Surfbot (2023)
In 2013, I created a 3D model and render of an old, tired robot lazily watching TV after a long day of work. It was based on a sketch I'd made for an illustration set I'd done previously, and was one of my first big projects in Blender. It would eventually help me land a job working on Divide (PC/PS3), but I was still quite a novice with Blender at the time, and I made a lot of bad decisions and compromises because of that.
My original sketch of the TV-watching robot
In 2023, after 10+ years of using Blender professionally, I decided to go back to that scene and see how much I could improve it. I ended up remaking almost everything in the scene, including an entirely new (and rigged) robot, reworked procedural materials, and many changes to the scene to set a better mood.
My original render of the robot watching TV, made in 2013
The original model was posed by making each part a separate object, parenting one to the other in logical order, and making sure each had its origin set to the proper pivot point for that part. It was time-consuming and didn't work well, but I didn't know how to do any better in 2013.
For the 2023 version, I the newly remade robot was rigged to an armature, allowing me to easily pose it in a much more dynamic way.
Some screenshots of the new, un-posed robot
It was fun and exciting to update the robot so much, but the part I was probably most excited about was re-making the materials, to utilize procedural effects where possible and relieve the scene from its dependence on image-based textures.
The final scene still uses a few images to help mask some of the procedural stuff, but the images are mostly gone now, and the scene is so much better for it.
Here's a comparison of old and new node setups for the red painted material on the robot:
Look at all the nodes!
Suzanne never looked so good!
I didn't rearrange the scene much from the original, but I did make a better chair for the robot to sit in and add some more detail to the other peripheral objects. You can see them a lot better in this "clay" render:
A "clay" render of the new Surfbot scene
Overall, I've really happy with the improvements I was able to make to Surfbot. I feel like I was finally able to do my original concept justice!
