Rikki Vitello showed how she adds historic details during the production of amazing realistic 3D props.
Rikki Vitello showed how she adds historic details during the production of amazing realistic 3D props.
Intro
Hi! I’m Rikki-Lynn Vitello, I am a freelance 3D artist based out of Los Angeles who specializes in realism. I have contributed to many AAA games in the last 5 years including Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Call of Duty Franchise, Spiderman, and Insurgency Sandstorm. I am currently available for full time/contract/freelance. In this article, I wanted to share the importance of interpreting reference and give a few do’s and don’ts on making aged assets.
In this tutorial, I will discuss how to effectively interpret reference of antique objects and how these images can be used to texture believable, venerable surfaces on your game assets. Understanding what type of material was used to manufacture an antique object is critical as the weathering and degradation of the surface over time is unique.
How Materials Behave in Real Life
Commonly used materials include:
- Brass
- Copper
- Steel
- Bronze
Every material tells its own surface narrative. In order to understand how these metals age it’s important to look at a breakdown of how they degrade.
Some of the best reference images for antique texturing can be found in places you wouldn’t normally think of.
On weekends, I spend a ton of time wandering around cemeteries for reference. When you hear “cemetery” you immediately think of stone, but I would urge you to look around more attentively or go into a mausoleum. Many times, footstones and nameplates are made from brass, copper, and bronze and these can be beautifully aged due to time and natural elements.
The importance of finding a reference in unconventional places is incredibly valuable and you will be able to see how things react in different elements. Cemeteries are unique because there you can see age progression on a metallic surface that is exposed to weather, humans, and animals.
Another important step in interpreting antique objects is that you can give yourself a history lesson. My favorite topics for historical documentaries are usually World War II or turn of the century. You’d be amazed at the amount of valuable information that can be found in these films. Watching them you can learn where, why and how things were made. Ultimately, this gives you a really solid outlook on how the cost and the manufacturing process shapes the way these objects were made.
For example, brass knuckle knives were manufactured in a way that when in close combat they could be used both as a blunt object and as a knife. This gave the soldier a better chance of survival because the weapon had become multipurpose.
Below are some extremely useful youtube channels I visit frequently for inspiration:
The great thing about the Restore It and Hand Tool Rescue is that they restore the object and as you watch the video, you get a good idea about what it looked like before it was worn. Forgotten Weapons is a great resource for any worn weapon as he tends to find some pretty obscure ones this can be extremely useful for anyone interested in creating and texturing antique weapons. Vickers Guide is great for modern and World War II era weapons, they release books with extremely high res images which are great for understanding how things wear.
Recreating
US WWII V44 Ranger Knife
For this tutorial, I’ve chosen to recreate a US WWII V44 Ranger Knife.
When it comes to interpreting your reference it’s important to look closely at the details, really focusing on how things wear, more specifically, how they would have gotten that way.
In this detail surface image you can see the metal grinding on the handle, some green discoloration from age, micro scratches, differentiating gloss values, and some black grime.
Now, if we look at the weapon as a whole we can learn a lot as well:
There are large scale gloss and scratch shapes, some edge chipping/discoloration, overall staining and macro scale grime building up.
Some things to avoid:
- Overtexturing: when you make something and throw everything you can think of on it at once like scratches, rust, dents, and stains, my advice is to always approach texturing with a less-is-more attitude. If you realize that your textures look more like a crime scene than as a real surface, there’s a good chance you might want to pull back.
- Noise: it’s quite easy to get noisy textures very quickly. A lot of times, I can immediately see that there was some thought put into how to make the surface look old but the details weren’t purposeful. Purposeful wear should provide a quick texture read to the viewer. I want to look at something and immediately identify what the materials are. When textures get noisy it becomes very difficult to get a quick read on the object and often I find myself questioning what each material actually is intended to be.
- Texture order: Understanding texture order is important, let’s look at this door as an example:
If you break this door down to its simplest forms you’ll find 3 materials: bare metal, painted metal, and rust. Most people tend to go astray from effective texturing when they don’t focus on the order of these materials. Think of this as a cake: the base metal is the first layer, the second layer is the rust that peels off the frosting of paint. If you pay attention to your layer order and focus on your reference, you’ll find that you have way more effective control over the look of your aged assets.
Texturing
Base Textures
The start of good base textures is relatively simple. First, figure out what the material is and gather reference specific to that surface. If you’re trying to achieve realism I recommend using photos in your texturing process. I generally put mine in the gloss, that way it gives a decent base of variation to build upon. By putting this detail in your gloss map, you are already adding character to your base metal in the simplest way possible.
Building up Grime
Generally, when building up grime you want to look at an object and try to analyze what came first. As simple as this sounds, it can actually be quite difficult not to get ahead of yourself and try to add in micro detail from the start. Generally, this is what makes textures noisy and hard to read.
So now that we have started with our base metal and base gloss variation we can move onto adding in the larger details that come next (for the brass bits):
Next we will add the scratches. Generally, you want to use an alpha for scratches like this:
Using an alpha that has both large and small scratches will give you the advantage of picking and choosing which scratches you want to use and which ones you don’t want to use. You can do this by adjusting the tile rate, rotation of the alpha and the offset.
When working with scratches you want to keep a couple of things in mind: How did they get there? Do they look intentionally placed? Can I explain how they got there if asked? If you think of your asset as a real object you find yourself asking those questions, because the point of realism is to portray realism, and with that, you have to think of the object as an actual physical object and match it with purpose.
For example, I wouldn’t leave these scratches because they can’t be explained:
I simply paint out what doesn’t appear to be intentionally placed.
Grind marks
Grind marks are achieved by putting an Anisotropic Noise in the height/gloss channel. Just adjust until you feel it looks right.
Detailing
Obviously, the following ref is important, but also adding your own detailing and wear is where the creativity comes in. I’ve added all the important bits from the reference (grinding, wear patterns, etc.) and then decided to dirty it up a little to add more visual interest. Truthfully, this asset is pretty boring-looking without some personality, so I added in some extra dirt in areas that needed it and some dings to the brass. Doing so creates more visual interest and ties it all together.