Modeling & Texturing a Felco C12 Wirecutter Using Blender & Substance 3D
Rafael Murta talked about the creation process for the Felco C12 Wirecutter project, detailing how it was modeled and explaining how the details of dirt, grease, and rust were added.
Introduction
Hey everyone, I'm Rafael, currently in my second year as a Game Graphics Production student at Howest DAE. This is my second university, as I already completed a master's in Design and Multimedia at the University of Coimbra. Around that time, I stumbled upon Blender and the world of 3D art and started to fall in love with it the deeper I went.
Felco C12 Wirecutter
This project was a school assignment for my Game Asset Pipeline course, where the goal was to recreate a simple tool that could be found in a garage and make it game-ready. As with any good project, I started by looking for references and inspiration. A great place to find this is eBay or any similar auction websites that offer a large number of pictures of the same object.
When choosing a tool, I tried to look for something fairly easy to model, but had interesting textures: Rusting metal, aging wood, dirty fingerprints, etc. I then stumbled upon different models of wirecutters and decided that the symmetry of the prop would come in handy and save me time when modeling it.
I first settled for a different model of the same brand, with peeled paint on top of it, instead of pure metal, only to realize there were no reference pictures of it. In my opinion, you can never have too many references. It's very lucky if you manage to find every single angle of the prop you intend to model, so I try to gather as much as I can before the modeling phase.
With that said, I always go back and look for more once I realize I don't know how to model certain details, or I don't know what a certain part of the prop looks like.
After that, I chose the most orthographically looking reference picture I managed to find, like an angle directly from above, and threw it in Blender. That helps me block out the main shapes and get the proportions correctly.
Modeling
As I mentioned earlier, one of the reasons I chose a wire cutter was its symmetry. Therefore, I modeled using the mirror modifier for all parts that were similar early on in the process. As you can see in the post, the model is not fully symmetrical, and that's when I had to work more destructively, apply my mirror modifier, and model each part separately.
For the high-poly, I prefer using the bevel modifier with bevel weight, allowing me to easily adjust areas, add or remove topology as needed, without significantly altering the mesh to the point of unusability. Since it's a fairly simple model to create, this did not take me too long.
The goal for this class was to optimize the model and textures as much as we could, so I pushed the low-poly down to a very low count (until the bake was not working properly) and then iteratively added more in the areas that were needed. For this, I decided to bake my textures in Substance 3D Painter.
There, you can put the texture resolution to something very low and select only your normal texture. This way, you can quickly bake in around 10-15 seconds and verify where you have the biggest mistakes, where the low-poly is faulty, etc. Going back to unwrapping, since the tool is very long in one axis and pretty symmetrical, I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to use non-uniform textures.
Once again, nothing out of the ordinary here. I started by putting seams on the model, and auto-packed it with UV Pack Master. After that, it's easier to see which islands of your UV are symmetrical or at least similar, and then overlap them. UV Pack Master has a "groups" feature that is very handy for this. You can simply assign islands to the same group and select the "allow overlap" option.
This helped me save UV space and increase my texel density overall, resulting in crispier-looking textures. You will notice that I also decided not overlap every symmetrical part, more specifically, the clippers. This is because of the amount and difference of detail on it, I decided that it would be detrimental to the prop to overlap.
Texturing
With that out of the way, we can move on to the fun part: texturing. With my bakes completed, the first thing I do is separate each part of my prop according to the texture it has. In this case, I had rubber handles, the main metallic body, metallic clippers, and the sticker, so each gets masked out and put into a different folder.
Texturing is, in my opinion, the most crucial part when it comes to creating a realistic prop. I like to texture my props as if they are new and then add damage, wear, dirt, and all signs that they have been used after I'm happy with the base. I started by applying Base Color, Roughness, and metalness to all the parts, then getting into more details for each.
Malte Resenberger-Loosmann has a great post on ArtStation where he tries to texture a prop with only 10 layers. I think it's a good read for beginners and helpful to see which aspects are the most important when you have a limited budget like that.
For the main body, the most noticeable aspect for me was how noisy and bumpy it looked in some of the references. So, keeping that in mind, I start by getting the color variation in the metal. Most things, no matter how uniform in color they look, have some of this, and it is important to be able to portray that in order to get a nicer-looking prop. This is also valid for Roughness variation.
