3D Week 16 Final Round Of Environment Scene

This is the final weeks progress of the overall final that the 3D artists had.  I of course instead of just doing an environment had to throw a creature in there so I made a Birch tree Ent.  This final round of development I painted all of my modeled assets in substance painter and made a substance designer material of dirt for the base.  Following the standard pipeline for 3D asset creation I exported those bake maps and created materials for them in UE4 as well as created vegetation cards for the scene.  After everything was imported it was all a matter of assembling this bad boy together in engine.  I built the scene and placed every asset, making tweaks to materials as needed.  Added lighting as well as my very own particle effects that I created for this environment!  All the little details came together to make this scene feel alive and I love it. This was an incredible project to work on and I can't wait to do more environments!

2D Week 15 Round 5 Final Delivery of Demo Level

This week I helped assist with general clean up and refinement of our level as well as some tech art issues we had with the VR tracking system.  I also modeled some proxy Art Deco buildings for our city skyline outside the arboretum. The art director and myself worked together to decide and build our presentation for the VR level test.  Below are the proxy models in Maya and then placed in the level with some basic materials on them.

3D Week 15 Environment Round 3

This round there was a bit of a new time constraint so it limited down the work I had originally intended to do.  So for this weeks round I finished all of my high res sculpts for the rock set, the hero asset Ent character, and the background birch tree trunks.  I specifically only sculpted the tree trunks of the birch trees because I will be using foliage cards I created to fill them out.  Below are my handy dandy high res sculpt images for the Birch Ent and the rock set.

After finishing all of the high res sculpts for the assets I resurfaced all of the models in Maya and created UV's for all of the assets as well.  Below are some images from the resurfacing process that show an improvement of my edge flow skills!

After resurfacing all of the high res sculpts and creating proper UV layouts for the assets I exported the FBX files and imported them into Substance Painter and created all of the bake maps for the rock set, the birch Ent, and the birch tree assets.  They are now setup to be painted in the next round and exported to create materials in UE4.  Here are some images of the assets in Substance Painter ready to go for the next round.

 And next week will be the final polish of the entire environment including the substance designer materials I will have made.

 

2D Week 14 Round 5

This week my team worked on polishing a few more small details to make the scene feel alive.  I assisted the technical artists with lighting and issues that arose in UE4. I also created some vegetation cards to help cover the ground with a more dense forestry appearance. I also coordinated with our lighting lead to help create the scene's new setup.

3D Week 14 Environment Round 2

This week I worked on furthering my high poly sculpt and getting it to a form that I thought was sufficient for the final posing.  Next round I will finish the final details and refinement of all models and begin resurfacing them.  I also encountered some issues with Zbrush that required me to recreate my Ent model from scratch but I also began creating the vegetation assets for my environment this round. Below is the current state of the Ent model and the vegetation I created applied to planes in Maya.  Time restraints have also required me to remove the background birch trees and replace them with the rock assets I have modeled.

3D Week 13 Round 1 Proxy Pass Ent Environment Model

This week I started my final project for the semester, which is to model a small portion of an environment with a tree as the focus asset of the scene.  Of course hearing this I decided to model a tree Ent version of my favorite type of tree, Birch!  So to start I created a reference document of all the imagery I would like to include for this project.  The trees will of course be birch trees and the Ent will also be birch wood.  The season is fall because of the incredible contrast of red and orange against the white bark of birch wood.  And the rocks will be mossy rounded forms that will have the moss later textured on.  Using these references I created the concept art for my Birch Ent character, it was important to have a solid concept for him before beginning modeling anything.

Here is the first pass of the scene that I created to just block out what I wanted from the model and the positioning of the Ent.  I decided to work entirely in Zbrush for the proxy modeling to practice working from large to medium to small details.

And here is the refined proxy pass after further sculpting some details in Zbrush! Obviously there is going to be much further refinement but I plan to utilize the nifty program substance designer to create tiling textures and bring this scene out further in the Unreal Engine.

Here is the first pass of the Rock set I will be using in the scene, we needed to have multiple scales so there is of course large, medium, small, and tiny rock size.  I will be using substance designer to create the mossy texture I want in the final work.

2D Week 13 Round 4

This week we focused on fixing some of the technical issues we had discovered and fleshed out the 3D environment a bit more.I modeled a simple fish model for one of the tech artists who was focused on rigging some of the flora and fauna for future animations.  I also adjusted the scale of the elevator models and the color materials in the vestibule to create some variation. Per our feedback I created a proxy model of the grand clock our art director designed for the vestibule wall so it didn't look as barren. The tech artists and myself worked out the navmesh issues to create the movement mechanic and worked with the environment lead to work out the new scale we will be working towards in the arboretum.
Here are some of the models rendered in Maya before being moved to UE4.

And here are the models after being imported to the UE4 level as well as some of the material modifications I made to the vestibule to create some visual variation in color.