Breakdown: How to Create a Detailed ICA Dresden Folding Plate Camera

Introduction

Hello Everyone! My name is Rajan Verma, and I'm a 3D Artist specializing in hard-surface modeling, props, and game-ready assets. I started my journey into 3D because I was always curious about what happens behind the games we play. That curiosity eventually turned into a career, and since starting professionally in 2020, I've had the opportunity to work on a variety of game projects and assets.

This time, however, I wanted to do something slightly different. I decided to participate in Sierra Division Academy's Back in Time: Antique Props Challenge, which was actually my first-ever 3D art challenge.

The rules were simple, but challenging: create an antique from the 1800s to the mid-1920s as a game-ready asset, while staying within 25K triangles, a single texture set, and no third-party assets. Over five weeks, around 200 artists took on the challenge.

For my entry, I chose an ICA Dresden Antique Folding Plate Camera. I was immediately attracted to it because it wasn't just another hard-surface object. It had a little bit of everything – rigid mechanical parts, leather, metal, brass, glass, and the characteristic folding bellows.

But there was another reason I liked it. A camera is an object designed to preserve memories. That idea eventually became the foundation for the final presentation. Rather than showing the camera as a simple isolated prop, I wanted to create the feeling that it belonged to someone and had survived a particular moment in time.

After five weeks of dedication, the project was awarded first place. The judges highlighted the storytelling, realism, material response, bellows, wear and tear, optimization, UVs, and final presentation. 

In this breakdown, I'll walk through how I approached the project, from choosing the camera and researching its construction to building the game-ready asset, creating its aged materials, and finally giving it a story.

What attracted me to the camera was not just its appearance, but the amount of history contained within its construction. It combines leather, metal, brass, glass, fabric-like bellows, and many small mechanical components. Each material ages differently, which made it an interesting subject for both modeling and texturing.

I also wanted the final piece to communicate something beyond the object itself. Instead of presenting the camera as an isolated asset, I imagined a small story around it – a camera belonging to someone during a war-torn period, carrying memories that remained long after the person was gone.

Why I Chose This Camera

The first thing that caught my attention was the camera's design. We are so used to modern cameras now that taking a photograph feels almost effortless. You take out your phone, point it somewhere, and the picture is done.

This camera is the complete opposite. It is a physical object. You can see how much thought went into making every part of it work. The body folds, the bellows expand, the lens sits inside a mechanical assembly, and the whole thing has this very distinctive combination of leather and metal.

But I didn't want to stop at simply recreating the object. I wanted the final piece to have a reason for existing. While developing the project, I imagined that the camera had once belonged to a soldier. Before leaving for war, he used it to capture memories with the person he loved. The old photograph, dried rose, and worn book in the final scene represent those memories.

The idea was that he never came back, and the camera was left behind with the memories it had captured. I didn't want to make a huge environment to explain this story. Instead, I tried to keep the composition simple and let a few objects quietly suggest what might have happened. The camera remained the hero.  That small idea actually influenced many of my decisions later, especially the materials, wear, and final presentation.

Work with References

I always enjoy the reference-gathering stage. For me, it is almost like detective work. Instead of collecting only pictures of the camera, I tried to understand how the camera was constructed and how its materials would behave after years of use.

I separated my references into different areas: overall shape, mechanical parts, leather, painted metal, brass, glass, bellows, and aging.

This helped a lot because sometimes the exact camera doesn't give you enough information. You may find a good image of the front, but not the back, or you may see the leather clearly but have no idea how the metal underneath should look.

In those situations, I looked at similar antique objects and materials to understand how they age. One thing I learned from this project is that reference isn't only for modeling the shape. It is equally important for texturing.

For example, instead of randomly adding scratches to make something look old, I tried to understand where a real camera would actually be touched, rubbed, folded, opened, or exposed to dirt. That small difference can make a texture feel much more believable.

I tried to keep the workflow fairly straightforward and use each tool where it made the most sense.

Modeling

I started with a simple blockout, focusing mainly on the proportions, silhouette, and overall construction of the camera. Since the camera has quite a few mechanical parts, getting these relationships right was important before moving into the smaller details.

Once the blockout felt right, I refined the individual components and paid close attention to the smaller construction details. I wanted the camera to feel like a real, carefully assembled object rather than a collection of simple shapes.

The bellows were one of the more interesting parts to work on. Their folds and layered construction give the camera a lot of its character, so I spent extra time making sure they felt natural and held up well from different angles.

For the smaller details, I tried to find a balance between accuracy and optimization. Not every detail needed to be geometric, so I kept the important shapes in the mesh and left finer information for the later stages.

High-Poly

For the high-poly, I focused on refining the main forms and adding the smaller mechanical details that helped sell the construction of the camera.

I also introduced subtle imperfections rather than keeping everything perfectly clean. Small changes in the edges, surface, and construction helped break that CG-perfect look. 

The idea was to have enough detail to make the camera interesting up close, while still keeping the model practical for the final game-ready version.

