I saw something similar in a Blender video, but that model was part of a procedurally generated geometric cabling system. There was one piece in that project that caught my eye: a rounded, pillared power source with a glowing core, and thought I’d like to take that idea for a spin myself. It took me about 2 days of fiddling with this design to get the results you see above and while I know there are parts that need improvement, I’m not unhappy with the current results.

Here’s my own post-mortem on the thing.

Cons

Repetition

Being round, there’s really no “start” or “end”. There’s a top and bottom, sure, but as this device is meant to be plugged in to a larger device like you’d insert one of those vacuum cannisters into the tube at a bank, and because by the time I realized I needed some geometry at the top and bottom I decided to render in a way that neither of the ends were visible. Needless to say, the details encircle the glowing core and while it says what it was meant to say, I think the repetition is a bit much.

Not enough detail

Considering the repetition, and the density of repetitive objects — the pillars, the extrusions, and the “muffin tins” — there’s not a lot else going on. The cut-outs on the red extrusions was an 11th hour attempt to do something engaging, but when I considered adding bolts to insinuate that the extrusions were actually panels, I decided against it as the model had already been unwrapped and textured.

The color choices

I am less happy with the red on the extrusions, or the flat-dark-grey of the muffin tins. Trying to make something that has A) shape, B) texture, and C) color is something I’m having a lot of trouble with. I wanted the extrusions to stand out, but the small grates are kind of…just there for the sake of being there.

The details there are

Finally, I thought I was doing OK in Substance Painter with my layering, adding color and metal, removing roughness, and then dirtying it up just enough to look worn, but not like it had been buried in a landfill for 1,200 years. On closer inspection, though, the dirt could be better and the scratches are a bit too much…and too bland.

Pros

The glow

I hadn’t really done emissive textures before, but learned about them recently when watching my bazillion videos on texturing in Blender. I did the emissive textures in Substance Painter, so I used Node Wrangler to load those images back into Blender, which wired them all up for me to the Principled BSDF. Still, when I turn the scene lights down, the core’s glow takes over, and that’s kind of cool.

Smooth metal pillars

The pillars are meant to be detailed like the rest of the machine, but somewhere along the line they lost the dirt and scratches and came out hyper-reflective and smooth. Looking at areas where the pillars are reflecting the light of the core when the scene lights are turned down came out real nice.

I didn’t suck at Substance Painter

While I think my aged metal texturing for the body of the device could use some revision, the fact that I did it at all is a milestone for me. I had been hoping to not have to go to Substance Painter and instead had planned to do all of the texturing in Blender, but my skills aren’t there yet. Until they are, I’m pretty pleased that I can do some damage using Painter and not have the project suck entirely.

Remembering what I learned last time

Aside from the hypo-spray I’d posted about previously, this is the first model I’ve made this season, after several months away from 3D modeling, and I’m elated to realize that most everything I’d learned in years past has not gone missing. Because of the repetition involved, there was a lot of mirroring and arrays-around-empties involved. In fact, the model itself is just one pillar, one “muffin tin”, and 1/4 of the body of the device. The whole thing was put together using modifiers, and that also saved some UV space by only having to texture 1/4 of the overall device.

And…Scene

I could spend eternity fiddling with this, exporting it to Painter for retexturing, and importing the files back to Blender to get more detail, figure out better colors, and clean up the textures to make them more believable, but I think I’m going to put this on my First Grade trophy shelf and move on to something different.

I’m the kind of person who thinks towards the end product and then tries to work backwards towards it, but that means my ideas are usually much, much larger than my skillset. This wasn’t a terrible project. I revised a few things here and there, got myself into several pickles, but was smart enough to get myself out of them again. I think it’s because I didn’t go nuts with, say, a hoverbike or a star fighter or some big ticket, involved project that I was able to approach, execute, and enjoy this one. That also means that for my next idea, it’s got to be simple, but interesting, so I’m going to have to think about it for a while.