This map is by far the most important for us to play with. It is what keeps the materials interesting, grounded, and helps add the eye candy details we see. Only after this, I start adding the height details. Here, it's very easy to overblow your values and end up getting a "deep-fried" result, as I call it. Try to maintain the height below -0.1 and 0.1, always zooming out to see how the overall prop looks.
On this layer stack here, you can see I played around with blend modes both on Base Color and Roughness, plus generators and masks to achieve the desired look.
Details
The clippers were done in the same way, but in this case, most of the interesting details were located on this part. Dirt, grease, and rust were mostly around this area. It was quite a challenge to make all these details work together without it being too noisy or just senseless detail thrown together on top of the metal.
My biggest advice here is to keep trying again. I had to redo this area countless times, repositioning details, changing values, seeing how it all was coming together. Another helpful tip that I think is overlooked by beginners is the use of stencils.
They're amazing at getting easy, realistic detail in your damage, so always scour around the internet for good ones and keep them saved in your library. Lastly, about this part of the prop, I would like to talk about rust. By no means am I a specialist, but to achieve a realistic-looking rust, it's important to keep in mind that it is not metallic anymore and that it has more color variation than you might think.
I see many beginners leaving the rust metallic, which causes a weird effect when looking at it, all realism is instantly thrown out of the window. Lastly, rust is also very colorful; there are yellow, purple, green, and orange splotches around it. With quick research, you can find different types of rust and how it affects the metal it is currently sitting on.
After these two "main" parts were done, the rubber and sticker were much faster to work with. Not only do I feel like it is easier to create a plastic-y or rubber-y material rather than metals or woods, but also the grips of the wire cutter were mostly symmetrical. Once again, I started with base color and roughness and then some variation of both.
Looking at the reference, a few things quickly caught my eye, like the dirt accumulated between the ridges of the rubber, the small holes and scratches, and the paint and dirt that dried on top of it. I think the key takeaway from this part is that not everything in your prop has to be extremely detailed.
Lastly, for the sticker, I wanna highlight the importance of stencils and scanned data. I started by simply taking a screenshot of the sticker I saw in my reference (I was lucky enough to have found a good top-down angle with very little light information), cleaning up any artifacts the image might and optimizing it in photoshop, then adding (in this case removing it, since the paper is being ripped off) details to get the desired look.
Lighting
The process of lighting and rendering is very iterative and goes hand-in-hand with texturing. For small assets and props, I believe that Marmoset Toolbag is king when it comes to rendering. Not only is it easy to use, but also very quick when it comes to setting up and getting quick results.
I usually put my asset there as soon as the textures are good-ish, so it’s easier to grasp how it looks under different light conditions, which positions are more appealing to the eye, etc. Lighting-wise, I usually start with a nice HDRI. Tomoco Studio is great and available for free if you have Substance 3 Painter.
Then the classic 3 light setup, which, if you don't know, consists of key light, which is the main light, which should do around 80% of the work to get the setup to look good. Fill/ back light, placed opposite to the fill light, helps give more depth to the subject. And finally, the rim light, which should highlight the details of your model, helping it pop more. These are, of course, rules of thumb, and exploration and tweaking are always necessary to achieve a good look.
Conclusion
I also try to keep a neutral background for most of my shots since I like how the studio renders that we always see on Artstation end up looking. Searching for reference and inspiration is also a key part of the process. I'm always scrolling through ArtStation (even though it always distracts me from my work), looking for similar works by artists with more experience than I.
I ask myself, "Why did they do this?" "Why did they choose option A instead of B?" Of course, it's not always helpful to compare yourself to a person with 10+ years of experience than you, but I believe that it is always a goal to strive for instead of comparing myself to them.
I guess the most important thing is to keep trying and being realistic. Gather the reference and look at it. Ask yourself: "Does it look like the reference? Is my model the same as I see in the pictures? Are my textures conveying what I want them to convey?" Of course, it's hard, and we will never get there on the first try or first prop, but by repetition and trying to improve each time, we will achieve the level of quality we strive for.
Another key part of the process I haven't mentioned yet is asking for feedback, asking your peers, friends, or even your mom, always helps. A pair of fresh eyes looking at the thing you’ve been staring at for hours and hours will always spot something different and be more critical.
I would say I'm proud of how this project turned out, but also excited for the next one to be better. Never stop practicing and putting in the hours, talk to people (message them on ArtStation, and most times they will reply), and you will eventually get to your goal, no matter what it is.
