pliant lily
This scene started as a piece for my Unreal 5 Modular Environments course at CG Master Academy. Some of you have watched my progress in voice chat, but I've never made a public post about it. Helpful critique is welcome but note that a lot of this is from months ago.
A typical start for all projects, gather reference, organize assets, and once the ideas are formed, block out shapes.
That resulted in a lot of text and images:
What is the environment?:
Intrepid Library, a fantasy library in 1600’s English architectural style, current era is 1700’s England inspired fantasy
Concept sketches
Figuring out the modular breakdown
Grid paper is extremely helpful.
Period Reference Images
Color Palette
Neutral with primary colors for interest. I found other games and concepts that fit the color palette as examples to return to while I worked.
Off Topic Note: Environment artists modeling libraries love us some god rays. Though, after some introspection this may not be strictly limited to libraries.
What is the story behind the scene?:
The library was recently passed down from the wealthy benefactor to his daughter who will be taking over managing the affairs of their estate. The parents are alive. The owner is female and fairly young, but full of passion for building upon her merchant family’s legacy.
Details:
--
Hi, ACuppaTea, thank you for getting this far down.
__
What challenges do you see for yourself?:
Time management, I will focus on the large modular elements first, walls, floors, ceilings. Setting up shaders is something I will need extra time to research and learn.
What are your strengths as a 3D artist?:
My 2D art skills translate well to 3D, meaning I have a strong grasp on artistic and creative fundamentals which allows me to see when scenes are achieving their goal, and when they are not, why that is. I have 15 years of professional design and marketing experience, meaning I prioritize both problem solving and aesthetics when creating.
With the bones of it figured out, I blocked it out in Unreal 5.1.
I made the asset gym first, and then pieced together the mesh instances in UE. This works great because you can reimport from a new file later on with the updated mesh.
I used the third-party template to create my scene and so it was easy to hit play and record some video of Quinn walking around my block out. Very satisfying.
pliant lily
I also started a Trello board but did not end up using it. By the end I was putting everything into my Pinterest board https://www.pinterest.com/camillem1201/library/
I continued on with more scene block out, exporting the gray boxes to Maya for further refinement. Comparing the prior video to this you can see the basic materials being added in and the suggestions of books, gates, display cases, and railings.
https://youtu.be/9_TkuO8bRH8
I took too many screenshots. One of my biggest mistakes was not setting up cameras for my primary shots of interest from the beginning. I'm going to piece some of these together to show progress soon but it will be more challenging due to no consistent camera.
I added a cozy private solar (loft) for the family to study in.
When I exported my Unreal Meshes into Maya, because I had offset my pivots in the engine, it disrupted the pivots in Maya. As a result I had to reposition all of them. I have not offset pivots in Unreal since, instead I use the engine modeling tools to permanently move the pivot. This is important.
Here I start to create some high poly nanite meshes. The large frame was converted from a 3D printing model into a nanite model. There was much cutting involved as the frame was a fraction of the length and width. It also had a bit of internal geometry which needed to be removed.
The covered door, gates, railings, posts, case tables, and balusters were further refined in Maya. I brought the book placeholders in for some variety on the shelves.
pliant lily
I modeled and UV'd the light sconce on the wall and set up a rough trim sheet with material ID colors. You can see a trimsheet for wood and metal, two materials which appear often in my scene.
Note: As a designer it's tempting to pick a pleasing color scheme for your IDs, but this will make you sad. Pick vastly different colors, ideally ones that blind you when laid side by side, in this way Substance Painter will be sure to identify them properly.
As I work I ask myself, "What will make the most impact?" In this case the bookcases make up a large chunk of the screen space so I focused on modeling and UVing the bookcases before importing as nanite meshes. I'm unwrapping in RizomUV as it handles high poly meshes well.
I save an OBJ version to maintain the groups and constraints for Rizom, and an FBX to reimport into Maya. Maya's naming conventions made it challenging to reimport the FBX and my Rizom to Maya bridge was not working so the fastest way to solve this was to delete the original mesh in Maya and then reimport the new UVed FBX. Make sure not to triangulate on export for UVs.
pliant lily
Reply to Cherry: Set the Unreal editor's grid size to the size of your modular piece and turn on grid snapping. It will limit your movement to the size of your pieces.
You can also change scale and rotation quantization in the same manner.
pliant lily
Reply to Cherry: My foundation came from CGMA but there are many other sources of learning. I've grown through working on voice chat in Slackers, learn.unrealengine.com is the best place to start for UE, and FlippedNormals has some great tutorials.
If I could benefit from the GI Bill I'd definitely get a degree, they're valuable to have. At the same time I'd also plot my own learning online, thinking of the school courses as foundation for where to start.
pliant lily
This week I focused on textures but also continued modeling. I created ORM, Normal, and Base Color for my wood and metal trim sheets by modifying smart materials in Substance Painter. I also did a lighting pass and despite the UVs not being finished, added Megascans textures to the walls, molding, railing, carpet, carved door and floor to get an idea of where the scene was going. The books were converted from a static mesh to a blueprint which uses an array of meshes and ai generated designs to create the variety you're seeing now. I benefited greatly from @atomic venture Mippithedork's help here.
At this point there are still many handmade assets remaining to be modeled. Specifically the bay window shelves, doors for the shorter bookshelves, a brace/hinge mechanism to hold the gates up, and the glass room windows and doors. Basically I felt behind, but I was doing fine.
pliant lily
📚 📚 Crashtastic 📚 📚
It's about this time that Unreal started crashing on me.
