MiguelDiaz AV3411 Professional Studio Project - Garage

 Substance Designer  I found this program very interesting and i wanted to learn how to use it and its workflow with other software.  I experimented with Designer before, watching other videos on YouTube, but this time i wanted to further improve on it. I bought a short course from Domestika, in which an artist explained his workflow on how to make textures from real references. He explained every detail and gave tips and tricks on how to create the Causeway of Giants using Designer. After this he also demonstrated how to take portfolio renders using Marmoset Toolbag and how to showcase them in Artstation. Following a course like this was good. He spoke slow and clear and explained multiple things. The bad thing about following a course was that i had multiple questions. For example, what was the use of certain nodes and why we used one and not the other. I was still able to learn a lot about the software and its workflow. I followed this course by Carlos Perfume. We crea...

 Baking textures Generator Before importing the 3d assets into Substance Painter, i had to ''explode'' them. This is when you separate each part away from each other. Substance painter or any other software used for baking textures, create a bounding box around the mesh. If they are too close or the bounding box intersect each other, you will project mesh from other objects into each other. After i separate the multiple parts, i also had to make sure that each part of the low shared the same coordinates as the high poly parts, so the bounding box surrounds both of them and the textures project accordingly.  Substance Painter There are a few settings that you have to change in order to get the best baking You can bake your textures 2 different ways. By naming convention: You have to name all the low poly assets with _low and all the high poly with _high. This is supposed to give you better results, however i never notice the difference. You can also bake by keeping the s...

Optimization   Here, i reduced the low polygon props even more, creating triangles where possible to reduce the number of vertices. In the image, on the left you can see a more optimized version of the generator and on the right a higher detailed with the floatters. In the case of the wood plank, once i had a low and a high poly version in Zbrush, i imported the lower version into Maya. Here i reduced the polycount a little more, still making sure it held the silhouette and i didnt get any bad artefacts and edges. I could have optimized it more, reducing the center edges and leaving the ones that held the rounded areas. Uving was very straight forwards.  I placed the seams in areas where they wouldnt be as visible and hard areas like edges. I also made sure some of the uv islands were as straight as possible to make it easy when texturing. Something important that i always try to remember to do is, to unfold all islands and when i lay them out, to make sure they're not to...

I used 2 different ways to create higher and more detailed versions of different assets.  Floating meshes. I duplicated the low poly version and continued to add more details and other assets. In the case of the generator i added floaters, which are assets that will be part of the high poly version and baked onto the low poly version.  I assigned a colour to each asset, later on i will be able to select and texture each specific colour individually. Zbrush I created wood planks that will add as barriers for the windows.  I first created a regular plank with enough subdivisions which i then imported into zbrush. In Zbrush i added as much detail as i wanted, making it look like used wood. Keeping in mind that this is not going to be very close to the camera so i dont have to spend too much time on micro details. When i finished adding details, i duplicated the mesh and hid it. Using the decimation master i was able to reduce the poly count to an amount that allowed me to ma...

 Going back to the block out i decided to start with the table where the sword would be displayed. Out of the many references that i found, i went for this table with lots of cabinets. mtneer_man (December 2010) Using it as reference and having pureref on top i was able to model it, changing a few things from it and moving things the way i wanted it to look. To make this better next time i would go on amazon or ikea and download the images they have from different angles to make the model more accurate. This generator for example. I went to the website where they were selling it and downloaded the images, they had advertised and its product specifications. I added them to pure ref and the front image i also added it to maya. Chefstreet (2023) Chefstreet (2023) In maya using the perspective cameras i adjusted the low poly version to match the image as much as possible. To help me avoid creating assets too big or too small, i downloaded a body mesh that had the height of 180cm. After...

  Blockout Using primal polygon shapes i created this block out version. This helped me know where i wanted the sword to be and other props, like tables doors and windows.  I only blocked out the biggest props as they would take most of the space.  As i went along i added more props to make the scene look fuller, but this was good starting point for me because it gave me the general look i wanted.

Concept I didnt have a concept so I put together a few images that i used to guide me.  I went back to all of them to take a look at the objects that they have so i can add them to my scene as well. Libre shot (2023)  Dengo (2023) m balabababa (2023) Roe K. (September 2012) Friedman D. (November 2015)

To have knowledge of how the games industry works was vital for this project. Knowing what goes first and last helped me to stay organized as i was able to follow a path. Once i figured a list of the things that i have to do i was able to shuffle in and out, working in different things at the same time or doing research and exploring it without losing sight of the main goal or losing track of where i was.  Boshev D. (2022) Workflow In the games industry, they use multiple game engines to create their games such as Unreal Engine for games like Fallout and Skyrim. Unity for Assassins Creed and League of Legends. And also, CryEngine for games like Crysis and Homefront. I focused on Unreal, so my workflow and research were based around it. Most studios have the same workflow or at least they are similar to each other but having a general understanding is key. Story First i came up with the idea of creating a garage environment for the mechanical sword that i made. I know i wanted it to...

 For this project, one of my goals was to learn how to use Unreal Engine, Substance Designer and the workflow of an environment artist.  I have used Unreal Engine before for my Sci-fi scene, but i wanted to learn more about it as it is very interesting, and you can get fast results and interact with them in real time. I love seeing artists' work done in substance designer. It can be stylized or realistic, i love how procedural and nondestructive it can be. On Artstation, i follow a lot of material artist that inspired me to learn the program. Paquiet E. (2022) Agieiev R. (2020) I wanted to learn how artist integrate substance designer to their workflow and how i can do the same. I also noticed you can add the materials you create, in substance painter and use it on whatever you're texturing.  As i would love to become an environment artist, i searched how i can become one, what tools, software i need to use and learn, and what techniques i can learn to make this possible....

References - Props From the images of the garage environments, I was able to collect a series of ideas to create props from. In this image there are multiple little assets that I could model and integrate to my scene. For example, the spray cans, the wrenches and pliers and the little metal assets that hold them into place.  GANUCHAUD H. (2022) For a better view and higher resolution, I also looked for individual tools and other objects that I can recreate. The more images I find with lots of props the more I can create and add to my scene. However, I only chose specific ones that contribute to the look I wanted. As this would be a home garage not an actual garage I didnt look for too many garage tools.