Low-Poly & UVs

After completing the high-poly, I moved on to the low-poly version. I kept more geometry where it was important for the silhouette, especially around the larger rounded shapes, while simplifying smaller and flatter parts. This helped me keep the final model around 25K triangles without losing the overall quality of the camera. 

The UVs were packed into a single 2K texture sheet, with the texel density distributed according to how important each part was to the final presentation. I tried to keep this stage clean and efficient because good optimization is not really about removing as much geometry as possible — it's about knowing where that geometry actually matters.

Baking

The baking stage was kept fairly straightforward. I mainly focused on getting a clean transfer of the high-poly information onto the game-ready mesh.

The smaller surface details, especially those that didn't need to affect the silhouette, could then be handled through the bake and textures instead of adding unnecessary geometry.

Texturing

This was probably the stage where the camera gained most of its personality. I didn't want to make it look old simply by adding a heavy grunge layer. I wanted the different materials to show different kinds of aging, depending on how they would have been used over time. 

I worked mainly with leather, painted metal, brass, glass, and bellows, building each material separately before bringing everything together.

Leather

The leather was one of the most important materials because of how much of the camera it covers. I started with the base material and gradually built up color variation, roughness, wrinkles, creases, and worn areas.

The edges and frequently handled areas received more wear, while the deeper folds became darker and collected more dirt. I also added small tears and stretched areas to break the uniformity.

I wanted the leather to feel old and well-used, but still believable.

Painted Metal

For the painted metal, I focused on creating several subtle layers instead of making the surface uniformly damaged.

I started with the original painted surface and then added color variation, roughness changes, edge wear, chipped areas, and exposed metal.

The important part was controlling where the damage appeared. Edges, corners, contact points, and areas that would have been handled more often received stronger wear.

That helped the damage feel like something that happened through use rather than something randomly painted onto the texture.

Scratches & Surface Wear

Scratches were something I had to be quite careful with. It's very easy to add too many and make an antique prop look noisy. Instead, I tried to imagine how the camera had actually been carried, opened, placed down, and handled.

Some scratches are sharper and easier to notice, while others are much softer and mostly affect the roughness. This combination of larger damage, smaller scratches, dust, and subtle surface variation helped create a more natural wear layer.

Bellows

The bellows deserved extra attention because they are such a recognizable part of a folding camera. 

I focused on the folds, creases, height variation, and darker areas between them. I also added subtle wear where the material would naturally stretch and move.

This was one of the areas where small changes in value and roughness made a surprisingly big difference. The folds don't need to be extremely detailed if the material response is doing its job.

Final Material Pass

Once the individual materials were working, I brought everything together with a final pass of dust, dirt, edge damage, oxidation, and roughness variation.

I tried to keep the overall texture relatively dark, which was another small challenge. When an asset is mostly dark, it can easily become flat or lose its material separation.

So instead of simply increasing the brightness, I used different roughness values, subtle color shifts, and controlled highlights to separate the materials.

That helped the leather, painted metal, brass, and bellows remain readable even within the darker overall look.

Final Presentation

Once the texturing was complete, I moved on to the final presentation in Marmoset Toolbag 5.

I wanted to keep the composition simple and make sure the camera remained the clear hero of the scene. The photograph, dried rose, and worn book were there to support the story without taking attention away from the asset.

For the lighting, I focused on getting enough contrast to reveal the different materials while maintaining the nostalgic feeling of the scene.

The final beauty shots were not just about showing the model from different angles. I wanted them to make the viewer curious about the object and the story behind it.

I also added some subtle post-processing to bring the colors, contrast, and overall presentation together.

What I Learned

This challenge taught me a lot, but probably the biggest lesson was observation. When I started, I was mainly thinking about how to model the camera. By the end, I was thinking much more about how the camera was used, how it would age, where someone would touch it, what material would wear first, and what objects might exist around it.

That change in thinking made the asset much stronger. I also learned that you don't always need more geometry or more texture detail to make a prop better. Sometimes the improvement comes from simply making a better decision. A scratch in the right place is more valuable than twenty random scratches.

A small roughness variation can tell you more about a material than a complicated shader. And a simple photograph beside a prop can sometimes give it more personality than an entire environment.

Conclusion

The ICA Antique Folding Plate Camera was a really enjoyable project because it allowed me to combine prop creation with something more personal – storytelling.

The Sierra Division challenge pushed me to improve every stage of the process, but more importantly, it made me slow down and really observe the object instead of simply rushing through the pipeline.

My biggest advice to beginners would be to finish your projects. You can always improve your modeling, texturing, lighting, or presentation, but finishing a project and learning from it is what really helps you grow.

And sometimes, the most interesting projects start with a simple question: “I wonder who used this?”  That question became the starting point for this camera.

If you've made it this far, thank you so much for reading! I really appreciate it. And if you'd like to see the complete project, WIPs, and final submission, you can check it out here:

View my Sierra Division submission here.

ArtStation post here.

Thanks to Gloria and the 80 Level team for the opportunity. Until the next one, see you soon again, hopefully with another story and way too many tiny details.

Rajan Verma, 3D Artist