LogInJohn Melo shared how he paid tribute to his favorite SNES game using Cinema 4D and Redshift, focusing on how he created the translucent material for the console.
Inspiration
I wanted to show something that really spoke to me, and I love videogames, always have, since the first Nintendo system I had with my brother. I have some really cool memories of that. That's why I decided to use my skills as a 3D Artist and take the SNES with my favorite console game and show it in a cool, trendy way. I was inspired by Peter Tarka's recent render of a handheld console I saw online.
Everything was made with Cinema 4D and Redshift, then composited in After Effects.
Getting Started
I started modeling the SNES, and it was taking quite some time. I realized that what I really wanted to accentuate was the material and the lighting, so I went to Sketchfab and downloaded a free model from MamuteBionico. Although it was a good model, it had some proportion issues that I had to correct before moving on to the materials, and it only had the outside mesh of the console.
After I dealt with those issues, I had to separate the top and bottom parts and start building the interior. I looked online for various references of the SNES opened up, where you could see all the interior parts, the electronic board, and where the plastic cover had the slots for the screws.
Also, there were some really cool pictures of a transparent version of the SNES, which helped me a lot to see which parts would show from the outside and which parts would not. That way, I could optimize time by only modeling and creating the insides that were going to show in the final shot.
The Cartridge
After I created the board and everything else inside, I started working on the cartridge. For this one, I couldn't find a model that was good enough online, so I had to do it from scratch.
After looking online for a bit, I found some good-quality pictures of the cartridge I wanted to have in the scene, Donkey Kong Country. So, I used them as a reference, modeled the cartridge, and built the textures from it.
Materials
After I had all the elements I needed in the scene, I started working on the materials and lighting. I lit the scene with a simple three-light setup, with a global Dome Light to bring up the darkest parts a bit. The cartridge has some independent lights only affecting it so we could see the game's label better; otherwise, it would have been too dark.
The translucent material for the console proved to be a challenge because I was having issues with noise. I had to make several tests, tweaking the roughness value and the extra roughness value of the transmission until I reached a good enough quality without taking over 20 minutes per frame, which would be crazy because I was rendering at home and couldn't have the computer busy for days on end.
After fidgeting a lot with the values and the samples I got to a good enough compromise in the material. Which is a simple transmissive material with a GSG dust texture for the roughness, connected to a ramp to limit the values so I wouldn't have either too rough of a reflection, or too sharp. The transmission has a light purple color, so it gives that colored plastic feel to the material. I did some tests with the bump but, in the end, decided to remove it because it was interfering too much with the view of the console's insides.
Rendering
After I had rendered the whole sequence from Cinema 4D, I brought it to After Effects for some final compositing and effects. I made some color corrections and added a bit of chromatic aberration to it. For the audio, I went online and downloaded a great song from Artlist and some sound effects from Freesound. I made a small mix in Adobe Audition and put it all together.
You can see the finished piece here.