Teenage Engineering TP-7


Software: 3ds Max, Houdini, Redshift, Substance Painter

Project Brief:


One of my favorite 3D exercises is to take an object that I am obsessed with and replicate it in 3D. This time around, I chose to recreate the Teenage Engineering TP-7: “The ultra portable audio recorder.” 

With each project, I try to challenge myself to learn something new. With this one, I wanted to create a game-ready asset, optimize the model via baking, and make it as low-poly as possible while still maintaining the silhouette. Additionally, I wanted to polymodel this, even though using CAD would be much quicker. This challenged me to create a detailed hard surface model with no artifacts via polymodeling and subd.

I also wanted to try my hand at some motion graphics styled renderings that had more elegance and style than the classic render.




Phase 1: References



I always begin my projects in Figma by gathering references. This step is critical to recreating a real life object 1:1. I love Figma for mood boarding. I often start totally messy by pasting images all over the place and then as I gather more and more references I can start to organize my ideas.

Figma also comes in handly later down the workflow when I use it to create decals that I will paint in Substance Painter.

High Poly 




Low Poly

Phase 2: Modeling



Perhaps my favorite step of the pipeline. I chose to model this object entirely in 3ds max. I decided to switch up my approach and (for the main body) to use booleans and then clean up the mesh afterwards. Usually I model in entirely in subd and try to avoid making decisions that I’ll have to clean up later. This object, however, I decided could benefit from booleans with all out its various cutouts and shaps. I still used Subd on the smaller components such as buttons and wheels.

I learned clean up methods that I hadn’t had to implent prior, but in retrospect I would probably choose another approach in that the boolean clean up was rather laber intensive and took longer than I would have preferred.

Once modeling was complete, I created the UV’s on the low poly and then it was time for texturing/baking. 

Phase 3:
Baking/Texturing



This is one of the most satisfying sections of the pipeline. I was able to bake the high poly onto my low poly with zero artifacts and maintain tons of details while retaining a low file size.
Texturing and Baking was done entirely in Substance Painter. I used a mix of substance painter materials as well as custom decals that I created in Figma based off the references I gathered.

Phase 4: Lighting/Rendering



This project was rendered in Houdini using Redshift. I also utilized MOPS: Houdini Motion Operators. It was through this I was able to get some interesting configurations and animations.

I have yet to render out the animation sequence but as you can see by the screen captures, there is alot of movement and close up dynamic beaty shots.