Modeling & Texturing a Complex Birch Revolver
Anastasiya Prokopovich explained how she created the Birch Revolver, detailing how all the details and main form were sculpted, and how she achieved the tree-like look of the material.
Introduction
Hello, my name is Anastasiya Prokopovich. I am a 3D Weapon/Hard Surface Artist currently working at Mundfish game studio. During my career, I have had the opportunity to participate in the creation of games such as World War Heroes, Killing Floor 3, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and I am currently working on projects such as The Cube and Atomic Heart 2.
Once, while searching the internet for ideas for my new personal project, I finally stumbled upon this masterpiece. For a while, I hesitated to start this project, as I had never done anything like this before and wasn't sure if I had the patience and ability to do it, but I decided to go for it anyway. My goal was not to copy the references exactly, but to make something as close to them as possible.
Birch Revolver
To begin with, I created a blockout in Blender. Then I imported the model into ZBrush. For sculpting, I used this brush pack. I tried to work out all the details as much as possible, such as various chips, scratches, and layers of tree bark on the HP, for good baking. You can see more details about the HP here.
The original idea for this project included fireflies in the form of cartridges. The 3D model of the beetle was created by Albert Isa, but unfortunately, for personal reasons, the artist was not able to continue working on the insect, and the idea did not reach its final result.
I wanted all the details on the LP to be made with geometry for a more realistic picture in the renders, so I didn't skimp on triangles. Like most artists, I wanted to relax and not limit myself in my personal project, which is why the final number of triangles on the LP was about 1 million.
Texturing
Previously, when I created a tree texture, I always textured it from scratch in Substance 3D Painter. This time, I decided to try using photoscans of trees as a basis for some elements. I downloaded all the textures suitable for this work from Quixel and, using my Photoshop skills, created the first base layer for my tree. I also used a lot of photo scans as references.
Then I started working out all the details on the tree. It will be much clearer if I show you step by step how I textured it.
Here are the Substance 3D Painter Renders:
Substance 3D Painter viewport:
Rendering
When I started rendering, I ran into a lighting problem. For a long time, I couldn't get the same effect as in the references, like a photo taken with a phone camera. Here are the first unsuccessful renderings.
My problem was that I was using several light sources, and the solution was to use one that was linked to the camera.
I will also demonstrate my settings for the camera, render, and lighting:
Conclusion
I started this project almost exactly a year ago and worked on it very rarely, about once every two months. I think it took me about three weeks in total. The main problems with this project were the power of my computer. Towards the end of the work, Substance 3D Painter was incredibly slow, and I had to work not in the standard viewport lighting but in a base color so that the program would log less.
The total weight of the final SPP file is 5.5 GB. This project made me realize that texturing such complex organic objects is much easier than I previously thought, and the result will be 100 times better and faster if you use photoscans and then refine them. So this is a good method for artists to produce the best results with minimal time investment.
