Beyond my realistic textures, I've also spent a lot of time working in more stylized contexts. For both The Reaper and my Mailbox environment, painterly textures with a semi-matte finish create a gentle, storybook feeling. These elements were created in Substance painter, using a custom made Smart Texture as a base, with hand-painted details such as highlights adding variety and additional detail. Additional textural details such as wood and cardboard textures were either hand-painted or created using procedural methods and overlaid to create a detailed texture that still fit within the visual style of the project.
My general process for modeling and texturing begins with reference. For my Mailbox Environment project, I began with a piece of concept art by @pingapenguins. From there, I determined a visual style I wanted to follow using existing reference from both photography and from other 3D artists, and blocked out the main shapes to ensure my proportions were correct. I also divided up the room into Primary, Secondary, and tertiary objects based on size and level of detail.
Each item was block modeled, with an emphasis on clean geometry and low poly count. These were rendered in Arnold for Maya, so the smooth preview made it possible to create detailed geometry by strategically increasing and decreasing the edge loops for each section.
From there, each piece was brought into Substance Painter. A custom Smart Material was used to provide a base gradient with a semi-matte finish, and additional details were either procedurally generated and overlaid, such as the cardboard texture, or hand painted, such as wood grain and edge highlights, to create a gentle, illustrative feeling.
Finally, the objects were referenced into the scene, and lighting was added to complete the look. Subtle animation was given to different elements, such as the plants waving in the window, or the globe spinning. The scene was rendered from a few different angles, and the project was completed!
