Tools and Guides for Hard-Surface Scene Production

1. Mesh Machine

Grab a cool mesh modeling add-on for Blender from machin3. The add-on comes with a handful of useful functions, including creating your custom plugs inside of the add-on.

Features:

• turn chamfers into fillets/bevels and back
• change the width of a chamfer or bevel
• create variable fillets and washouts
• unbevel and unchamfer to go back to a hard edge
• practically edit existing bevels
• resolve tricky geometry overlaps in cases where two bevels meet
• flatten polygons based on another polygon or flatten a polygon based on 3 vertices
• flatten along a normal or flatten along edges
• redirect chamfer flow by turning the corners
• convert triangular bevel corners into quad corners
• plug details into your mesh
• build your own plugs and create/buy/sell plug libraries
• cleanup booleans and create clean perimeter loops around their intersections
• stash backups and objects referenced by other tools, without cluttering the scene
• create, mirror, and symmetrize manipulate custom normals
• 28 Plugs included

2. Decal Machine

Work on surface detailing in a fast and easy way with a Blender add-on. Decal Machine goes with Trim Sheet, Atlas, and Baking support.

A few features:

• quick and precise raycast-based Decal insertion
• easily select Decals by parent object or by type
• automatic material matching, parenting, normal transfer
• automatically organize Decals in collections
• advanced Decal materials using emission, transparency, and transmission
• unlimited decal libraries + flexible asset loader layout
• create all four Decal types directly in blender, including batch creation of Info Decals from folders of images
• quickly adjust the height, object or UV rotation, panel width and type, and much more using the convenient modal adjust tool
• enforce default settings scene-wide and change them quickly in the DECALmachine panel in the sidebar

3. Industrial Hard Surface SUBD

Check out a cool kitbash from Evgeny Romanov. The pack includes 94 individual parts, .obj and .fbx files, and versions without ngons (ngons smooth more correctly), 3Ds max and Maya scenes with all geometry. 

To see how the kitbash works, take a look at this environment from Evgeny.

4. Game Asset Creation Guide

Dive into the production process of game assets with a tutorial from Armored Colony. The pack includes over 10 hours of video content recorded in real-time and goes with commentary in English.

Covered topics:

• Using SubD modeling to create the high-resolution model.
• Converting out the high poly model into a game-ready mesh.
• UV Mapping and getting the most out of our UV space.
• Baking normal maps with Substance Painter.
• Adding textures and decals with Substance Painter
• Using Marmoset Toolbag to render out Sci-Fi Crate in realtime.
• Making a holographic animation inside of Toolbag.