I got to spend a good part of the weekend working on this project.  At this point I've completed my pipeline and everything going forward will work to improve any aspect that I feel might need it. 

A cello wood Substance designs I've been making.

I finished up the base meshes in Maya and cut the UV maps. I've now started fine tuning the forms and sculpting in ZBrush.

So far, the two parts that I've worked on have around 15 million polys in each subtool. I've never had more that 30 million in a single project file. If polys become problematic I'm planning to separate out the finalized subtools based on UDIMs, which will also help in exporting vector displacement maps.

I'm also considering that maybe sculpting this amount of detail could create unwanted overlapping when I start using wood materials in Substance. I think I can avoid this issue. Planning to do a quick test soon using the scroll mesh before I go further with this amount of detail.

UV sets:

Reference board:

More work in progress modeling done on the cello. At this point I've nearly finished all the base meshes for the primary parts. Once they are finished I'll cut their maps and arrange UV tiles. After all of this I'll begin final modeling and sculpting. There's a good amount of work needed in the curvature of the front and back belly. I'm planning to engrave the pegs and tailpiece with decoration which is why their models are dense. 

 I'm going to start including Sketchfab/Marmoset into my process, enjoy!

About 5 or 6 hour study so far. I'll be finishing this at some point. 

Reference:

I started this about a year ago. It'll live as a blog now, as I don't think it holds up against my newer work. Hopefully I'll get to finish this at some point. 

  

  

I've made a couple more cello parts, the bridge and the tuning pegs. 

References:

Had some time to continue modeling the base mesh cello parts.  

Started a cello base mesh today. I played cello extensively until I was about 18 years old, so this is partially a nostalgic project. The cello has very specific curvatures to each part. This modeling/sculpting precision, as well as rendering believable wood will be my priority challenges here. Because the best classical stringed instruments are hand carved, I'll be modeling as much as I can and then taking the models into ZBrush in hopes of replicating a hand carved feel. 

Primary Resource: James McKean

Reference Boards: