Wayfinder Fan Art - Props

Barrels and Crate
After my work on a Wayfinder diorama during class, I really wanted to push my exploration in this art direction that I really love.

To do this, I sculpted 3 planks (back and front), giving them the highest level of detail. I then spent the time necessary to ensure a clean retopology and perfect UVs. After that, I baked my wood kit in Marmoset, so I ended up with a set of 3 planks, 1 wood beams (that I reused from my window project) and 2 nails. I recomposed my lowpoly with modifiers directly in Blender which I rebaked with the normal information from the previous bake, this workflow was a huge time saver.

On this version of the barrel, I quickly created a first albedo pass using the Normal OBJ, Curvature and Ambient Occlusion baked maps in Photoshop. I also added a little noise over the albedo using the overlay blending mode to get a slight color variation in the base.
I then imported all of that into 3DCoat and did the painting. I don't really do a lot of painting directly in 3DCoat, I use the Photoshop link a lot and almost 80% of my painting is done in Photoshop, either by projection or directly on the UVs.

For the Roughness map I reuse my Albedo as a base, which I desaturate and Level in Photoshop to get a clean roughness. I also paint over it if needed, but most of the time the level with a few tests in engine does the job perfectly.

For the crate, I did almost the same thing. Based on my wood kit, I duplicated some planks and made the crate. I used a lattice to give it a more interesting shape (a little pinch in the middle, a little V-shape on the sides) to increase the stylised look. I baked the information from the kit to the new UVs and the new composition. Same process as before for the texturing.

But I changed some things, for example on the wooden beams I added damage to the extremity. And to bring more information to it, I got the mask from this worn part and with Substance Painter, quickly generated a bevel. And so, in the engine, it will get a much better and more interesting look.

In the same way, after I added my nails on my crate, I wanted to have cracks under them that would have Normal information on the planks. So I just handpainted the normals to add volume information to those cracks. And I painted the albedo to follow with the details.

Again, it saved a lot of time to make these props using this process.