The creators of Kitbash3d talked about the store and the content, which you’ll be able to buy there.
The creators of Kitbash3d talked about the store and the content, which you’ll be able to buy there.
Intro
Hi! We’re Kitbash3d! We’re founded by Maxx Burman and Banks Boutté! Maxx is an Art Director and Matte Painter, who’s work you may have seen in films such as Godzilla, Iron Man 3, Her, or games like Far Cry, Titanfall 2 and League of Legends. Banks is an entrepreneur who has been utilizing digital content marketing since the early days of YouTube.
Origins
After going through many 3d Asset stores, and finding that buying models felt like rolling dice, we decided it was time to create a store that would exclusively provide premium models, art directed by industry professionals, and built to be used in production. What we want to provide is a platform to give artists the tools to help speed up their workflow and inspire them to play around with different genres and worlds. Our goal is to let individual artists have the same resources that a studio with a team of modelers would have, and give more power and creativity to Matte Painters, Concept Artists, and Designers.
Workflow
We start with a theme, and pull a lot of references of the paintings or photographs we’d want to recreate with a kit. We then break down all the elements in those images, and make a list of what those pieces are. We gather reference for each piece and give a 3d modeler a design document of everything that’s needed in the kit. The 3d modeler builds a “Sub Kit” of mini pieces that they can re-use within the larger pieces, and that gives everything a consistent style. They then assemble all the pieces, and Uv them. We test the kit out, creative cover images, and give it to different pro artists to make sure everything is working and they have all the pieces they would need to create the worlds we were originally inspired by. We design these kits around specific architectural styles that we see repeated in many different projects or properties. The kits are generic in that style, but we also try to make each piece special, so that it might inspire someone when they drop a camera in and catch a detail they didn’t know was there.
Tutorials and insights
We want to give artists great tools, but what good are great tools without the knowledge of how to use them? We take that very seriously, and it’s why we’re teaming up with Learn Squared, an incredible education platform, run by some of the best designers in Film and Games. For the rest of September into October, we’ll have some of the top artists in the industry demoing how they use Kitbash3d, live on Learn Squared’s Twitch Channel. You can see Ash Thorp (Ghost In The Shell), Nick Hiatt (Star Wars The Force Awakens), Jan Urschel (Star Wars Rogue One) and a ton of others. Afterwards, we’ll continue to release videos and insights into the life and workflows of artists, as part of our mission to empower and inspire artists.
Versatility
The models are incredibly versatile. We spent a long time figuring out what the right size of pieces would be. Too small of pieces and it slows you down when you’re assembling a large scene, too big and paintings begin to look the same. We really think we nailed it. On top of that, the poly count was something we played with a lot. We wanted to detail out each piece enough to be used in a close up, but not have them so heavy that it would crash a computer when you duplicated them 100 times. We think we hit the sweet spot, but just in case, we kept our models all quads, clean geometry, so they would be easy to up-rez or down-rez as you go. Our models are all UVed and setup for tileable textures. We took every issue we had with 3d models on other sites, and tried to address them here.
In terms of seeing the same buildings everywhere, or paintings looking similar, we’re trying to build thematic architectural styles, with enough pieces to be highly customizeable. Art Deco is a great example. That style exists all over the world in real life, and all over cinema, but HOW you use that style determines whether you create the historical New York of Great Gatsby, the futuristic Los Angeles of Blade Runner, or the dystopian world of Metropolis.
Plans
We’re planning on releasing new kits every month, and we’re working with the best designers and modelers in the world. We’re going to start with architectural kits to help people create worlds, but we’re very interested in doing vehicles, props and characters as well. We’re excited to show more of our kits and plans soon!