The “Marie-Louise” - A Character-Filled Fishing Boat Presented In Marmoset Toolbag

All aboard as we set sail on this epic journey through the creation process of The “Marie-Louise”. François talks about how he utilized Blender, Substance, Photoshop, Marvelous Designer and Marmoset Toolbag to craft his hyper-realistic fishing boat, The “Marie-Louise”.

Intro

Hello everyone, my name is François Larrieu and I am a 3D Artist living in Paris, France. I am currently a final year student at New3dge and a Contract Artist at Dekogon. When I was 18, I obtained my "Bac" (diploma at the end of high school in France) and I did not know at all what to do for a job. I have always been a big video game player and I said to myself as much as I could to make my passion my job. I joined a 3D school for 3 years and wanted to continue in this way for another 2 years in a Game Art specialization. This job quickly became a passion, I was constantly working at home to improve my techniques, my models, my texturing. I have always been quite self-taught and love to learn new things on my own. 3D is a profession where you can improve to infinity, there is no limit, and that's why I always try to achieve more.

Texturing Process

For this step, it is imperative to look at our references because they are the ones that will really dictate our texturing. You can obviously go and look for more if the ones you have are not precise enough. For this project, I really wanted to give an "old boat" look, a little run down and rusty. I advise always working with styles that are a little used/abandoned. The texturing and the story behind your props will be more interesting than just smooth, clean textures. Remember, your props have to say something.

For texturing, I start by setting up my Painter viewport. For that, I use Jason Ord's setup post in this tutorial video that I recommend. It is excellent.

I often start the same way. I start with the biggest areas and end with the smallest. For the details to come to an end, the base material has to be right first. My texturing is an assembly of colors variations, roughness, the addition of dirt, dust, stencils, etc ... I wonder what could have damaged this surface, the wind, the water, the storms... each prop is different. We do not texture a weapon like we texture a boat by example, but the construction logic of layers is the same; we start from the largest to arrive at the smallest.

As we can see here, the tire is damaged by time and by shocks with other boats. Many traces of paint are visible, probably the hulls of other ships. It's all these little details that will bring your props to life. My goal is to transcribe the history of this tire on my prop. I start by creating the base of the material of my tire, a gum/rubber texture. I give it characteristics of colors as well as roughness. Then I add color variation, here rather white/gray, damaged tires tend to go towards these colors. I then add variations of roughness. The tire is not entirely flat, the light is reflected inside, and you also have to remember that my tire is probably wet here. Finally comes the part where I bring life to my tire, details. As said above, we see many traces of paint, shocks, etc. Here is a set of layers of dirt/dust, generated procedurally or created by hand using a stencil. I recommend this video tutorial series by Rick Greeve, who explained very well this process.

The same example here with the boat hull:

Lighting

Nothing very interesting here for the lighting. I'm not a very good lighter, and it's not a part that I really like to do, in this project there are only 2 white directional lights, that's all. I like to have a very simple lighting so as not to distort the props or the textures, I want my textures to stay as visually as possible, and therefore I light my scenes very little, I manage everything else during the composition in Photoshop.

Challenges Of Using Marmoset Toolbag To Create The Scene

The main difficulty when creating a scene like this, which is quite imposing (not a simple props), is the placement of the cameras and the good management of the materials. You can quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of information, you have to know how to organize.

In this scene, there are 18 cameras in all, they did not serve me well, but their placement must be considered, you have to ask yourself what you want to show on the screen, it could for example be a props that we liked a lot, or spent more time on than the rest.

As for materials, a scene like that can contain a certain number of them, you have to know how to rename these files and these materials, in order not to get lost in the hierarchy. I recommend using the material files, this will allow you to sort them by category as below.

The other difficulty in working a scene like this in raytracing and the power of your computer, at times, I felt that I was reaching these limits, and I had a lot of problems with it, finally I managed to when even finish this scene.

Marmoset Toolbag Scene Creation Tips

My main advice is organization, it is the most important thing to respect, if you are not organized, you will get lost and you will abandon your project. You can create folders in Marmoset that will help you get organized.

Personally, I create a "Meshes", "Lights" and "Cameras" folder, that's enough for me, no need to create dozens, but it has to be tidy. I know where everything is.

And this advice is even more valid if you have a big scene, the rendering work will be much more enjoyable.

