RNG 01.5: Fancy desk
I don't have a new story-scene for you. (As you may have noticed.) My plans went out of the window this week and I ended up with complicated assets to make and not enough time to work on them. So I decided to be pragmatic about it and rather than do everything poorly, I picked the most complex one and spent the whole week on it. Here it is.
It is a carved oak desk I found on eBay. I tried to immitate it as closely as possible, but I still ran out of time in the end, and some details are missing—most notably the pattern on the edge of the green leather top.
I think that, overall, the desk turned out decent, but I'm not quite happy with the carving on the top drawers. I used a multires sculpting to create the pattern, but the normal map didn't come out well at all. And I'm not sure why. Maybe I went too low-res on the base mesh—but since it is a library piece, I'm trying to keep the poly count as low as possible, and I didn't want to go over 100k triangles (the fully assembled table has 95k).
The modelling was otherwise quite straightforward. The only piece I really struggled with was the wavy bit on the top drawers. I tried to use an Array modifier with object offset, but the pattern is not circular (it is more of an ellipse) so I quickly found out that the array was a dead end. I eventually modelled it by hand (just in case you were wondering why it is so uneven).
In the texturing realm, I somehow managed to get away with only importing the mesh once. No need to fix anything, no UV adjustments... highly suspicious, if you ask me. A 3D equivalent of a program that works correctly the first time it is run. It just never happens. Anyway, I had to go through a range of wood materials before I found one that looked convincing. Then I applied several layers of colour-dodging and multiplying (aka lightening and darkening) to get an effect similar to the original image. I wasn't entirely happy with the procedural state of things, so I also included a couple of layers with manual paintovers. And I'm glad I did, because I wouldn't be able to darken some areas in any other way, I think.
I think that, overall, the desk turned out decent, but I'm not quite happy with the carving on the top drawers. I used a multires sculpting to create the pattern, but the normal map didn't come out well at all. And I'm not sure why. Maybe I went too low-res on the base mesh—but since it is a library piece, I'm trying to keep the poly count as low as possible, and I didn't want to go over 100k triangles (the fully assembled table has 95k).
The modelling was otherwise quite straightforward. The only piece I really struggled with was the wavy bit on the top drawers. I tried to use an Array modifier with object offset, but the pattern is not circular (it is more of an ellipse) so I quickly found out that the array was a dead end. I eventually modelled it by hand (just in case you were wondering why it is so uneven).
In the texturing realm, I somehow managed to get away with only importing the mesh once. No need to fix anything, no UV adjustments... highly suspicious, if you ask me. A 3D equivalent of a program that works correctly the first time it is run. It just never happens. Anyway, I had to go through a range of wood materials before I found one that looked convincing. Then I applied several layers of colour-dodging and multiplying (aka lightening and darkening) to get an effect similar to the original image. I wasn't entirely happy with the procedural state of things, so I also included a couple of layers with manual paintovers. And I'm glad I did, because I wouldn't be able to darken some areas in any other way, I think.
And that will be all for this week. I'll do my best to finish the scene next week, because I already have a fragment of the story in mind and it would be a shame if it went to waste. See you next time!
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