, interior, headlights, engine, or use programs like PureRef or Kuadro and structure everything there. Of course, this is not a panacea, you can neglect all this or find a personal way.

Modeling Middle-Poly

I’m starting to set up a scene in 3ds Max with real dimensions and reference planes. I’m doing middle-poly, not really thinking about the topology, as long as there are no visual artifacts. I use “Boolean” if more complex details are needed or if it can be used to make elements faster. “Boolean” creates a mess, but I am able to clear mid-edge vertices faster by selecting the vertices of two edges using “By Numeric” in the “Ribbon Panel” and deleting them by pressing Backspace.

I weld several nearby vertices, clean up the consequences, etc. Sometimes I use “FFD” to add curved shapes, and I assign smoothing groups for better display. The whole process is pretty simple.

For me, the disadvantages of this method are that sometimes you have to “collapse” the modifier stack and, in case of errors, it’s more difficult to go back to the original geometry—you have to literally redo it. Of course, this does not happen so often, and you can always make a couple of backups, but it’s much more convenient to have several “Edit Poly” modifiers with different steps. On the other hand, many plugins and scripts simply do not work with “Edit Poly”, so this is inevitable.

Note: when making a screwdriver, I used “Boolean” only once when I made the handle, because the screwdriver has a rather simple shape and, roughly speaking, can be made with one “Extrude” and a cylinder or with “Spline” and “Lathe”.

When the model is ready, I check whether there are errors or holes (this is not fatal, but ZBrush does not like holes very much), check the smoothing groups and unwrap UVs with their help. I export each part of the object to a separate file (this can be done using a script or manually; in 3ds Max I did not find an alternative function, unfortunately).

Sculpt High-Poly

Sculpting the high-poly is a pretty fun and laid-back part for me, especially after the days of “Subdivision modeling”. I import the mesh into ZBrush, “Offset” individual parts with each other, so that they do not overlap and stick together during the application of “DynaMesh”. It’s a good idea to merge all parts before using “DynaMesh” so that the density of the polygons is uniform after applying; then comes “DynaMesh” itself. Next are long manipulations with the functions “Polish”, “Polish By Features”, “Polish Crisp Edges” (do not forget that these functions have two modes), masks, masks by groups, selections, and, sometimes, “Relax”.

Note: It’s better to exaggerate the size of the chamfers on the high-poly to make them more readable. Sometimes I even add them where they are not, but with restraint (I have the feeling that because of this article, the problem for beginners will be that all hard surfaces turn into molten plastic). Because of all kinds of pitfalls, such as: normal map resolution, screen resolution, anti-aliasing and other interesting things, soft, pleasant little bevels turn into sharp razors. Moreover, at a distance of more than a couple of inches, they completely disappear, and with them the meaning of the normal map and half the work done. This is perhaps one of the main problems that beginners face.

After smoothing out all the places I need, I get a high-poly mesh. At this stage, before sculpting chips, deep scratches and other defects that are difficult to model, I prefer to export the model. Firstly, because I love customization and variability, and secondly, in the hope that this can save me if something goes wrong. Each time before exporting, I reduce the number of polygons using the “Decimation Master”

Note: Look at the references, but if you feel you want more scratches, just do them. But do not forget that some places simply could not be damaged, because they do not come into contact with anything and that people often subconsciously begin to place damage at the same distance from each other, imposing order and other rhythms and patterns. Nevertheless, if you notice that you made this mistake several times and don’t want to redo everything, then the “Morph Target” function and the “Morph” brush can help—just find out how it works.

So far, I’m completely satisfied with the standard ZBrush brushes. I mainly use: “TrimDynamic”, “Smooth”, “Morph”, “TrimAdaptive”, maybe “DamStandard”. Sometimes I may need something special, then I either look for brushes and other effects on the Internet, or create them myself.

When I am satisfied with the result, I save everything, reduce the number of polygons using the “Decimation Master”, and export the mesh.

Modeling Low-Poly

This process is also quite intuitive: I take the original middle-poly mesh and if any edge or vertex does not affect the silhouette or there are too many of them in one place for low-poly, then I just delete or weld them. Reduce the number of vertices, edges, stitch objects, delete geometry that no one will ever see or which is ideally replaced with a normal map. I check the object for unwanted holes, overlapping vertices, and other problems.

Unwrap UV

By this stage, I usually already have the smoothing groups correctly located and I can just unwrap the whole object with one simple click in the “Unwrap UVW” modifier using the “Flatten By Smoothing Groups” function.

Unfortunately, everything is not so simple, as this is only the beginning. Much should be cut, relaxed, aligned.

I would not say that I strictly follow some rules, the process is intuitive. But here are a few key points:

• I try to place a seam on each corner, which is less than or equal to 90° so that on the normal map there are no compensating gradients that can cause artifacts;
• I hide the seams in the least visible places so that they are not obvious;
• I try to make the UV islands straight so that there are no anti-aliasing artifacts on the textures;
• I check with various checkers to avoid distortions;
• I watch for Texel density so that there are no large differences in resolution; for less important islands’ UVs, I assign a lower resolution;
• I watch for padding and the lack of overlap.

When the UVs suit me, I begin to prepare everything for export to Substance Painter. I explode the objects and make cages (if necessary), having previously saved them in the original location using animation, export or copy. I assign materials of different colors to the high-poly in order to subsequently be able to quickly assign materials using the Id map with the low-poly.

Texturing

I start texturing by baking various maps, with low settings, so as not to waste time on rendering and if I notice problems, immediately fix the cage, AO, and other settings. If everything is fine, then I increase the resolution and anti-aliasing.

Standard Smart Materials allow me to easily create an impressive foundation, but I do not stop there—they require manual adjustment. I gradually increase the detail of each of them by using generators, masks, filters, procedurals, various overlays and other features of the program, trying to resemble the references in the smallest details.

Note: At some point it became popular to add various surface imperfections to objects, but at the same time I often see how they do not correspond to the size of the object. It’s funny at times to see kid’s fingerprints or drips the size of a palm on a machine gun. Of course, no one asks for everything to be done perfectly, but you should adhere to at least approximate proportions.

Sometimes the references look sterilized and uninteresting, even upon closer inspection, and I move away from them: add more dust, interspersed particles, introduce variability to maps and other defects that add story to the object or naturalness. It is important not to overdo it and remember about the big and small details—to leave the eye a place to rest.

Note: For small details, as well as chamfers, it is better to do a little more so that they are more readable.

Substance Painter has a convenient export preset for Sketchfab, that allows you to quickly continue working there.

Sketchfab

After import, I have an excellent base, which has to be seasoned with effects. I usually don’t have a clear plan of how the result should look: I just select the settings that will look good. I adjust the brightness, choose the environment, lighting, Ground Shadows Baked AO—just awesome. Next up are Post-Processing Filters. It’s hard for me to say which effects I like best, they are all breathtaking and I often use many of them. Sketchfab is very convenient and always at hand.

You can find me and more of my works on ArtStation or here in my profile.

Thanks to the Sketchfab team for giving me the opportunity to talk about my work here.