Alejandro created this finished piece of work of a 3D Rolleiflex from 1983, modelled, textured and rendered as a hero object for VFX using a workflow with UDIM in Maya (with UV layout), Substance Painter 2017.2 and Redshift. Here he explains how he did it all:

“I’m self-taught and recently working in Germany but as a matchmover. I created it in this ‘workstation’ so optimisation was quite important.”

“I did some research with Allegorithmic Documentation and tutorials, Redshift documentation and UDIMs information in general, with all that info I made a plan.”

“Knowing that every UDIM will be a different texture set in Substance made me think ahead in the UV process. Doing a proper UV layout taking into account the different materials was key to just drop some Fill layers and start working with every material individually, trying to made them as smart as possible. Maya 2018 helped A LOT on this, because UV is so fast now!”

Resolution
“I worked mostly in 2k, and I just used 4k for final decisions – it wasn’t that fast, but it was necessary to see final details. Optimisation was my best friend (and my laptop’s best friend). Here are some of the key things I did to improve speed:

– Using a Mid-Level resolution model
– Working in solo mode
– Hiding everything I don’t need or leaving everything in 1k to keep the feeling
– Using just the necesary amount of layers
– Using just the necesary maps for a PBR workflow
– Baking maps in 2k, and other small things”

Exporting
“When I was sure, I baked everything in 4k and exported the maps in 4k as well. I did my own preset for Redshift using the RGB channels to save the greyscale maps in a single image:”

“So I can have Metal, roughness and opacity maps in just one image.”

“Doing this, the setup in Maya was really easy, keeping in mind the correct Color Space for each map (RAW for everything except for the Color) and Substance already made the naming convention, which made the UDIM work perfectly.”

“I didn’t use the opacity map in the end, I made another shader for the Lenses to give them this coloured look that has been produced for the different kind of coating on the surface.”

“There are a few things that probably I would do different (like using .tx instead of .tiff) but I’m pretty happy with the overall workflow and the final render itself. Everything worked smoothly, the only drawback was to wait a few seconds for the 4k version in my laptop but the speed using procedural masks and materials is amazing.”