Environment Artist for Games

- Temple of the Radiant Dawn -

Greetings! The first work I want to present focuses on creating an architectural set for an ancient temple, lost in the Cambodian forest. For this reason, I focused my efforts on modeling and texturing the statues and the environment set, while generating all the foliage and most of the biome aspects using Megascan.

While the arch and the statue are entirely sculpted, for the Hydra, I decided to start with a 3D scan as the base of the model. Then, I sculpted all the details, deformations, and chipped edges to create a more realistic version of the model. I also took some models from the Quixel Abandoned Temple Collection that I found suited the mood.

I created the meshes entirely in ZBrush, UV-mapped them in Maya, and then textured them in Painter.

In the process, you can see that I changed my mind during execution. I made the "rookie" mistake of creating a wide and perhaps too generic PureRef board for this work, combining generic "forest temple references." This led me to have half the references as "Mayan" and the other half as "Cambodian" architecture, both of which have significant meanings of the sun in their religions. So, I decided to stick with the Cambodian architecture and reworked all the hero assets in the scene.

Thanks to Houdini, I also created a Houdini Digital Asset to speed up my workflow for the set dressing part. This is a simple tool that helped me populate my scene with other meshes such as bushes, plants, vines, and rocks. It has two modes: one is a simple grid that can be placed over the landscape, and the second can be attached to a mesh (it works really well with big meshes like rocks or packed level actors) and then scatter on the entire surfaces.

Functions explained in the video below:

The lighting was the hardest but also the most rewarding part. My initial idea was to create a sacred place where the Sun plays a key role as the main protagonist. However, I also wanted to evoke a sense of serenity and freshness in the scene, which can only be achieved with shadows and softly diffused light.

For these reasons, I made a hole in the statue's face to let the sun be the protagonist of the scene, allowing the light to pass through the shapes of the hole and the arch. At the same time, I aimed to achieve a sense of breeze with the soft light.

At the end i sitck with this light scenario and scultp the godrays in the scene using the rocks and foliage in between which at the end gave me the mood I was seeking for.

- Viking Outpost -

In this work, my idea was to create a ritual place where offerings to the gods could grant safe travel towards the sea.

In this project, my first in environment, my focus was to learn the entire pipeline of an Environment Artist, 

A huge thanks to Giovani Magana, my menthor, who helped me learn the entire pipeline of an Environment Artist, the important use of masks, the trim sheet workflow, how to create the main architecture and the optimiziation for game engines and the continuous feedback he gave me to achieve this project, as well as everyone who helped me with suggestions and ideas.

I used vertex painting and decals for all the imperfections and dirt on the building and created all the 3D models in Zbrush, UVs, and some retopology in Maya and Blender. The textures and masks were created with Substance Designer, 3D Painter, and Photoshop.

Process view of base color, detail lighting and roughness

Process view of props base color, roughness and lighting.

For making multiple variation with only one material, i decided to make a masked material for the shield.

I created the trims in Substance Designer, using different masks and stacking them together and texturing in SDesigner. Then I exported them to Maya, where I created custom shapes based on the trims. This method was useful for making multiple ornaments using just one material.

I also try to maintian a good texel density for a Third Person Character game, with a TD  around 5.12.

ROCKS

My process for creating the rocks involved creating a single rock and then using Painter to create different masks. From my main rock, I created three different UV sets, where in Painter I divided them by channel: green for occlusion and interior spots, blue for flat faces, red for edges, and the alpha channel for the top and bottom parts.

Then inside Unreal, from the single massive rock with boolean tool i made different shapes for creating the cliffs.

For the Material of the roof, i created a set of slates on Zbrush, to use their alpha mask on substance Designer and putting them together with a tile generator. 

These are the final materials i created for the entire project.

- Titalic Elven Walls -

This year, I also wanted to explore stylized materials and assets. 

My challenge was to design an interesting pattern suitable for a magical Elvish royal hall! Some friends suggested it could also be useful for armor, and I think that would be really cool!

The colors and mood were inspired by two of my favorite games, Warcraft and League of Legends. I also want to thank Cristóbal Vila for giving me the initial idea for the pattern through LinkedIn. His daily tips and tricks with Substance Designer are always very helpful!

- Olivetti M20 Typewriter -

In the end, I would like to share my latest WIP project.

Unfortunately, at the time I'm writing this, I've just completed the high poly model and am currently working on the low poly model and UV mapping, but still i'd love to share with you anyway my progress!

And also i want to thanks Dylan Abernethy for creating an incredible tutorial about the process of creating complex hard surface props for games.

Reference

Thank you for your time and patience! I hope you enjoyed my work as much as I enjoyed the creation journey!

I wish you all good luck and good work.

Cheers, rookies!

Marco