To speak more precisely of the scene, my setups are generally the same, I use cameras with an orthographic FOV. I love the rendering it gives. Always activate the ACES and slightly sharpen, which avoids having a too blurry result, and that's all. I prefer to work it in Photoshop for all of the compositing and color correction, which gives me more control.

For the light ambiance, I use the HDRI "Indoor Fluorescents," which is the one, in my opinion, that gives the best result and which creates the least contrast. It also allows me to have a reasonably flat light, which I can rework behind.

The scene is composed of 2 directional lights, one to illuminate the right side and one for the left side. I don't like to use too many lights, which can modify the appearance of the color or the textures. I really want it to feel the same as in Painter. Finally, I regularly use a classic black background, which allows you to see the main elements.

To quickly talk about Photoshop, I try to make it as simple as possible. I use a set of composition layers like contrast, brightness, saturation, etc ... and I try to make the result I want.

I also advise you to add a High Pass filter, which brings out the details much better, put it a little higher than you just think because Artstation tends to compress the quality of the renderings a bit. Just go to Filter > Other > High Pass. You may not see the difference on the screen, but try it, and you will see a big difference in quality.

Creating Rope and Chains

My process for creating my ropes and chains has been asked a lot and I am very happy to be able to share it with you, I will try to be as clear and precise as possible because it is for me one of the main points of my scene.

I'll talk about the chains first because it's the easiest, it's just two different meshes placed by hand and then wrapped around the ropes.

For the ropes I used 2 different techniques, one using curves and the other using Marvelous Designer, I will talk about the one with curves first.

I don't use the curve directly to create my ropes (which is a bit complex and impractical for my taste), what I do is extrude my vertices to give them a general shape of the rope that I want, then I convert them to Spline in order to be able to use the bevel tool curve which allows me to create a cylinder around my vertices, I then apply a Subdivision Surface in order to smooth everything, I reconvert my Spline to mesh and finally, I am optimizing the mesh, here are some screens to better understand.

The placement of the ropes and the entanglement of the latter are only a matter of patience, it is necessarily a bit long but the result is worth it.

Marvelous Designer

I will now talk about the second techniques for creating ropes, here it is more precisely the piles of ropes that I am going to talk about, all the piles that you see were simulated in Marvelous Designer, I did not see how to do them otherwise and as precisely. To create these piles of ropes, I first created a generic mesh which will be used to create all the piles. Here a simple Spline twisted a little in all directions. I will come to import it into Marvelous Designer as OBJ to Garment, which will allow me to be able to simulate it as Cloth mesh. Now that the rope is imported, it must be simulated, for that, there is almost nothing to do except add a little pressure in the material properties so that the rope does not crash into itself. Once the simulation is finished, all you have to do is import everything into Blender and touch up a few areas by hand (the simulation is never 100% perfect).

Which model are you most proud of and why?

I think the model I'm most proud of is the lifebuoy because it's the first object I modeled when I started this project, and therefore surely the one that brought the basics of mesh density and textures for the rest from the scene. It's a personal scene so I didn't have any polycounts constraint, I tried to model the scene as cleanly as possible but also to have the best aesthetic aspect.

Lifebuoy Creation

My process for creating props is still the same. I start by creating the lowpoly in Blender first, then import it into ZBrush to create the highpoly. I then import the highpoly into Blender so that it overlaps the lowpoly. Finally in Blender, I do the UVs for the lowpoly.

The next step is baking, for my part I only bake in Marmoset, I find that it is the software that offers the best results and the fastest. When exporting, remember to add the _low and _high suffix to your props so that Marmoset automatically creates the folders for you, this is faster and more convenient if you want to bake a large number of assets at once.

For the texturing, I already spoke about it above so I will not re-detail everything, however I can show you all the layers created for the buoy.

Tips For Learning Blender

For 5 years now that I have been doing 3D, I have always used Blender, I have tried a lot of other 3D software but in my opinion blender remains the best. I recommend it to all beginners in 3D because it is free and its use is very userfriendly, with a lot of shortcuts and a very clear and clean interface. You don't get lost in a ton of options and once you know the shortcuts, modeling becomes super enjoyable.

Nevertheless and as in any software, the use of scripts is essential for certain operations and will greatly facilitate your work. This is why I recommend two very useful scripts:

• UV Squares: allows you to reshape the UV into a square, very useful for ropes or pipes.

