Fender 1950 Esquire Super Heavy Relic Aged Nocaster Blonde - Digital Twin

[Sgab]

Hello everyone,
I'd like to share my latest project, developed for university courses and presented at the 3DMilan event.
It was created as a teaching tool for photomodeling techniques at the Master MADI IUAV (Venice) and AANT Academy (Rome).
The subject is my Fender Esquire Custom Shop guitar, and the goal was to recreate the relic finish on the body in order to map the wear and aging over time.
The process began with a photogrammetry scan. The model was then refined using 3DF Zephyr for reconstruction, and 3ds Max, ZBrush, and Substance Painter for retopology, texturing, and shading.
The images were inspired by Cesco’s Corner Guitars, an Italian company known for its beautiful vintage instruments.
All renders were created with 3ds Max and Corona render.
A Feedback, tips, and suggestions are more than welcome!

Here the artstation page with some steps of the process:

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/XJEDvn

Bye

IG: Sgab_Viz

[TomG]

Inevitable that I was going to comment on this one :) Amazing work on texturing, but also modeling and lighting. Also, congratulations on owning such a lovely guitar!

[Sgab]

Hello Mr. Grimes,
I was pretty sure you'd be the first to comment :).
Thank you so much for the kind words.
It would be a dream if one day I had the opportunity to work on a real vintage guitar instead of a reissue.
By the way, it sounds really good!

[TomG]

You are welcome, all the words are well-deserved :) On the guitar, arguably a reissue especially from the Custom Shop could well be better than an original in terms of sound and playability, it might not have the "history" but then you can't really hear history (I would say, though I guess in the guitar community there are plenty who would argue hahaha, let's start talking about tonewood :) ).

[Sgab]

I completely see your point, the playability is probably better on Custom Shop models, but in my opinion, not on the reissues.
This Esquire, for example, has the same specifications as the original — it doesn't even have a truss rod, and the neck feels like a baseball bat ahahah :).
To be honest, I think Fender's goal here isn't to make the most playable guitar, but to faithfully recreate a dream instrument from the 1950s.
For some people, the guitar is a collectible dream object that just happens to be playable. :)