Crowbar 3D (Blog)

6/23/26

Part 2: Hi-Res and UVs

Haven't got to a first bake yet, but I'm practically already there, using the CAD refacet, I was able to get down to 21k as a first pass without any effort. Making good progress.

Plasticity Viewport

Blender Viewport

6/15/26

Part 1: Blockout

Starting work on the Siemens MRI Machine, getting a quick blockout of the scene just to get some early scale

UE5 Blockout

6/09/26

Part 4: Renders

Sneak peak of the cinematic. And Plasticity renders.

UE5 Render

Final Plasticity Pass

M-777 Howitzer Ref Board

6/02/26

Part 3: Baking and Materials

Part 3: Materials

Finally getting back into it, for this part, I wanted to begin with my first bakes and textures, just to get a better feel of what the final model might look like.

Did some bevel shader baking from Marmoset to Painter, it came out pretty nice.

UE5 Render

Plasticity Progress

MMT Bevel Shader

M-777 Howitzer Ref Board

5/25/26

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, I am a bit behind on the model right now, I'm not worried as I will be compensating this loss for part3 . Thankfully, not all is lost, I made some progress in other areas. I created the early prototype for the firing simulation within Houdini. I plan to setup an entire animation within UE5 using the alembic pipeline.

M-777 Howitzer Ref Board

5/18/26

Part 1: Blockout

This project is significantly more difficult than the Hubble Telescope, so I really have to make sure my forms are strong from the start. By now, I'm pretty married to the CAD workflow, I've been able to model 3x quicker than I would even at full speed on Blender. By now my pipeline is near instant, I don't even have to export anymore.