The process consisted of splitting the texture by similar materials.

Plastics are all different, with unique damages, various imperfections, and colors, but they share similar base layers to construct them. That allows me to borrow layers or groups that work well to another, with a simple tweak in roughness/color/height value.

I wanted the grip and the main body with a different feeling of touch, a quite rough with apparent grease here and there, and a glossier and smoother one with another type of imperfections. Something that worked well on the plastic was to add some noise patterns in the rough only. That adds this nice rough-looking grain on it.

Same goes for the metal. As the instance, the model has only a few very different metals. But the details on each piece have been worked separately to gain variety in the model. The challenge was to have enough variations between each piece and materials though. And once the polishing with fingerprints, texts, grease, etc was done, the difference was even more pronounced. But having strong base layers is mandatory to define the primary aspect of what you want to obtain.

Another thing to keep in mind that’s important, is using the generator smartly. A generator is merely that: it will generate a mask according to your AO, cuvature, etc …and that’s it! But in reality, that’s not the way it works. Wears and tears, scratched, rough and color variations, each detail is due to something specifically, not randomly placed. That’s why I used a lot custom brushes and masks on top of existing smart masks.

And finally, a really important thing to improve the texturing is feedback (And I think overall skill in general). I asked friends in the industry that give a fresh eye on the model & textures. That helped me a lot improving my work and my art style.

Rendering & Post processing

I had the chance to add lights with the only goal to present the model within Marmoset. It’s not like a scenery with gameplay where the lights have an important role which is leading the player through the level.

So everything here is to reveal and showcasing a part of my work. I’m not the best at this, but I often see a lot of images with no interest, the model is lit with a simple directional light, no citation, no context, nothing except a lit model.

That’s why I use a few lights on top of the sky system of Marmoset . I always add a directional light and a backlight first. For this specific piece, I also used quite a lot spotlights to add visual interest on parts that wouldn’t be seen otherwise. I had to pay attention to catch the eye in a specific part, leading to the rest of the image.

And I don’t add too many lights or nothing will pop out and everything will be lost in an ocean of information. This was probably a more difficult and time-consuming task that I thought, but in the end, the result is pretty good.