Tutorials:
How to make a 3D asset from a profile picture / art: https://youtu.be/9WvhOI6Oluc
How to fix Texturing/ make asset form art: https://youtu.be/tCX9n9ipE6A
How to make a Hologram using a Shader: https://youtu.be/KGGB5LFEejg
Links:
Website that makes the picture 3D: Monster Mash: New Sketch-Based Modeling and Animation Tool
Programs Used:
Monster Mash
Blender
Maya
Photoshop
Unity
Step One:
The first thing you need is to find a picture of the animal or object you want to use. This picture must be a PROFILE picture/art similar to the one below.
Step Two:
Once you have located a picture/ art you want, import it into Monster Mash. You do this by clicking on the folder icon, find “import template image”, and then locate the image on your computer.
Step Three:
Once you have imported your image, begin drawing an outline around the part you want to be “inflated” into a 3D object. Monster Mash is compatible on a computer or a tablet, so you can either draw around your image with a stylus/ finger, or use a mouse. I suggest drawing around the main part of the body first, in this example's case, I drew around the head, body, and tail. After that, I went back and drew everything I wanted two of; I wanted two front legs, two back legs, and two tusks. To get two of an extremity you double click on the line so that it becomes red. I would suggest outlining one extremity and duplicating it instead of outlining all the tusks and legs because it will align down the middle.
Step 4:
Once you have outlined your object you can click the inflate button at the top, next to the draw option. It may take a minute to load your 3D asset. The texture on the asset may have white on it, but you don’t need to worry about that right now.
Step 5:
At this point if you wanted to add an animation to your asset you can use the animate tool and then add bones in Blender, but I did not animate my object. Since I am not animating it; I clicked the download icon, clicked “Export the current animation frame as .obj file,” and picked a place to save it.
Step 6:
When you export, you will be given OBJ, MTL, and TIF files. At this point you can stay in Blender or Maya, but I jump back and forth between the two in the upcoming steps. I import the obj file into Blender in order to decimate it.
Step 7: To decimate an object in Blender you go from object mode into editor mode by clicking the option menu on the left side of the screen and then going to Edit mode in the drop down. Then you click Select → All in order to select all the geometry. After selecting everything, click on Mesh --> Clean Up --> Decimate Geometry. The Decimate Geometry box is usually closed in the bottom left corner, but if you click on it, it’ll open. When open, lower the density of the geometry. I lowered mine from 1 to .08. After that, I export the mammoth from Blender and import it into Maya to fix the geometry and re - UV map it. If you are more familiar with Blender feel free to use it for the following steps.
Step 8:
In Maya I lower the opacity of the lambert texture to see where the geometry is weird. As you can see there’s a lot of extra geometry that isn’t needed on the interior of the mammoth. I went in and deleted all of the unneeded faces, cleaned up any other geometry that didn’t flow well, and smoothed out the edges by selecting the edges, going to Mesh Display → Soften Edge.
Step 9:
Then go to the UV tab and reproject the uv mapping to fix any stretching that might have occurred from fixing the geometry.
Step 10: To paint over the white I mentioned earlier, send it back to Blender. I personally prefer the paint tool in Blender, but painting texture can also be done in Maya. Go to the
Texture paint tab. There are many ways to get the desired texture. You can use the stamp tool, which looks like a clip or you can use the paintbrush and use the colors from the textures to fill in the white space.
Step 11: To export the texture that you have painted, go to the UV editing tab, click Image → Save As.
Step 12: Now that you have a textured 3D model, it is time to export it. I exported my object by going to the export button under file and finding FBX, but you can choose other file types as well. When exporting, change the Path Mode to “Copy,” and click the box next to it. You know it’s been clicked when it turns blue and looks like it has files in it. You can then export it.
How to had a Hologram/Shader Graph To 3D Assets in Unity:
Step 13: At this point you have a textured model that you can import into Unity or another game engine. For the models I’ve made, I wanted them to look like holograms. To achieve this, I changed the textures to black and white, changed the levels to be more dramatic, and inverted them in Photoshop. I used this adjusted texture in the Shader Graphs I created.
