Polar II

[3D Art Test]

Concept & Design

For this art test I set out to make a 3D environment that was built from the ground up by myself. I did not use any free or default tools, textures, materials, etc. in order to create any aspects of this project. This project utilizes these programs:

Krita -- Digital Drawing
Maya -- 3D Modeling & UV Editing
Substance Painter -- Texturing & Baking
Photoshop -- Digital Drawing, Editing, & Effects
Unreal Engine 5 -- Game Engine & Rendering

The rocket was designed to be dismantled realistically, based off the designs of Nasa's Saturn V Rocket and USSR's Vostok Spacecraft. In the future I plan to create an animation of the different stages of the rocket decoupling as it enters the orbit of Earth.

All lore and design concepts presented here are my original thoughts and would be considered an intellectual property.

Zoom In & Read Here

This rocket is inspired heavily by real life technology to add a sense of realism, but the full concept is fictional. Instead of being powered by fuel like on Earth, this rocket is fueled by the reaction of a substance called Vidact. This is the result of a new fundamental force I conceptualize called Valyk, a force that can only be detected through living organisms.

For a long time this force was not understood scientifically, instead seen as a magical power. Without going to deep into the lore, Vidact is a substance that helps create generational memory, like DNA of the mind. An unbalanced amount of Vidact can be created whenever a living organism is in stasis/a non-conscious state. Some organism produce more of this than others. The Koimome fish for example can produce an extreme amount when two are paired together. Scientists and engineers have exploited this behavior to better technology.

Valyk is a mostly understood concept now, no longer seen as magic, but as simple science. The ethics of using such a concept for technological development could be a great plot point in a story using this IP.

There is an unfortunate downside to the abuse of this power. Veomosis, a side-effect substance is created in the process of converting Vidact into energy. Living organisms have evolved to naturally filter this substance, but in the case of new technology Veomosis has become a huge contaminant. This rust-like, golden corrosion spreads quickly across solid and liquid substances and will degrade materials. The decoupling stages of the Polar II rocket exists primarily for this reason. The corrosion is so bad that the engines and surrounding hull need to be removed as to not harm the primary spacecraft and its passengers.

Unreal Screenshots

Texturing

Here are some of the textures/patterns/alphas I made in Photoshop. Many of them are quite simple and versatile. I set out to make tools that I can alter easily inside of Substance Painter and or use repeatedly without it being obvious.

The tiled textures I used often were also entirely custom made in Photoshop. I created a few individual bush alphas using basic tools. I then used these brushes in different ways to create different looking patterns that could be tiled perfectly. Some of these are for general noise, which would set it apart from generating perlin noise in Substance. Others are for dirt, scratches, rust, etc.

Modeling

To optimize how much I would need to texture on the mesh, I made sure only to model essential objects that could then be copied and pasted without being obvious. I effectively wanted to make a asset pack that I could then use to build the rocket again in Unreal Engine.

Here you can see the material preparation for Substance. The hardest aspect of this project was organizing hundreds of objects into the most efficient set of UV maps for the highest quality resolutions vs. storage. I came up with a list of specific repeating materials that I would make in Substance and copy/modify across multiple objects.

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