3D Art - Week 4 Portfolio Piece

India Environment

Week 4 - Final Turn In

This week, I continued to add extra pieces in Maya, like the walkway and railing. I continued to work with fixing UV's for the trim textures and exporting and re-importing into UE4. Then I continued to explore World Machine and picked up where I left off from Portfolio Piece 1. I created mountain terrain in WM using the terrain generator, with a fractal pattern called "Advanced Perlin" (most commonly used). I explain this in further detail in the "Research" Tab above.  

The standard template shows 3 boxes:  the GREEN boxes create terrain, then it puts them through various filters and processes (the BLUE box), then it exports the results of various processes into outputs (the RED boxes). Each terrain generator device creates an infinite fractal pattern. There are lots of different patterns you can use by tweaking the parameters of that green box called "Terrain Creation".

You can get better defined mountains or craters by using the left side "Shape Library" tools. Then voila! You get cool detailed sculpted mountains.

Once I exported the rar file, I had to create the textures. So I hand painted the green terrain and brought it into Substance Painter and created tileable textures. Then continued to add grime and dirt using decals. 

I looked for some dirt and grime images and found some that could work. Here is one of them in the blueprints, that shows the nodes that will allow to change Density. This was a huge help to control the tones.

This is it applied:

I had several challenges when exporting the terrain since the mesh is so large, and had to create parameters to fix the U and V tiling (thanks for your help Nick! :)

From here, I spent time adjusting textures and doing some set dressing for a sunset and warm scene. I played around with the lighting and had some help from Alberto Negron for capturing just the right sunset! 

Despite the many challenges throughout this project, I must say, I learned a lot! :) 

From creating trim sheets; to refining tileable textures in Substance Painter; to creating decals in UE4; creating Mountain terrain in World Machine and fixing TexCoordinates in the U and V tiling, and also understanding lighting a bit more! This was a fun project and personally rewarding to understand these crucial components for creating environments. 

Here is my final environment that despite some issues, I'm happy with :)

3D Art - Portfolio Piece - Wk 3

Portfolio Piece - India Environment

Week 3

This week I researched how to create trim sheets! Wow, did not anticipate the redious and long process of going back and forth with adjusting textures and UVs to line up with the trim sheet.

Here is my mockup trim sheet in Photoshop: 

Then I created a plane and brought in the image as a texture to the plane. This will be used as a template for lining up UVs in each section according to the separate textures. In this case, the top tileable textures going horizontally.

I started creating the main area, but then realized it had to be a tileable texture so it would be its own file. Next, I started on the horizontal textures for the Border trims on the buildings and the Burgundy terra cotta portions.

 

Continued to rearrange UVs and checking to see if the prints are aligning.

Then I made sure all meshes get the right textures applied in Maya. For the most part combining each building came in fine. But there were some that I had to detach and separate the portions that had different textures.

Finally after re-checking a thousand times, I exported my meshes and textures and built materials in UE4. I continued to go back and forth in Maya to adjust UVs, because they didn't all come in good at first. I will continue to work on the main tileable texture for the main portion, as well as setting up the landscaping and lighting as a final.

3D Art - Portfolio Piece 3 - Wk 2

Environment - India
Week 2

This week I continued to model the low poly building sin Maya, but had an issue with my laptop having a driver blackout...

3D Art - Portfolio Piece 3 - Week 1

Portfolio Piece 3 - Week 1 
Environment Piece - India

My schedule for this environment piece will be the following:7/15: Proportions and scale takem into consideration; most of the low poly modeled; UV as needed for duplicates7/22: Complete Low Poly and UV all parts; Begin High Poly7/29: Complete the High poly and First Bake. Start the texturing & Materials into UE4.8/1: Complete texturing/Materials & create Tilable textures for ground.

3D Art III - Week 4

Truck Side Assembly (Week 4 FINAL)

This week I modeled any missing pieces, and created the high poly for them. I re-baked in Zbrush and softened areas that needed it. Unfortunately, my high res crashed on me, but I was able to export the fbx in time. I did the Reconfiguration in Substance and then reimported the low poly and high res to bake again, while keeping all of my 8 layers of textures. Yay!  I created a lot of decals this week, and imported as Alphas into Substance.

Finally, brought it into Unreal and played with the lighting for several hours... 

All of my decals...

Then placed into Substance as Alpha's and png's dropped into the Base Color section for each layer of decals.

In Unreal Engine...

 

3D Art III - Week 3

Truck Side Assembly (Week 3)

This week I've modeled several new pieces, and created the high poly for them. The bake took several attempts, as the 8 layers were not baking through successfully and some of the layers had merged. Eek...So I then remembered the low poly fbx had to have all of the layers with different materials. It worked! So I was finally able to re-texture all my layers. I'm right on track for this week, and intend to have the painted decals and the final ready for next week included and brought into engine.

3D Art III - Wk 2 - Portfolio Piece 2

Truck Side Assembly

I had continued on to the high poly in Zbrush and texturing phase in Substance, but this week have gone back and modeled some of the missing pieces, like the screws and hoses in the front and back (see last image).