The making 'Cakebot'

CG artist, Vincent Tonelli, shares how he made Cakebot in Maya...

The goal of this project was to create a colorful and fun image with a robot. I will take you through the steps I followed to create Cakebot.

Step 01: References

I looked for references for the robot, the cake shop, and the ambiance that would fit the scene I wanted to create. I found an image of an old stove and used this to imform the design of the robot. I used the book The Art of Robots from the film Robots for inspiration and robot design. I am also inspired by the work of the artist Brian Despain who did many wonderful robots illustrations. For the cake shop I wanted to use a traditional bakery design and found most of my references on Pinterest.

Step 02: Modeling

I started the modeling of the robot in Maya. I wanted the robot to have a mix of vintage and steampunk look and feel to the design. I tried to keep the design simple because I didn't want to waste time doing a complicated rig. I structured the robot very simply; the different parts of the body are connected in a uncomplicated way.

Final model of the robot

Final model of the robot

Final cake shop model

Final cake shop model

Step 03: Composition

I drew a couple of small sketches to work out the composition of the image. I wanted to show a robot who was proud of the cake he has made. I tried to find a pose and a composition that would serve my purpose. I tried to use the position of the robot's limbs and elements of the cake shop to guide the viewer's eyes and get them to look at the cake.

Composition ideas

Composition ideas

Step 04: Texturing

For the texturing I used mainly MARI and Substance Painter for the copper parts. Textures are very important for the surfacing. When I work with Guerilla Render I try, as much as possible, not to put overrides in the render options, the objective is to manage the surfacing as much as possible with the textures.

Bump map

Bump map

Diffuse color map

Diffuse color map

Roughness maps

Roughness maps

Step 05: Lighting

For the lighting I used a pink environment, a yellow key light, and a blue back light. I also use one light for the front elements. Lighting a scene with both warm and cold color lights is useful to create contrast within the image. I also put some textures in the lights to have add imperfections and make the lighting look more natural.

Lighting set-up

Lighting set-up

Lighting settings

Lighting settings

Step 06: Compositing

I rendered the image and front elements separately. I was easiest for me to blur the front elements in compositing because their place in the scene was not logical so I couldn't have the wanted effect by controlling the blur with the field distance of the camera. Apart from that I didn't want to have to modify the render a lot in compositing so I tried to render the image properly.

Finally in compositing, I blurred the front elements, I modified the contrast a little bit, and I added a vignette to add some structure to the image. The vignette allowed me to reinforce the story I wanted to tell with this image. I did this with Krita (free to download) which is a very good alternative to Photoshop and can run on Linux. I would like to thank Claire, Romain, Rachid and Loris who helped me a lot with theirs critiques and advice.

Separately rendered elements and vignette

Separately rendered elements and vignette

The final piece

The final piece

Related links

To see more of Vincent's work check out his website
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