3D Environment Art & Materials

A medieval environment scene project I made in Unreal Engine during my 3rd year at Breda University of Applied Sciences.

My initial inspiration was the interior of Chillon Castle in Switzerland, from which I took most of my reference objects. The rest was based on research into medieval times in order to create a realistic scene from that time period. While working on this assignment, I got to practice working better with real-life references and replicating them, as well as learning how to create more believable, realistic assets and textures. I also improved my lighting and composition skills.

I've always had a passion for creating materials in Substance Designer and this project gave me more opportunities to practice my skills.

These materials I then used and blended in Unreal Engine using vertex color painting and other world position/gradient effects to create variations in the walls and the floor.

Little breakdown of the scene: Wireframe, Unlit, Lighting only and the final result.

While working on this project,  I kept exploring variations in composition and lighting, and made iterations on the overall scene based on feedback given by my teachers and classmates.

I used Maya for modelling the assets, Substance Painter and Substance Designer for texturing, and Unreal Engine for assembling the final scene. There I focused on lighting and composition, which are crucial in creating believable environments. Unreal Engine's real-time capabilities allowed me to make adjustments on the fly without waiting for rendering.

All assets and textures were made by me, except for food and wood logs assets from Quixel Megascans.

Another small project of mine that was done in Substance Designer, my goal was to become more familiar with the software and explore various nodes to create interesting patterns.

One of my favorite projects was probably this one, a research into material creation inspired by Horizon Zero Dawn. The aim of my project was to research different texturing pipelines and use them to create a final benchmark.

 During my research, I was exploring different workflows using Substance Designer, Substance Painter, ZBrush, xNormal and Photoshop. The final benchmark scene was set up in Unreal Engine.

In addition to creating the textures, I took the project one step further by modeling the building in Maya because the city has its unique architecture style that was needed to make the textures really stand out and resemble the game reference.

I decided to also include this modular building piece.  It was inspired by Amalfi coast architecture but with elements of Assassin's Creed Odyssey game style. While building this piece, I focused on modularity, meaning, creating as few assets as possible and reusing them in the scene while making sure they all fit together properly. It required a lot of planning in advance and making necessary adjustments on the go but it taught me to think in a modular way, which will be very useful for future game industry projects. The foliage used in this project is from Megascans, all other elements were created by me.

All these projects had their own challenges I had to face and lessons I had to learn, but thanks to them I have been growing as a 3D artist and improving my skills every day and I can't wait to share my future projects with the world and to show my passion in 3D environment art.