Step 14: To use shader graphs you need to be using the UPR (I think anything outside of build-in allows shader graphs, but I can only speak on UPRs). To create one, right click in the project box → Create → Shader → PBR Graph.
It then should create something in the project box that looks like the image below. To open your shader graph, double click on it.
I personally would recommend maximizing the Shader Graph while working in it as it is easier to see what you are doing. To do this, right click over the name of the Shader graph you are using and click maximize.
Step 15: To start working in the shader graph there are few important components you need to know about. The first is the PBR Master Node. This is where you eventually plug everything in. It has options such as Emission that normal UPR Materials don’t explicitly have. If you plan on working with transparency/ Alpha make sure the surface is changed to Transparent and the Blend is changed to Alpha if those settings aren’t already set. The way you do that is by clicking on the gear on PBR Master Node.
The next thing you should check out is the Main Preview. It’ll initially be empty. You can choose any of the options when you right click, but I chose the Custom Mesh and then found the mesh of the Mammoth I created earlier.
The final thing that’ll get you started is this menu thing (I’m not sure what it’s specifically called), but it makes nodes that aren’t pre created for you. The dropdown menu shows all the different things you can make with it.
Step 16: The first thing I did was make the nodes I needed using the menu above. The ones I created were two Texture2D, one for the mammoth texture I made and one for a hologram texture (you can make a hologram texture in photoshop by lining up a bunch of gradients in a row), two Colors, one that is the main color and one that will be an accent color, a Vector1 to make the ScrollSpeed, which will control how fast the hologram is animated, and a Vector2, which will control the tiling of the hologram. When you want to use one of the nodes you created, you click on its name and drag it onto the graph.
Step 17: Now that you have your nodes created, start out making the albedo part of the texture. In order to use a texture in the Shader Graph you need to use a Sample Texture 2D. Connect your texture of your model to the Sample Texture 2D. I wanted my hologram to have a bluish hue to it so I drug out the main color node I previously made and then on the graph I created a Multiply node. To create premade nodes you can either drag from an already made node’s input or output source or you can right click and search for the node you want in the search box. After creating the Multiply node I connected the Sample Texture 2D’s output to the input of the Multiply; I did the same with the main color node. Finally I took the output of the Multiply node and connected it to the Albedo option.
Step 18: This is a good place to stop if you want detail or are just trying to change the hue of an object. I personally wanted to play with the transparency, a hologram texture, and animation. To do that we will need the Hologram texture we previously added and then figure out a way to make it move over time. First add the hologram texture and add it to a Sample Texture 2D. This more or less is standing still. I decided that animating it down the UV mapping would be the best option for the mammoth so I connected a Tiling and Offset node (which I found by right clicking and searching for it in the graph) to the UV2 input of the Same Texture 2D. You may notice it still isn’t animating; that is because we haven’t added any sort of time input. We will first add the tiling (the Vector2 option we previously made) to the tiling input of the Tiling and Offset node. Then to factor time I added a time node (again, right click and search in the graph), the Scroll Speed (the Vector1 we previously made), and from their outputs, connected them to the Multiply inputs. I then connected the Multiply output to the Tiling and Offset’s Offset input. Now you should have an animating hologram texture and the texture of the asset you made. We need these to talk to each other. To do this add another Multiply. Then take the output (which should also be connected to the Multiply that adds color to your Albedo texture) of the asset texture’s Sample Texture 2D and add it to the input of the Multiply. Then add the output of the Sample Texture 2D that’s connected to your hologram and add it to the input of the Multiply. At this point you can connect it to the Alpha channel and it should work, but I also connected the Multiply to a Blend so I can have more control over the opacity and how everything overlays. At this point you can be finished! I would encourage playing around with the “x” and “y” values of the tiling and scroll speed options to see the different outcomes.
Thanks For reading!
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