Asset & Scene Creation

Despite the sometime arduous nature of the planning phase, I’ve come to learn the necessity it has in long form projects. It is a strong foundation that determines how high your building can go, or in this case, how great my final design will be.

Pre-production in this assignment was no different going through two iterations as my understanding of the goals improved along with the skills I wanted to develop through this process. 

The concept sketches were to really cement this location as a ritual room with a supernatural feeling. The idol sits in front of a massive stone carving of a full body idol with a shimmering gold veins traveling through it. In front would be the ritual table where the sacrifice would take place and bring the forsaken deity into the real world. 

One thing I wasn’t sure about when it came to modeling this idol was how to create the nose in a way where the topology would be clean. Before making the model in Maya, I experimented in Blender due to its quick modeling tools. As expected, the model started to warp at the top of the nose when I started adding subdivisions. This showed me that simply extruding the nose from the head was not very effective. 

I eventually found a small tweak I could make to he topology to retain a smooth edge flow around the entire nose and allow for subdivisions that don’t warp the nose in undesirable ways. 

I’m really glad I came across the multi-faced stone head in my reference research as it’s just so damn eye-catching. My concept sketches are more for me to understand the detailed shape of the head as the face curves around it. The material explorations made me steer away from gold and take on a more natural carved wood look. 

A Happy Balance

I’m very happy with this new direction as it crosses off the concerns I had with the last plan: 

• It’s a more challenging model to create that also has a large margin of error as it is based off non-realistic human proportions

• The new design is incredibly interesting to look at

• No unnecessary sauce surrounding the scope 

It’s one thing to draw my vision as concept art and another to actually model it in Maya. Although I had experience poly modeling, I realized very quickly that I had no ideas on how to approach an organic face with features. This obstacle could have very well made this dead in the water.

That was until I remembered a tutorial I saw a while ago created by two senior character artists in the London film industry. Thanks to Henning Sanden and Morten Jaeger, I learned a method to make an attempt at the idol. 

Here are some techniques and tools I learned of in Maya to make this model: 

• Mirror Target halved the modeling time by only needing to create one side and then mirroring the mesh on the other

• Keeping Poly Count Low kept the mesh from become overwhelming

• Extrude is what let me create that “wire frame” of the face before filling everything in

• Maintain Edge Loop Flow was important to keep in mind as it makes for a cleaner mesh and helps keep track of how much geometry is needed to close all the gaps 

The process taught by Flipped Normals worked perfectly with the only shortcomings being my inexperience creating clean topology for faces.

My process was pretty much using my reference and concept art to mentally visualize how the head would be shaped in 3D space. This allowed me the freedom to model without the need for a perfectly rendered head on an image plane to trace. 

This is the stage where the idol really started taking form as sculpting elevated it to the final design I had in mind.

I had my hesitation going into Mudbox as I’ve never heard of the software and online discourse on it was scarce and relatively negative of the tool. It didn’t have the community and active development behind it like Blender did nor did it have a dominant place in the industry like ZBrush. However, I cannot deny the ease of use I felt when using the software. All the basic sculpting tools I needed were there and the layer system combined with the subdivision levels made sculpting very fun and productive. 

When sculpting, I was focused mainly on making the head shape more nuanced and interesting and adding distinct scarring. The head way way too symmetrical at level 0 and needed to look more like an organic hand-carved piece of wood. Using the grab, pinch, bulge, and flatten tools, the head shape was able to take form. Then using the knife tool at level 7, I carved out the scars across the face and the symbol on the forehead. I saw that exact symbol in my references a lot so I ended up adding it in.

I choose to omit the use of stencils to draw on textures on the high poly idol mesh because I had plans to generate that texture using Substance Painter and Substance Designer. Especially for wood and paint, I felt I could get good results without needing to sculpt it on. 

I want to bring special attention to this stage of production because I chose to execute my UV unwrapping using UDIMs. Through my research online, I came across this method used in the industry to apply high-fidelity materials onto a mesh without needing to create texture maps with massive resolutions. Although for something as simple as the idol, it’s not necessary. With that in mind, I wanted to still get some experience working with UDIMs seeing how important they are when working on highly-detailed models. 

The UDIM workflow ended pp being very easy with only needing to work with four UV shells. Because of this workflow, I prioritized the shell with the idol’s face to take up the most space on U1001. Since it’s front and center and the most detailed part of the mesh, it only makes sense. The back and neck got a good amount of space on U1002. The bottom of the idol just got whatever space was left since no one will see it when it’s placed on the alter. 

This stage of production was my most anticipated because I’d finally be able create and apply materials to the idol. Of course, textures bring so much life to an object and really make it exciting to look at. Not only was I excited about this, I was really looking forward to working in Substance Designer to get some experience creating procedural materials. 

I ended up choosing a nice dark walnut for my wood texture and it turned out pretty good. It gives me a sense of accomplishment exploring other tools not covered in the lectures to get a better understanding of 3D production as a whole. 

Definitely the highlight of the entire project as this was my first time working with Unreal Engine. Moe was right, I never want to create and render and environment in a 3D modeling software ever again. Over these 2 weeks, I loved working with Nanite and Lumen to create such as high fidelity scene in such little time. 

Early Screenshot of Scene Development

Late Screenshot of Scene Development

Through this trial and error, I also realized that the angle of your camera plays a big role in whether or not you can see the light rays. Something I’ll have to be consent about in A2. Along with the light ray, I also chose to make the light crack a more natural and interesting ”Y” shape to add more character to the scene. Making sure to keep the focus on the idol, I worked on the shape of light hitting the floor and walls.