In the above image, you can see the initial shape iteration. Future details are planned in advance using simple placeholders. In this iteration, my saw was too massive and not interesting enough, so I decided to delete it and start over. In these early stages, it's important to be flexible and not be afraid to make massive changes. To keep a sane mind, it’s important to break down parts of the asset into layers and to organize the scene. I used Blender 2.8’s new collection system to help me with this.

Asset Modeling in Blender

For this asset, I used Blender for modeling and a few add-ons to help with the concepting phase. This included Hard-ops and Box-cutter. For scene organization, I used a very powerful add-on called “GroupPro”. This add-on allowed me to create “Groups” in Blender and also to instance these groups around the scene without eating all my system RAM.

Since I have a full-time job, a significant other, a parrot and a dog, I didn’t have a lot of time on my hands to create “clean” meshes using sub-D, low poly, and fully UV and also texture them. I wanted to be able to create something that looked clean and highly detailed but using the small amount of time I had available each day. This led me to utilize a powerful method in Blender. The method simply goes like this: Model base mesh, add creases to all hard edges, subdivide to get a smooth mesh. This mesh, although smoothed using sub-D still has razor-sharp edges due to creases. This is where I use Blender’s bevel node to add a fake fillet into the edges.