Creating Aged Weapon with Realistic Texturing Using ZBrush & Substance 3D

Introduction

Hello, dear friends. My name is Lyubov Vasilyeva. I'm a Weapon Artist at Mundfish. I've been in the gaming industry for about three years and have already worked on projects like Escape from Tarkov and Call of Duty.

I've already told you about the creation of two of three projects: Leuchtpistole 42, Precision Milling Machine, and DBAL-A. In these articles, I've talked a lot about my approach in the initial stages of working on a project. Now I want to go into a little more detail about the most important points.

I continue to explore texturing on more interesting objects, but I've also decided to add some creative flair to my work. I decided to choose some interesting weapons, but also complement them with some interesting elements. I liked this realistic GM-94 grenade launcher, but I decided to add some non-typical but quite realistic elements.

I'll tell you about the most interesting stages of creating this GM94 concept, and show you the most striking and interesting moments from the creation process, which I hope you'll find useful.

The original weapon looks amazing

But I made several attempts to create an interesting stock and forearm.

My design searches

And still searching for design...

and more…

and more...

After spending a fair amount of time creating design iterations, I created my own polish-ready model in ZBrush. I've started working with Plasticity, and I can say it's now my favorite program, allowing me to create incredible things. I recommend every artist who wants to work on new projects to learn CAD programs, as they truly are the future. (You can trust me, I worked on a large project that was over 10 years old, and they often only approved polygonal modeling. But then, when I moved to companies with more modern CAD pipelines, I realized how much easier and faster it is for production work.)

Let's Start Real Creativity

I'm finally starting sculpting high-poly. This is one of the most interesting stages. I specifically chose a design where I could add welds, as they always look cool and three-dimensional. Always remember that to make welds look three-dimensional, you need to use a thin layer of underlay.

Also, make sure your welds are varied. I always combine several types of welds, which look cool together!

This is how I create several versions of finished models that I can always use in my work (actually, no, because I will never have that much time).

Some Technical Points

A very important point in ensuring successful weld bakes is important. If you're not trying to conserve polygons and are doing a project purely for your portfolio, I recommend always embedding large weld seams with geometry. This will help you achieve realism in close-up renders. My life hack for speeding up the process is to simply use the DECIMATE tool and connect a piece of this mesh to the correct low-poly geometry.

It also looks incredibly cool when your weld seam transitions from one piece of geometry to another. I love these kinds of details and highly recommend them. If you use this often, it looks very unusual and immediately adds realism.

Some boring information – my low-poly model consists of 89 thousand triangles and 4 UV sets.

The Most Interesting Thing Is Textures

First, I want to make a nice soft mask for the wood grain. I'm making it in ZBrush so I can customize it quite easily. Pay attention to real-life references of glued plywood. I like to slightly exaggerate the layer sizes to beautifully render the underlying textures. But most importantly, check for realism! For me, creating fiber wood was one of the most challenging aspects.

I will definitely refine the mask in Substance 3D Painter using various stencils to get a more interesting edge and some details.

I like to select references for several stages of texturing – I start by collecting basic material references, then separately gather images with examples of unusual damage and elements. I often work on a specific object with reference photos of other items.

Be sure to pay attention to how the fibers run in different directions. Also, be sure to maintain a soft overlap between the microfibers. I create my base fiber material using several Anisotropic maps. I also add color variations and don't mind mixing in photo texture to achieve the greatest variety in the base fill layer.

When creating stickers and 3D decals, I pay special attention to the height and normal channels. They create a true, realistic volume. I like to work on the albe channel first and then move on to playing with the height. The HIGH-PASS filter always helps me here, creating realistic contours.

For example, when creating a rubber bandage, I thought about having the gun's serial number taped underneath. This meant it would be really cool to add a raised effect via the height channel. This immediately adds incredible realism and story to the interaction with the object.

The next and most important thing I always remember is gradients on the albedo channel. I pay a lot of attention to ensuring my albedo map looks vibrant and three-dimensional. Albedo is the most important map, making your project look as realistic as possible.

Notice how the Roughness and Albedo maps emphasize the volume of the geometry.

In the recesses and places where the geometry meets, I always add more matte shading, which immediately shows that your piece has lived a long life.

Here's an interesting example of how I create cracks and damage in the rubber material. I love painting all my most interesting large masks by hand, which makes your project stand out from other projects where many use basic stencils and generators.

I love large damages and scuffs. Don't be afraid to work with your hands anymore.

Once again, I'm returning to my favorite part of working with the height map. I always add contrast between the milling cutters and engravings – it's very interesting to look at up close.

Look at the uneven and noisy albedo and roughness channels I'm achieving. I love creating contrasting and soft transitions between spots. I love the LARGE-MEDIUM-SMALL rule. I always start by creating a super-fine noise layer for the base. Then I add height details – milling, damage, welding, etc. And then I always break up the large details with gradients and spots so the material doesn't look like a solid fill.

Creating a Picture

I render standardly in Marmoset. I like the fast rendering setup. I always assemble lighting schemes along with the base HDR. My favorite rule that I always follow is a small spotlight behind the subject, a spotlight from the top corner, and a bright light beam.

It's also important to set a fairly realistic perspective distortion. I rarely use values ​​higher than 20 because I don't like strong perspective distortions, as they look unrealistic except in rare cases.

For realistic renders, I really like these cool hand and figure models from BMS.

Concluding Words

Thank you very much for reading. I really hope you found some interesting insights. Thanks to the editors for giving me the opportunity to share my project with you for the third time. 

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have on my social media: LinkedIn and ArtStation. Wishing you success in your creative endeavors!

Lyubov Vasileva, Weapon Artist