• UV Packmaster 2.0: the script I use the most, allows you to automatically package your UVs with a lot of options available.

As far as modeling is concerned, I don't use any script, the software is so complete and easy to use that I don't need it. You can nevertheless use HardOps or BoxCutter which are great scripts too.

Is there anything you feel you could improve or would change if you were to make the scene again?

If I had to redo the scene, I think I would manage my materials better in terms of organization, I think I could have done less with the same result, when we do a detailed scene like this, it's always difficult to choose which props to group together and which props to texture alone, I could have done better at this level. Being a personal scene, I did not look too much at the number of triangles, it is true that in certain places I could have done less with a similar result.

Was there anything you learnt that will change your workflow as you move forward with new projects?

I tend to want to get results too quickly and may not focus enough on certain steps. When you do a personal project, remember that you have no deadline to meet, take your time on each part of your scene in order to have the best possible result.

Where are you still looking to grow as an artist? What new techniques or topics interest you?

A lot of 3D circles and specializations interest me. As astonishing as it may seem, I love to do vegetation, I have never published one on my ArtStation, but it is an area that I find very interesting, it is moreover my goal in my end year project in a group at school, I only do vegetation, and moreover stylized, it's a big challenge for me. But the thing I prefer to do is create realistic props and environments, I always try to get as close as possible to reality and put as much detail as possible, I always try to improve myself in this area , as a 3D artist, frustration is part of our job, we are never happy with what we do and that's what drives me to always give more.

Inspiration

First and foremost, the inspiration comes from me, I first try to find an idea for an object that I would like to do, and that's where a lot of questions come to me:

• Is this prop interesting to texture (clean texture or we can drift on some older, rusty things)?

• Is the modeling interesting and complex enough to make it a unique scene?

• Will this scene challenge me on a few things I'm not used to practicing (here the strings and the use of Marvelous)?

• Is this scene customizable to my liking (here the placement of the crates or the modeling of the boat can be modified by me, there is no rule to follow)?

• And finally, for me probably the most important question, can I add an interesting detail to the eye? Do not only respect what I can see on a reference (here the fish net for example or the fisherman's coat hanging down), always try to add a personal and visually interesting touch. I am currently working on car modeling, and rather than just redoing a car, think about what we could add that might be interesting, it could be a trailer, cans on the roof, muddy ground to give life to your scene, etc ...)

Once you have found what you want to do (this step can take me up to a week or so), you have to look for as many references as possible, they must be as precise as possible and in fairly large numbers. The best place to find referrals is, of course, the Internet. Personally, I use Pinterest and Google Images a lot. The advantage of Pinterest is that once you know what to look for, it delivers many images of the same style to you. What I always do once I have lots of references is a cleaning phase, keep only the references that will be useful to you, often I try to have lots of references, but that bothers me more than anything else, be sure what you want to do and don't get lost in the pictures. Once the desired props have been identified, look for as many references as possible on them.

Feedback

Feedback is essential in our work, when you've been on a project for 2 months, you may no longer see the problems, whether artistic or technical. I get my feedback mainly from my family and different 3D communities on Discord like The DiNusty Empire and of course Experience Points. You might think, you can ask for feedback from people who don't know anything about 3D (like your family might be) and it's even important, they will only have a criticism on the artistic side but often very interesting because they will see the biggest problems first, much better than we often.

Tips and Advice

I think this breakdown has already shared a lot of tips, but the best advice I can give and probably the most important, do your job with passion, love what you do, do the right thing and the result will only be better , take your time, do not rush and show the best of yourself on each piece of your portoflio that you publish.

What can we be on the lookout for from you in the future?

My main goal is to continue to improve myself day by day, to bring out the best in myself. I only have one year of study left and my dream thereafter and to work and travel abroad, Canada, England or the USA are places where I would love to work. Stay tuned for my portfolio as new things will be coming soon.

Outro

This project has been long and I thank all the people who helped me during its realization, I again thank the communities of The DiNusty Empire and Experience Points for giving me all this advice. I also thank Experience Points for giving me the opportunity to write this article and share my advice and tips with you. Hope you find this article useful and enjoyable. For more questions, you can find me here:

Artstation

LinkedIn

Email: francois-larrieu@hotmail.fr