Tech Art - 3D Generalist - Steven Minvielle

Hello everyone!

Before we begin, I would like to briefly introduce myself.

My name is Steven Minvielle, I am 27 years old, and I live in France.

I joined the creativity adventure in 2020 at a school called Créajeux.

I am currently doing an internship in Tech Art - Profiling/Optimization on Unreal Engine 5 (3 months, 22 April - 22 July) at Ocellus Studio in Lyon, France.

I am a 3D Generalist - Tech Artist.

Fan art, Mabo9317 on X (Twitter)

Mabo's Monster.

For this first piece, I wanted to go through the entire character pipeline and work in a way that makes the project Game Ready. 

In fact, all my projects are designed to be Game Ready. 

So, I went through Sculpting, Retopology, UV Mapping, Texturing, Rigging, (Ready for Animation), and Engine Integration.

Unreal Render

Render - 01 - PathTracing

Render - 02 - PathTracing

Render - Turnaround - PathTracing

Zbrush - Sculpting

For this character, I started the modeling directly in ZBrush.

I began with a human anatomy base before adding the protrusions on the body.

And for the brushes, I mainly used: Clay Buildup, DamStandard, Move, Smooth, MaskLasso.

Retopology

Texture

RIG

RIG - Without Wireframe

RIG - With Wireframe

Unreal Engine

I chose Unreal Engine for the rendering because I started using Unreal during my final year of training, and I want to continue learning more about this engine.

Unit, RTS game.

For this second project,

I created this character to integrate it into a student video game project on Unity, an RTS.

Like the first project, but with additional animation and, of course, a time constraint of about 2-3 months.

The character is based on concept art by Alexandre Bédèche.

Unreal Render

Sculpting - Zbrush

For the Sculpting, I worked in a similar way as with the Mabo's Monster project.

I first worked as if I were doing a human anatomy study, so I could later adapt it to the target design.

Then, I went back and forth between Maya and ZBrush for technical modeling reasons.

Retopology - Maya

Texture - Substance Painter

RIG - Maya

Animation

Unreal Engine

In the same vein as the Mabo Monster project, I chose Unreal Engine for my renders. 

In the future, I will likely use Unreal extensively, not necessarily for path tracing but mainly for real-time rendering (Lit) to achieve in-game results.

Unit In-Game, Unity Engine

For the in-game rendering, regarding my work, I only handled the human units and the robots existing in the game (not visible here), all created using concept art by Alexandre Bédèche.

Sandbox for learning skills in Unreal Engine 5

Unreal Render

Ceiling Randomize

Locker Randomize

Raycast Door Widget

Optimization / Unreal Insight

Render - Environment

Lighting Only

Detail Lighting

Lumen

Quad Overdraw

Shader Complexity

As for the last screenshot, there isn't much to note other than it serves to introduce my more textual section regarding optimization/Unreal Insight. ^^

But let's say that this part, Unreal Insight and all its debug views, are very recent topics that add another dimension to understanding and anticipating my projects. 

It is not clearly visual, but it can greatly enhance the way one approaches Game Ready work. Just knowing how a frame is rendered adds significant value.

- Having an idea of how the GPU and CPU communicate,

- Using commands like: stat unitgraph, stat gpu,

- Understanding the basic mistakes to avoid, such as paying attention to physics.

-  Blueprints with many instructions, depending on the needs of course.

-  Placing a lot of objects with many different materials, especially within the camera's view, generates a lot of draw calls for the CPU.

- Too many lights interacting with each other often requires using the light complexity view.

- Be mindful of what casts shadows because an object casting a shadow doubles its vertex/poly count as it needs to duplicate the mesh.

But let's say that all of this is currently the subject I'm working on during my internship while I'm making this post.

 It's all very recent, and I wanted to share that it's not just a technical thing for those doing profiling/tech art. It can really be a plus for any artist aiming for game-ready content. It's not indispensable, but it's definitely a value add =)

Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to look at my work, I appreciate it.

For my next project, I'm planning to dive back into character pipeline to refresh my skills. It's been a while since I've worked on something more artistic, as I've been focused on technical aspects in Unreal Engine. So, I'm thinking of following a tutorial by Seihoon Kang, a 3D Character Artist, focusing on stylized characters. ^^

Then, I plan to go through the entire Unreal Engine roadmap to catch up on the latest technologies and probably practice Control Rigging and animating directly in Unreal.

On a longer-term basis, I aim to revisit Houdini and learn Python to create scripts and tools to meet specific needs, especially considering time constraints.

If you'd like to see more of my work, you can check out my Artstation, particularly featuring turnaround videos of 3D models. I had some trouble with embedding portrait format videos here.

Here are the links:

Artstation:   https://www.artstation.com/steven_minvielle

LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/steven-minvielle/

Thank you, and feel free to contact me.