This started as a level design project in which I needed a map of a place with several levels. It had to be a factory of some sort with several ways in and out as the project needed a sneaking mission. In the end it has 3 ways out of the area, one by a pipe leading out of the facility, one via the carriages and the elevator shaft.
Process
Project started with blocking the area inside Tinkercad. It is a software used primarily in 3D-printing and as such it is not feasible to use it to make the final product, but you can iterate something very quickly.
Tinkercad blocking process
After blocking I moved to Blender to do the actual modelling and some texturing, it was never meant to be a high quality piece, instead seen in isometric view.
After some tweaking and modelling some additional parts to the original design, I textured the part using a blended box mapping technique and a concept image was rendered.
Original render without details
Details were painted in Photoshop and some effects & color correction was made.
After the detail process, here's the concept art again:
Concept Art
Learning points:
Moving from Tinkercad to Blender is surprisingly easy, but all the shapes get triangulated and the normals are very odd. Texturing detail and grime in Photoshop is quite fast and I did the details and some editing in 2-3 hours.
I usually work with my home computer on these projects and my screen is very out of spec in regards to black-level, and I only found it out as this was shown at Assembly'24 Graphics competition and all the shadows were black.
Remember to check your art with a properly calibrated monitor!