I wanted to do a study on the 1970’s version of CBGB Club in NYC. I loved the textures and grime in all of the reference images I found. This is my first city street environment and it was definitely a challenge and a great learning experience. I modeled everything in Blender and used Quixel Mixer for materials. The Canopy is kind of the main actor and I sculpted that in ZBrush. I exported a low-poly FBX and used a Hi-Res map baked out of ZBrush for the Canopy texture. Quixel Mixer was great for easily creating materials. I went with 2K materials since I wasn’t going for photo-realism and wanted to speed things up. I found Quixel Bridge great for easily exporting materials directly to Blender as well. Originally I wanted to render in Cycles but it was going to take too long for this quick study. I used Eevee. Overall I’m happy with the results, I know I could have kept going but decided it was done and now on to the next. Working my way in Unreal engine is the end goal.
Super brief history on CBGB. CBGB was a club opened by Hilly Krystal (RIP) back in 1973. It was situated directly below a notorious flop house, “The Palace Hotel” in the Bowery of New York City. CBGB stood for “Country, Blue Grass and Blues”. Nobody really knows what “OMFUG” stands for. Ironically CBGBs became the birthplace of American Punk rock and also the starting point for many of the greatest (or most iconic) bands and acts of the 70’s and 80’s. As a kid in the 80’s I was heavily into punk rock and saw many shows in LA and SF but always wished I could have seen a show at the CBGB.