Crafting a Chinese Bamboo Steamer for Cooking Dumplings in 3D

Introduction

Hello everyone! My name is Finogentov Bogdan, I am from Yekaterinburg, and I am 29 years old. I started studying computer graphics in 2022. I studied law at university but realized I didn’t want to pursue a career in this field. I worked part-time as a driver and a waiter. I’ve always loved Disney and Pixar cartoons, and I decided I wanted to try my hand at creating computer graphics. So, I came into 3D without any prior experience and loved it from the first moment.

I wanted to turn this into my profession, so I started studying 3D graphics for 8-10 hours a day. Currently, I work for a mobile game development studio.

I wanted to improve my sculpting and texturing skills. There aren’t many works with bamboo steamers on ArtStation, and the concept also included dough, which seemed interesting to me. I found a lot of references on the Internet and decided that it could be a cool art.

Getting Started

I started with blocking the steamer in Blender. I was looking for interesting silhouettes. The steamer is divided into levels, and I added a little bit of carelessness.

Modeling

Next, I started modeling the lid of the steamer. Perhaps it could have been done more easily using modifiers, but I did it myself, creating several strips and braiding them by moving polygons.

After that, I performed a Boolean subtraction operation to get rid of the excess.

I got a base, with which I could proceed to sculpting.

Before exporting to ZBrush, I created a UV for my model. I arranged the UV-islands on the bamboo texture, so that later in ZBrush, I could create an alpha from this texture and a mask to generate basic noise on the bamboo cylinders.

Then, I loaded my model into ZBrush.

I used the bamboo texture I applied in Blender as an alpha for ZBrush. I had to invert the texture vertically to make it display correctly. I increased the subdivision levels to make the topology smoother and used the layer function to control the deformation.

I used the mask-by-alpha function to get a mask based on the UVs I created in Blender. Then, I utilized the Inflate function to create base noise and controlled its intensity with the Layers function.

I started working on the details and silhouette of the steamer. I used many layers so that I could control damage or remove it using the Morph Target function.

I added a logo with the word “spinach” and fabric on the sticks to make the composition more interesting and add some artistic flair.

The fabric was created in Marvelous Designer because it’s fun.

Baozi (dumplings) were sculpted in ZBrush using references as a guide. Initially, they looked sloppy, but after 5-6 attempts, they began to look better. I used the DynaMesh function. The main brushes used were Standard and Pinch.

The damage on the sticks also has an interesting silhouette – it is very important!

Texturing

Once I finished the high-poly model, I started making UV in Blender and baking maps in Substance 3D Painter. Then, I proceeded to texturing – this is the most interesting and difficult part!

Firstly, I took the bamboo texture and, using the Anchor function, extracted the height and roughness from the base color of the bamboo texture.

Next, I will attach several videos showing the texturing process. It was a long process of analyzing references, finding interesting features to implement it in my model.

Lighting & Rendering

The rendering was done in Blender with Cycles. For the main lighting, I used an HDRI map from Substance 3D Painter (Panorama). I added three point lights and a contour light from behind.

I’m not very good at lighting setups and presenting my work. I try to highlight the interesting moments of the model I worked on and capture the reflections of roughness. I need to work on this and improve my skills.

I used SSS functions to give the dough a more realistic look. I split the dough into two materials. The first material covered 90% of the baozi model, and the second material was assigned only to the tips of the dough. The materials were identical except for the SSS values. I will attach screenshots of the SSS values.

I do post-processing in Photoshop. Standard processing – adjusting white balance and adding a little detail. You can also increase saturation and contrast.

I don’t consider myself a professional in this, so I process it based on my taste. I create several samples (5-10), show them to friends and family, and together, we choose the best option.

Conclusion

I want to express my immense gratitude to my mentor and friend, Maxim Safonov, Lead 3D Artist at XMFloat Studio. The project took about three months, and I worked on it during my free time and on weekends. During this time, Maxim helped me with valuable advice, shared his experience with me. He is a true iron man.

Bogdan Finogentov, 3D Artist