Fisherman's Watch

The old fisherman looks at this pocket watch as he quietly waits for a fish to take the bait.

This prop was created for the monthly challenge of the Telegram group 3D Artist ESP, with the theme “Clock/Watch”. My proposal was to create a stylized pocket watch inspired in the sea, tush deciding to make a fisherman’s watch.

The part I enjoyed the most was esculpting the fishes of the cap, being something organic and with details. For the scales, I created a alpha in ZBrush, simplifying the process of all scales.

Once the high poly was ready I moved on to retopology, trying to reduce the polygons as much as possible without losing shapes. This was a challenge because of the circular shapes, which when I baked them gave small issues at the edges. So I used the technique of bake in a cylinder of higher polygon and then lower it progressively respecting the uvs seams, this bake was done using marmoset.

Moving on to the texturing part with Substance, I opted for pbr textures using a stylised smart material that I use as a base as it gives different colour variations using the bake maps as a guide. Although I later added some hand painting touches to give it some personality.
On the other hand, the numbers on the clock were originally flat, but I decided to give them a slight relief. On the inside of the lid I added a worn symbol. All of this using layers with height.

Finally, during the rendering process, I had to make various adjustments in roughness, metalness and opacity to get the right result for the glass, ensuring the visibility of the hands and numbers inside. So as not to lose the inside of the hands and numbers. In the end I opted to give a subtle touch of white on the edges and cracks.

Overall, I‘m very happy with the result, especially with the glass and zbrush sculpting.
I hope you like it!