Sony PVM-20 CRT
This project was inspired by my love of CRT’s. I chose to create an asset for this to practice and push my modelling and texturing skills. There have been many iconic models, but I chose the Sony PVM-20 CRT monitor as I liked the analogue design of its buttons, and the front facing speaker.
I modelled this in Maya, overall, it was an easy process. I was able to keep clean topology and was able to match the references I had. A few areas could have been improved in this model, such as evenly distributing some of the edges and reducing some unnecessary edges. Areas such as the screw holes around the body could’ve been made cleaner and be redistributed equally. An area that fell behind were the vent slots, these ended up a challenge for me as they required a very high poly dense mesh, which was unfeasible for this project.
Reference images I had based my model on
Topology
Areas that could’ve been improved
I modelled this in Maya, overall, it was an easy process. I was able to keep clean topology and was able to match the references I had. A few areas could have been improved in this model, such as evenly distributing some of the edges and reducing some unnecessary edges. Areas such as the screw holes around the body could’ve been made cleaner and be redistributed equally. An area that fell behind were the vent slots, these ended up a challenge for me as they required a very high poly dense mesh, which was unfeasible for this project.
UV’s
The UVs for this were easy and clean due to the shape of the model, as it’s basic shapes with hard angle edges. There were a few areas that had some distortion, but they didn’t have much of an effect when texturing. The UDIMs were separated by body, screen and miscellaneous parts, despite it being a simple solution, it works perfectly for my use case.
UDIM layout
One of my main goals for this project was to improve my texturing and look development skills. I used Substance Painter for this and was able to achieve a look similar to my references. I picked up a lot from many tutorials I had watched, and used that knowledge to recreate the materials I would need for this asset. I used Photoshop to extract stickers, create text and other symbols which I used a mask to put onto the asset, I found this added a lot of realism to the asset. Unfortunately, I didn’t realise I could’ve added the vent holes through an alpha mask from the texture, which would’ve completed the asset, as without the vents it looks incomplete.
Base Colour Map
Metallic Map
Decals, stickers and alphas
Front Speaker using normal map
Roughness Map
I created a turntable setup which I used a variety of HDRI’s and 3-point lighting setup, to see how the textures would react to different environments. I combined this with tweaking the shader to get a better result, I would combine this with tweaks to the textures to achieve the final look. Some of the metal materials I used needed to be desaturated and made darker, and some of my specular reflections needed to be made less reflective.
Overall, this was a fun project to work on, I was able to push my skills to a higher level. Modelling wise I improved my skills as a whole, and did well to match all the details and follow reference. Prior to this project, I hadn’t worked on an asset that required many parts such as buttons, knobs, screws. It’s been a good challenge especially for objects that I didn’t have many references such as the plug socket.
Texture wise this has been a massive improvement for me, I was able to recreate the plastic and other materials well and did a good job of maintaining a realistic look overall. Prior to this a lot of my textures would look quite flat with little breakup within the base and specular maps, or would look over the top with dirt and scratch marks all over the asset.