Valeria Molgora - Texturing and Shading entry 2024

Muddy

This project is the one that matters the most to me, as it marks my first steps into the 3D world and the pure joy of exploring a software and push my limits. This project and the next one took me a month in total to make, as I made them for my graduation from Rainbow Academy.

My goal for this project was to increase my knowledge of procedural texturing and see how close I could get to making a stop motion-like character, giving it the feeling of being made from play dough, but also making it a believable living character.

Software used: Maya, V-Ray, Photoshop, Mudbox and Nuke. 

Moodboard

The planning task was of course the cutest one, I tried imagining if I were a tiny frog, what would my sleeping bag be made of? A big chunk of wool of course!! My clothes from leaves, my pan of aluminum foil, my backpack from twigs and so on!

I enjoyed making a little environment as well by modeling some clovers, grass, and also using Vray fur to make shorter grass.

I used Thomas Wiegand's rig and Xiansen Lyu's model as main reference!

The hardest part was making sure that the sizes were well-proportioned to the character and the displacement was flattering. I think that having the character stand still while having the displacement move is still a bit weird to look at, but I’m confident that once animated, it would look much better.

For the displacement I used two layers of noise and in the bump channel I applied a fingerprint texture that I made. The mouth, hands and feet gave me a bit of a hard time because they were so tiny and slim and the displacement was too strong on them, so I used a texture painted in Mudbox to lower its intensity only in those areas.

Now for the trick part, making the displacement actually move, I used a time node combined with an expression to vary the translate on the U/V or both of the noise nodes and the fingerprint texture every 7 frames! The script was connected to a control so I could switch it on and off.

The script I made was:

if (control.switch == 1 && frame % 7 == 0) {

muddy_exp_body_place2dTexture.translateFrameU = rand(-1, 1);

muddy_exp_body_place2dTexture1.translateFrameV = rand(-1, 1);

}

It took many adjustments and tries to achieve this effect, but if I could go back in time, I'd change the randomization of the displacement a little bit more. I also wanted to add little cracks to the play dough but unfortunately I felt like it was too distracting for the character's pose.

Samus

After playing my very first Metroid, Dread (I know, I’m kinda late to the party, but better late than ever, right…??), I found Perry Lejiten and Julien Desroy's rigged model and immediately fell in love!

My goal for this project was to learn how to use Substance painter, which turned out to be an amazingly smart, dense yet intuitive software!!

I took most of the inspiration from Disney characters, while also trying not to stray away too much from the game she comes from.

Software used: Maya, V-Ray, Photoshop, Substance painter and Nuke.

Moodboard

The biggest challenge for this project was to differ the various metals by playing around with the metalness and glossiness, while also making them look like they all belong to the same asset.
I worked a lot in the diffuse channel as well, trying to add dust, dirt and edge wear to the armor keeping in mind how Samus' suit moves and where those details would be the most prominent.

I also had a lot of fun adding details onto the normal maps and personalizing the look with stickers and designs!

If I could go back in time though, I'd definitely make the UVs a bit bigger to give Samus a bit more resolution and add even more details.

School contest

Last but not least, this was part of a project made by my classmates and I; the modeling part was done by Jan Miguel Blanca Goce, Lorenzo Piva, Fabio Catalano, Davide Fanotto, Giorgio Pallini, Ilaria Clementi and Angelo Lobina while I did all the surfacing, except the house's signboard.

This was my very first attempt at surfacing, and it was obviously the one were I stumbled the most: loads of materials, thinking how the objects could have been damaged during time, trying to keep a painterly yet realistic look and so on.

But all this exploring didn’t go to waste as I learnt so much while also deepening the bond with my classmates!

To sum it all up

I'd like to thank all my teachers, friends, family and roomates, who were always available to guide me and give me the best advice, but you as well for taking your time to read my entry!!

Right now I’m working on a couple of new projects regarding something more stylized and game-like, exploring making customisable shaders and overall improving my skills!!

I'm leaving here my reel as well if you want to check it out!