In Art Spotlight, we invite Sketchfab artists to talk about one of their designs.
Hey everyone!
My name is Jasmin and I am an aspiring 3D Game artist from Cologne, Germany. I mainly focus on environments and atmospheric scenes with hand painted textures, since they offer so many opportunities in terms of creativity. I am still learning with every project I make and try to create different things and materials, which is always a good practise. I was introduced into 3D modeling about 2 years ago, when I found Blender 3D on Steam and started to dive into it more and learn the basics with the help of YouTube. At first I focused on low poly modeling with simple diffuse materials (a good example for that is my Isometric Living room Model on Sketchfab), but since last year, I started getting more into digital painting and hand painted texturing.
Inspiration and Concept Art
When I was browsing through Twitter, I found Catherine Unger’s adorable illustration called ‘Heading out’.
I instantly fell in love with it! The colour palette and the simple yet interesting textures got my attention straight away. The whole style of the artwork was so inspiring to me, that I felt like it would be a lot of fun to recreate it in 3D.
So the first stage of my whole creation process was basically studying Catherine’s unique artstyle, since I wanted to capture her style as good as I could in the 3D model. After Catherine agreed on me recreating her artwork into 3D, I got started!
Process
Most of my projects have a similar pipeline. I start blocking out the main shapes and objects of the scene in Blender. Blender is a free 3D software for anyone who isn’t familiar with it. It offers you many opportunities when it’s about modeling, texturing and rendering.
This is what my first block out of the scene looks like:
I tried to keep the shapes as simple and low poly as possible. This gives me more opportunities to have more detailed textures and it’s also more challenging, since you got to draw in the details, not model them out!
In a separate Photoshop file, I put together the initial colours of the whole piece, which were mainly these shades:
Now it’s time to unwrap everything! I decided for this piece to have 2048×2048 px textures, which lets me paint in details without losing the quality when I export the texture in a smaller resolution.
Since I want to add details to each texture, I gave each object a separate texture sheet. It gives me a better overview of the things I textured and still need to texture.
After I unwrap everything properly and with a minimum amount of stretch, I start with the actual texture and drawing work!
Early stage of texturing, base colors
Instead of painting all textures in Photoshop, I decided to paint them in Blender. The real time painting option is easy to use and makes the whole process much easier, since I can get rid of seams really fast and effective.
I start of with a base colour and then slowly add in darker shades and more details. I decided to paint in all the shadows of this scene, so that it has a more hand painted feel to it and it also gave me better control on getting the 3D Model as close as possible to the concept.
I continued to do this with every object in the scene, always focusing on using my color palette and keeping the original concept in mind.
Step by step progress of the scene
Texture sheets, these are for the house and the island
Texture sheets of the stones and floor, here it’s quite visible that I painted all shadows straight onto the textures
One of my last steps was the realization of the cone shaped objects in the original concept. At first I wanted to keep them abstract like in the original concept, but then I decided to replace them with pine trees and painted them in the similar way to the rest of the model, so it doesn’t break with the style.
Presenting the final result
Now we get to the actual last step, which is always really fun for me: uploading the finished piece to Sketchfab! I’ve been using Sketchfab for a couple of months now and it always has been a great experience! It’s in my opinion the best way to show your models in 3D, especially for your portfolio, since it gives everyone the opportunity, to see your finished work in it’s full glory from all angles. I also use it as a renderer and basically take beauty shots for my portfolio with it.
It’s great how the community interacts with you through your art and gives you feedback and inspiration. I will definitely continue using Sketchfab for my upcoming projects. Thank you for making it possible to share my artwork with everyone in 3D!
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me!
You can find me on:
About the author
Seori Sachs
Community Person!
