Tam Le - Environment Art and Texturing | Rookies 2024 Submission

Environment Art and Texturing Demo Reel

1. Pixar's Luca Fan Art -  Massimo's Bedroom 

For this project, I chose Giulia's dad, Massimo, from Pixar's animated film "Luca" as the subject to create a bedroom. We don't get to see much of Giulia's dad in the movie, so I thought it would be fun to imagine what his bedroom would look like! I came up with the concept sketches myself and tried to take his job (fisherman) and his personality into consideration.
I was responsible for the original design of the room and some props, modeling, texturing, look dev, lighting, and compositing. I would like to thank Lorena Da Silva for her extensive feedback that motivated me to constantly improve on this project and Haeun Kwon for teaching me how to do compositing in Nuke! 
The background image outside of the window is a screenshot from the movie LUCA, and the photos in the picture frames are from LUCA's art book.

Software: Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, rendered in Arnold, Nuke.

Comped in Nuke - Wireframe View - Maya Viewport - My original concepts

AOVs Breakdown: Diffuse - Specular - Subsurface Scattering - Transmission - Ambient Occlusion 

How it started vs. how it is going!

Photoshop was a great help to my texturing process. I used it to create a bunch of text alphas with different fonts that Substance Painter didn't have.

For the tree outside of the window, I created a tree bark material in Substance Designer to mimic the tree bark texture that exists in the movie.

2. A Girl with an Apple on Her Head

I recently picked up this project from where I left off last summer! I wanted to challenge myself with a realistic portrait referencing a photo shoot with the model Serena Motola. I wanted to capture the vibe of her makeup, hair, and the atmosphere of her photo shoot. Although there is still so much room to grow, I'm very proud of my first attempt at realistic portrait, skin shading, and XGen.
I was responsible for modeling, sculpting, texturing, lookdev, and lighting.

Software: ZBrush, Maya, Marvelous Designer, Substance Painter, rendered in Arnold, Nuke.

Comped and Color Correct in Nuke - Raw Render - Clay Render with Displacement - Wireframe View with no Displacement

Other lighting tests

Overview of my workflow:
I started out in ZBrush, blocking the bust, hair, clothes, and apple. After polishing the bust, I imported the mesh into Maya to retopo with quad draw and brought it back into ZBrush for further details. Next, I imported the bust into Marvelous Designer to create the turtlenecks and hoodies. Then, they got brought back into Maya for auto-retoplologize and imported into ZBrush for further details and adjusting areas with overlap meshes. I used ZBrush's GoZ tool to constantly check how the models look inside the Maya scene and also to work on the UVs in Maya.

While working in Substance Painter, I frequently used Project Configuration to update my meshes whenever I changed the sculpt in ZBrush to match with reference better. As this was my first time trying to match a sculpt closely to a reference, I had to return to ZBrush multiple times to adjust details in the look development stage.

For the turtleneck, I combined the albedo and normal map of a Megascan's material with the maps I made in Painter to further enhance the fiber detail in the final render without adding too much information to the displacement map in Painter. 

Lastly, I attempt to recreate the messy hair with XGen to match the reference.

First pass vs. Final pass! I'm very proud of how much I have learned through this project!

3. Cozy Kitchen - Unreal Engine 5 Environment

This project is inspired by all the cute little kitchen photos that I have collected in my Pinterest board and the wonderful smell of a sunny side up for breakfast!

This project was a great opportunity for me to dive deeper into Unreal Engine 5 as well as Substance Designer. I was responsible for all aspects except for the plants, turmeric, garlic, chopping board, and squash. I utilized Quixel Megascans' wood, plasters, tiles, and imperfection maps and learned how to create vertex painting materials and custom dirt decals. I also got to try out Unreal Engine 5's Niagara system for the first time to create the fire and steam effects!

Software: Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Unreal Engine 5, After Effects.

Diffuse - Roughness - Detail Lighting

I made a custom dirt decal in UE5 to add extra dirt splashes and coffee powder to the scene. It was a great way to utilize Quixel Megascans' Imperfection maps to add more detail to the scene. Check out the video to see the demo!

For the wall and green splash tiles, I modified the Megascans' default master material to create a vertex painting material with parameters to control the amount of dirt.

4. Coffee Machine

This was the first asset that I created in the "Cozy Kitchen" project and I had a lot of fun learning hard surface modeling and look development for this project with Arnold. I aimed to show how well-loved this coffee machine is with just an appropriate amount of imperfection and dirt.
Sticker designs belong to RiceClubCo and PinkSundayArt.

Software: Maya, ZBrush, Photoshop, Substance Painter, rendered in Arnold.

I drew a tileable pattern in Photoshop to match with my reference and used it as a mask in Substance Painter.

5. Substance Designer Materials for Persimmon Red - Thesis Short Film

This is my Thesis short film that I co-directed with Alice Yoon. Please check out our Persimmon Red's Rookies 2024 entry here!

For this project, I was responsible for coming up with the initial story with Alice Yoon, setting up the PreVis, some environment modeling, texturing, lookdev, set-dressing, shot 5 lighting, compositing, and managing our Perforce (P4V) depot.
Additionally, I created the PCG set-ups that we used for plant placements throughout the town and pond area. I also created different wall textures and set up the vertex painting material for all walls and grounds.

Software I used: Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Unreal Engine 5, Perforce, Quixel Megascans, Nuke, and After Effects.

Substance Designer Materials

For the plaster materials, I created one main set-up then added in many masks to quickly create many variations of the same plaster material. These plasters were then used for vertex painting off all walls across the whole town.

Areas marked in yellow are the ones with variations of masks.

A few variations of plaster materials.

Assets that I was responsible for texturing and look dev inside UE5

Modular pieces that I was responsible for modeling, sculpting, texturing, and creating vertex painting materials. The door and wooden window were textured by Kaiya Harin Lee, the jade window was modeled by Jonah Hausmann, textured by Alice Yoon.

Thank you so much for checking out my entry! If you enjoy my work and would like to connect with me, please check out my Instagram, LinkedIn, and ArtStation! Have a wonderful day!