Robert Waterworth Animator and Illustrator

There is a set of illustrations I created of a Russian probe called the Venera. Back in 2008 I worked on a series of shots for documentary. It was a National Geographic program called Journey to the edge of the universe. We did the best we could with the technology we had then and the time constraints. About six months ago I got into some new software called Adobe Substance Painter. I decided to update this Russian probe and use this as a learning exercise. I use this project to figure out how to go between Maya and substance painter. I'm pretty happy with the way things worked out.

Been experimenting with Arnold toon shaders versus photo-realistic PBR shaders. I'm starting to really like the way these graphic toon shaders look. I particularly enjoy the way it highlights the details in the geometry.

Continuing on with my Roman legion project, I have just spent the last couple days experimenting with Algorithmic Substance Painter, and Quixel Mixer from Epic Games. I'm really excited about this new PBR texturing workflow. It's allowing me to get some very realistic looking result.

I've started work on a personal project. Here is a sneak preview of part of it. More to come...

Working on shading this model. I made this over 10 years ago for an engineering firm, but I never did texture it. Having fun working with Arnold and the Arnold curvature node. The curvature node is great for adding Edge wear and scratches/rust etc.

I spent the last few days playing around with this M2 50 Cal machine gun model and rendering it with 3 different methods. First in Substance Painter with its own Iray renderer, then in Maya with Arnold 5, then in Maya with Arnold Contour line renderer and with Arnold 5 aiToonShader node. I like the Toon shader the best I think. It is clean, smooth and very fast. And most of all very consistent. The Full PBR Arnold shader looks very different in Maya then the Iray version rendered out of Substance painter. That is very frustrating indeed!