For this project we were tasked with modelling a hot air balloon for use in our Nuke class. The final project was titled “Balloon Festival”, so it was our job to incorporate this model into a Nuke composition. In this project I designed two hot air balloons, the first solely in Maya to demonstrate my modelling skillset, and the second was mainly in ZBrush because I feel I have a lot of artistic freedom and tools to create what I envision in a somewhat organic and intuitive way. The UV’s were created and adjusted in Maya however, because I find Maya’s UV toolset to be very powerful.
When it came to texturing, I brought the model and UV’s into Substance Painter and began to apply the textures. Using both materials imported from Quixel Megascans and flat planed textures such as the basket weave, I also textured in several wear and rust effects to the metal bars and rope links. One issue I had was the normal and displacement maps not appearing as they should in Maya, but after researching the AiNormapMap node and its functionality I was able to remedy this.
My thought process behind creating my first hot air balloon was to test some more tools in Maya, and create a realistic rendition of the concept. In doing this however, the polycount became unnecessarily high, ranging into the 100k range and the render time suffered massively as a result. As I was not that pleased with the final result anyway, I went back to the drawing board and tried to find a balloon concept that had some narrative interest.
My result of finding a new concept was settled as I remembered the film “Around the World in 80 Days”, a movie which centres around an explorer who embarks on a journey to circle the globe and return to his launch point within 80 days. I figured that this would carry more interest and personality to the concept rather than a typical balloon model. To this regard I gathered several references to the film’s balloon, and began modelling in Zbrush. I aimed to maintain a consistent silhouette and avoided making minor details to the model, such as engine levers and gas cylinders as I had previously done as these would be almost completely unnoticable in the final ‘Balloon Festival Project’.
Furthermore, in the favour of the model the final polycount was within the 30k range, and the Arnold render was much quicker. Whilst I typically aim for a polycount of around 10k, this was acceptable without the need for retopology and baked maps which were instead achievable in Substance Painter. Had this been a model required for a game engine, these needs would have to be addressed. but as a final beauty render a high polycount may bring certain lighting and texturing details lost to a texture bake, those of which I did not want to lose.