Software Used: Maya, Blender, Zbrush, Substance Painter, Photoshop, Marmoset Toolbag 5
Concept
Modeled and surfaced from a collection of photographic references
This piece is an homage to my maternal ancestors. Combining my memories, both real and contrived about their persons and of the spaces they inhabited, I wanted to build a scene that represents my precious remembrances of them.
The ornate outer box is meant to act as a protective container and shrine for these memories. It is based off of the architecture of gothic cathedrals, carved gothic-style cuckoo clocks, and ornate molded and carved chests.
I've had this image in one form or another in mind for years, and I've attempted it once before when I was a student. This is another attempt and I really treated this more as a sketch to get down an updated image of this scene as I imagine it at present. I'm sure I'll revisit this again in the future.



Base Colour

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PureRef reference board
modeling
For this project I worked from multiple blocking rounds, starting with basic cubes to get the furniture layout. Once I had those pieces fleshed out I started adding more blocking elements to help fill up the room. Then I turned to the outer box, and finally to the various props that fill up the room. This was a very additive process for me, and I worked between rounds of blocking/detailing doing rough sketches of what else I might like to add.
The room was modeled primarily in Maya, but I did make use of Zbrush for meshes like the sofa, the crucifix, and the statue of San Francesco. I also made a lot of use of Blender for its wonderful curves and cloth sims.
For the most part I modeled all the pieces to real-world proportions and kept them straight and square until I had all details in place. Then I made use of lattices to wonk and skew the pieces. This piece is rooted in reality, but its totally imaginary and I wanted the style of the modeling to reflect that.
Model example pre and post wonk pass
texturing
Similar to the modeling, I wanted the texture style to be rooted in reality while maintaining just enough wonk and stylization to give the scene a sense of make-believe. I tried to do this by increasing the scale of patterns like the woodgrain, and by exaggerating details like edge-wear and scratching.
Textures were made in Substance Painter with assistance from Photoshop for alpha creation.


Wireframe

Base Colour

Grey

Normals

Metallic

Roughness


Wireframe

Grey

Base Colour

Normals

Metallic

Roughness


Wireframe

Grey

Base Colour

Normals

Metallic

Roughness





Base Colour

Normals

Metallic

Roughness


Lit

Wireframe

Grey

Base Colour

Normals

Roughness


Wireframe

Grey

Base Colour

Normals

Metallic

Roughness


Wireframe

Grey

Base Colour

Normals

Metallic

Roughness


Wireframe

Grey

Base Colour

Normals

Metallic

Roughness


Wireframe

Grey

Base Colour

Normals

Metallic

Roughness

Lit

Grey

Base Colour

Normals

Metallic
