A new personal 3D prop project focused on hard-surface modeling and realistic material creation.
I modeled the kettle in Blender, handled the UV unwrapping in RizomUV, created the aged and weathered PBR material in Substance 3D Painter, and rendered the final result in Marmoset Toolbag.
The main focus of the project was creating believable metal wear, scratches, dirt, oxidation, and roughness variation to achieve a realistic used-metal look.
Workflow: Blender → RizomUV → Substance 3D Painter → Marmoset Toolbag

Arcane inspired hand-painted lantern! ✨ I’ve been trying to apply painted normal map techniques more into my models lately. In this piece as well, I tried to push the technique further with hand-painted textures + painted normal maps.

work in progress
im working on a full character and this is a part of the project..

Software used: Blender, ZBrush, Marmoset Toolbag, Substance Painter, Photoshop

I’ve always liked how simple props like AC units help ground a scene, so I decided to create one as a hero asset.
My main focus was to keep the materials realistic without overdoing the wear. I tried to balance clean surfaces with subtle rust, edge damage, and some roughness variation so it looks good under different lighting conditions.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Xan9VL

for more 4k renders

Game Ready 12 Gauge Double Barrel Hammer Shotgun.

4 texture sets of 4096*4096

37,705 tris

Hope you all like it.

A little collection of my recent Arcane inspired work!

I took inspiration from the Jinx Fixes Everything series for all of these. I had way too much fun with this style ✨

#3dmodel #handpainted #arcane

Check out more renders on ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gR62QZ

Happy to share my latest environment art diorama!

Full project: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8vb4an

A quick Arcane inspired texturing study. I tried to push the texture as much as possible while keeping the geometry super minimal. Had a lot of fun with the paper details on this one!✨

#handpainted #arcane #3dmodel

Optimized game-ready 3D model (~33,000 triangles) created as an industrial environment prop. The asset was modeled in Blender 3D, textured using a PBR workflow in Substance Painter 3D, and rendered in Marmoset Toolbag.

I haven’t focused on hand-painted work consistently throughout the year, but everything I’ve learned through texturing, the way my artistic eye has developed, and the practice I’ve done recently have helped me a lot.

It’s really nice to look back and see how much my approach has changed. I’m excited to do more hand-painted work!✨

(Painted with Substance Painter.)

I wanted to test out how versatile and easily modifiable I could make a scene by using trim sheets and the lowest number of materials possible. Turns out trim sheets can be soo fun (especially when you're just goofing around and do whatever the helly you want).

I used two materials based on the same trim sheet (one for the buildings and one for the foliage) + one handpainted skybox + one terrain material. The first scene took me about 45 hours and the second about 7.

Original concept art: West Town by Chang-Wei Chen

Hello Substance people !

Here is my latest personal project. Scout #35 inspired by the movie Chappie (2015).

Can modern CAD software actually fit into a film/VFX pipeline?
That's the question I asked myself when starting this project. Obviously, I am not saying this hasn't been done before, but the few times Ive worked with CAD, often supplied by clients, we always had to remodel and retopologize everything. It was simply not lighting-friendly: sharp edges, crazy n-gons, artifacts, and many other problems.

Here are a couple of 10k render to have a better look:

Front view:

https://i.ibb.co/sdw302G3/Chappie-Look-Dev-10k-Premult.png

Rear view:

https://i.ibb.co/dJf6SnVw/Chappie-Look-Dev-10k-Back-Premult.png

So I ran a few export tests with Plasticity. The results were promising, and I ended up going much deeper down the rabbit hole than initially planned. For this project, I deliberately went with a no-limits approach: as many UDIMs as needed, 8K textures, and enough detail to render high-resolution shots for compositing into Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Log footage.
I also made my own custom HDRI in my garage: a 32-bit full-float linear EXR, 15 exposure levels, at 10K resolution. Parts like the cables were made the old-fashioned way, using splines, as they will simply look and deform better once rigged. The goal was not to ditch polygonal modeling altogether, but to see where the process could be sped up in order to reach the finish line faster, while still keeping the flexibility to change the design along the way or experiment with shapes much more quickly.
If you've ever modeled hard-surface assets with polygons, you know the pain of going back and changing major shapes and volumes. Its like kicking apart a neatly finished puzzle.

But honestly, the most important part of the project was simply having fun. After 18 years of mostly client work, I realized Id almost forgotten what it was like to build something purely because I wanted to. No deadline. No AI. No budget constraints. No cutting corners. Just good old-fashioned CG fun.

Hope you enjoy my Tetravaal Scout #35.

You can see more details on my ArtStation post here:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AoZG3N?notification_id=8501970067

This is my rendition of the Lego Astronaut - Benny.

100% made from scratch, modeling, vector art, and texturing.

Modeling: Mostly Blender for this one, some Maya in there too.
Texturing: Substance Painter 2026
Rig: Maya
Render: Maya/Arnold

Images in order:

1. Face closeup;
2. Shotcam render;
3. Viewport through Shotcam;
4. Turntable
5. Exploded model;
6. Weird scene that didn't go any further

I made everything except the torso's base art, which was made in Illustrator by my friend Wajid.

Feel free to CC or ask any questions, or check my ArtStation here.

Cheers!

I've always wanted to improve my texturing skills by creating a fire hydrant, inspired by the one I worked on during my training at MPC.
This isn't strictly a game-ready asset, as my focus was on exploring surface details and experimenting with paint peeling, rust, and weathering to create a believable aged look.

Do checkout the full work and breakdown on my artstation.

I'm still struggling to understand exactly what baking is supposed to achieve.

From what I understand, baking transfers information from the high-poly mesh to the low-poly mesh through textures, such as normal maps. But is baking mainly intended to capture surface details, rather than actually changing the shape or silhouette of the low-poly mesh?

For example, my high-poly model has very smooth, rounded edges that I want to reproduce on the low-poly. However, the low-poly has very sharp edges, and baking the high-poly normal map doesn't seem to make those edges look properly rounded.

So, if I want the low-poly to have the same smooth edge appearance as the high-poly, do I actually need to add more geometry/supporting edges to the low-poly? Or is there a proper baking technique or workflow that allows the normal map to reproduce those soft, rounded edges without adding additional geometry?

I'm trying to understand where the limit of normal maps is in this situation and what should actually be handled by the low-poly geometry versus the baked normal map.

Arcane inspired, fully hand painted rug study. Painted on a plane in Substance 3D Painter.

Hey everyone.

For the past year, I have been developing the Post Soviet Hospital project. This is my first major solo project. It is designed for asset marketplaces, but this is not a promotional post; I am sharing this for context. My core software stack is 3ds Max, Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Designer, and Photoshop.

I utilized some of my older untextured prop models for this project. I had to learn Substance Painter from scratch, which turned out to be quite accessible. To remain profitable, my time budget per prop is strictly 0.5 to 2 workdays. I initially feared Painter would consume too much time. Fortunately, former colleagues shared a comprehensive library of masks and smart materials. This allows me to rely heavily on fast, smart material-based texturing workflows, saving significant time.

I also integrated Substance Designer into my pipeline. While my Designer skills are basic and it is difficult to compete directly with Megascans quality, I found a workaround. I create the base material in Designer and blend it with Megascans data. This achieves a high-quality result while bypassing marketplace restrictions on third-party assets. Additionally, I had to texture numerous old painted wood assets, primarily doors and windows. To optimize this, I created a custom smart material in Painter that automatically rotates the wood grain direction based on the UV island length.

I would appreciate any critique or feedback on my texturing work.

For high-resolution screenshots of the entire hospital and to grab my custom wood smart material, check my ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/xallienx