Behind the Scenes: Cat5! – BlenderNation

INTRODUCTION

Hey! My title is Mark Kyrylov. I’m a man residing in Khmelnytskyi, Ukraine, and moreover, I’m a 3D artist and designer. It began two years in the past once I stumbled upon Blender Guru’s donut tutorial. I attempted it, appreciated it, and to this present day, I maintain a behavior of messing with vertices. Fairly trivial beginnings, that’s all I can say.

As for right this moment, I proceed my self-education course of by way of project-based studying. And I’m more than pleased in regards to the path I selected.

INSPIRATION

This specific work is simply part of my future brief movie, which options plenty of techy and grungy objects.

Within the idea-gathering stage of this challenge, I used to be cleansing my home and located a bunch of previous and used Ethernet cables, in addition to minimize RJ-45 connectors. I immediately fell in love with these guys and did somewhat photoshoot so as to add them to my reference sheet.

Initially, I had deliberate to mannequin these cables as abnormal property for my movie, however I beloved the look a lot that I made a decision to deal with them as a person little challenge with their very own set of renders.

The vast majority of my inspiration comes from the references themselves. I shot my connectors over an inexpensive plastic flashlight to seize translucency higher, and it created this trippy gradient background surrounded by vantablack darkness. So once I had all the things I wanted, I proceeded to work.

MODELING

After gathering all of the vital references, I began my work. I made a decision to start with the toughest half, the RJ-45 connector. This feat was not the simplest one as a result of there have been so many difficult components about it. Firstly, it’s microscopically tiny, and it was virtually unattainable to seek out satisfactory references or blueprints anyplace on the web. Secondly, it is translucent and refractive, making it extraordinarily laborious to grasp the way it appears to be like from the within.

The modeling half was the hardest for me, and it took me a very long time to beat this problem. I labored on my mesh immediately in Blender as a result of I used to be planning to take extraordinarily shut pictures with my mannequin, so it was vital to maintain my topology proper and clear.

This quad-subD hell took me round every week. I used to be by no means good at sustaining clear topology.

SCENE BUILDING & LIGHTING

Proper after I modeled and unwrapped my mesh, I began constructing my scene composition. I at all times do that earlier than texturing as a result of I wish to create my supplies primarily based on the already-built gentle setup. I discover it simpler to work this manner as I set up my temper beforehand. It is also fairly laborious to make textures too reflective or bumpy when you recognize your gentle values.

There may be nothing extraordinarily particular about my gentle setup. In considered one of my scenes, I used my all-time favourite approach, which is to “Take any picture you’ve in your PC and use it as an surroundings texture.” It really works each time, and due to that, I found plenty of stunning coloration variants.

TEXTURING

From the beginning, I needed to create a yellowish texture for my RJ-45 connector. I gathered some extra references and tried to realize this impact by node noodling however rapidly failed.

So, I exported my mesh to Substance Painter and began engaged on it. I took a easy brush and randomly painted yellow coloration on the corners.

After that, I chosen the Smudge instrument with a dust texture and smudged the yellow coloration to make it extra random and reasonable.

Then, I added a Gradient filter to create multicolored areas on my mesh. On prime of that, I utilized an 8K imperfection map to create cracks and scuffs.

I made some extra tweaks with Cycles nodes, and ultimately, my node tree regarded like this!

DUST PARTICLES

To make my closeup scene appear and feel extra plausible, I made a decision to experiment somewhat. Along with utilizing .png imperfection maps, I needed so as to add bodily hairs and dirt strands to my shot.

And it turned out to be extraordinarily simple.

Initially, I created a number of Bezier Curves that considerably resembled mud particles and transformed them into meshes. If I needed to make some particles extra recurring or frequent, I merely duplicated them a number of occasions. I took each little strand, put them into one Assortment, after which used it contained in the Particle System tab.

Then, I adjusted the settings of my Particle System. I enabled random rotation and scale and tried totally different seeds and variations till it regarded satisfactory.

I used to be glad with the outcome. So as to add somewhat bit extra realism, I manually added a number of additional fats hairs. Humorous sufficient, I utterly skipped any texturing, and my mud strands nonetheless had this default Principled BSDF look. I checked all the things, and it regarded good! I used to be so completely happy it labored.

And that is in all probability it. After that, I rendered my photos, barely post-processed them in Photoshop, they usually had been able to go. I believe this little challenge turned out properly.

RENDER – Cat5!

A number of the WIPs and unused drafts:

RENDER: Video

Should you appreciated my work and are curious about studying extra about my workflow, I even have an entire video that covers that subject. Have a look; I’d be pleased about your consideration!

Thanks on your consideration!

Hope it was fascinating, and also you realized one thing new. Have a pleasant day!

In regards to the Artist                       

Mark Kyrylov, a 3D artist from Ukraine. He’s very obsessed with shiny surfaces and beer.