Triumph Speed Twin 3D Model
I created a (work in progress) 3D model of a Triumph Speed Twin Motorcycle to expand on my 3D modelling skills, and then rendered the model to progress and gain more experience and skill in producing photo-realistic renders.
The model was produced using a combination of mesh modelling in Blender and NURBS modelling in Solidworks. The model was UV unwrapped in blender and I used a combination of custom procedural materials in the Blender Cycles shader editor along with PBR texture sets.
To enable the model to be UV unwrapped, allowing 2D textures to be accurately applied to the 3D geometry, it was essential to maintain a clean topology. This involved constructing the mesh as a "quad" mesh, where each face consists of exactly four sides. This approach not only streamlined the UV unwrapping process but also helped prevent shading artifacts during rendering.
Quad-based topology is considered best practice in 3D modeling because it allows for smoother surface deformations and more predictable results when subdividing the mesh. In contrast, using non-quad elements, such as triangles or n-gons, can disrupt the shading algorithms of the render engine, leading to visible artifacts and irregularities, especially on curved surfaces, as the engine struggles to interpolate shading smoothly across non-uniform polygons.
The quad mesh can be seen overlaid onto the 3D model below, whereas in contrast the triangle based topology of the mesh imported from Solidworks can be observed. This presents a challenge when attempting to texture the mesh, but using a combination of procedurally generated textures and some clever mapping techniques allows materials to be applied with no distortion or shading artifacts.
To create the animation video, the camera movement was animated in Blender using keyframes, and material parameters were also keyframed to create the changing screen display in the 3D environment. To create the overlays for various components such as the wheels and engine, mattes were generated using the Cryptomatte feature and automatically exported to a PNG image sequence to be used for compositing.
The image sequences of the various animations were imported into Davinci Resolve video editing software and arranged on the timeline. The various text elements were created using Davinci Fusion, and tracked into the video to ensure they matched the camera movement. The previously generated PNG mattes were imported into Fusion and used to composite the overlays onto the video.
The outdoor 3D environment was created fully from geometry with no image backdrops used, as can be seen from the clay render below. The mountains in the background were created in the procedural terrain generation tool Gaea 2.0. The grass terrain was created in Blender using the sculpting tools, and a particle system used to distribute a 3D model of grass across the terrain. The scene was lit using the Nishita sky texture tool in Blender, and a volume scatter material applied to the scene to create the atmospheric scattering effect.