Which fortunately I resolved with some troubleshooting https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/repeated-crashing-on-mesh-edit-in-ue-5-1-1/782888/5
pliant lily
I added a new material to the picture frame, including a photoedited family portrait from Midjourney. I also UV'd and added textures to many other models, including rafters, crown and floor molding. I widened the room to better fit a large glass room entrance, and also to add a bit of variety to a shotgun style building.
pliant lily
Ramping up for GDC '23 I was trying to cram as much into this scene as possible so I finished modeling the railing, rail post, gate, and added a stair railing to the unfinished stairs. I began improving the master material for my scene, adding in optional normal blending and detail mapping. You can see this set up on the sphere. I also added a bump offset to my Megascans floor pavers but I didn't have a great height map so the results weren't obvious and I tossed this later.
I also went back and added more to my Pinterest, trying to find assets to add story and flair to the scene. Particularly I was looking for wallpaper textures, and art.
Most of the images are from the period around which I pulled inspiration, and I sourced my favorites from public domain museum collections.
🎮 🎮 🎮 This intermission courtesy of GDC '23 🎮 🎮 🎮
So, there is thing you should know about called the GDC Conference Associate program. It's a bundle of amazing motivated game developers who maybe couldn't bankroll that 2k ticket to GDC, but still wanted to attend. So they applied and were the fortunate few paid to help create a great con. I am one of those devs, who applied, got rejected, and then by the grace of @radiant bear got pulled off the waitlist.
Applications are open now and this year is likely to be even more competitive. I'm going over my application essay with a fine toothed comb now. (okay, not right now, right now I'm creating this WIP post)
pliant lily
GDC week went by fast and I was back to Intrepid Library! I updated many meshes including adding locking doors to the more sensitive bookshelves, hanging pendant lights, updated stairs, a long cloth sim rug, and braces securing the sides of the bookshelf gates.
Here I created tileable wallpaper textures using Midjourney and adjusted the albedos in the shader as well as Photoshop. I instanced meshes for the walls/doors/ceiling of the glass entry hall in Maya to streamline creating this unique large asset and I started using Maya's layers to maintain order and ease of selection. This had trials associated with it which I will discuss later.
I modeled miscellaneous smaller details too like the metal carpet rods on the stairs, and imported a chandelier photoscan as a placeholder for a similarly sized celestial model.
pliant lily
I used Seamless Texture Checker to quickly see what the generated wallpaper patterns would look like when tiled. I also modified the family portrait to look more like England 1700s by asking Midjourney to use Hans Eworth, and Robert Peake the Elder as the style source. It resulted in some pretty weird things as usual, but I found two that worked well enough, widened and photoshopped them together.
pliant lily
pliant lily
I now needed to move from building the large modular shapes to pulling out the smaller forms. Pieces to make the space look alive. To that end it's draw over time.
I use Lightshot to do this quickly.
So I begin blocking out the smaller shapes.
pliant lily
I began to model the chair, bench, table, display case details, stool, scrolls and more.
pliant lily
The furniture came together fast because it's composed of four basic pieces. They are adjusted for variety but essentially the same topology that was used for the very first baluster and shelf.
pliant lily
I needed an environment in my portfolio to start actively applying for prop and environment art work at game studios. I could turn an impressive scene out quicker, if I reduced my scope, and so I did.
I researched smaller presentations of 'corners' of rooms and single props, deciding I would present a slice of the library floating in space with the floor crumbling away ala Dr. Strange.
pliant lily
So let's talk about Cinema 4d.
Yes, Cinema 4d. Remember when I said there were '[trials](#1162979905391296642 message)' in Maya associated with instancing/layers for my glassroom? The layers weren't removing meshes leading to difficulty in the visibility and grouping. The instances would work, but I could not change the material on a parent and have that reflect on the child. I tested, researched, and reached out to friends who're more skilled in the software for help* with limited success.
You can skip this bulleted section, it's a list of my rage.
I'm glad you ignored that. So to continue, on talking about Cinema 4d. It has a delightfully clear outliner, it's wicked fast for large scenes, procedural non-destructive creation, generators, parametric modeling, physics that just happen like Hermione Granger waved her magic wand, and instances with updating materials.
pliant lily
*Thank you @formal steeple, @hybrid smelt, Mippithedork, and Big_Monet for consistently helping me troubleshoot Maya and for providing an ear to my grumping.
With the new scope of the library limited to a fraction of the original, I removed all but the essentials; bookcases, gates, lights, doors, walls, roof, and floor.
pliant lily
Importantly, I picked one view to focus on for my portfolio and bookmarked it in Unreal. You can set that in the viewport dropdown.
With my shot locked in place I began adding in small furniture pieces to fill up the space and help me determine where a floor should begin and end.
Rough ideas are drawn on top.
To get the crumbling floor effect I desired, I needed to cut up the floor to match the Megascan tile pattern I was using. When faced with a new task I sometimes write a plan for it, breaking it down into stupid simple steps. Here is the one I made for the floor.
This is a technique I use also when I may be intimidated by the job ahead, or in ambiguous territory.
Here is the Procreate paintover showing the way I plan for the floor to fall apart.
I used procreate to draw where I wanted cuts on the texture as shown below, and then added that to a UV'd plane in Cinema 4d. From there I cut and modeled the pieces out, while the whole time preserving the UV's and ensuring I did not lose the tile texture.
I also made a few extra tiles to be used scattered or as needed.
Sped up the process of making the floor looked something like this.
pliant lily
Added in some of my props as well as some assetsfrom other locations which I'll list in depth soon.
pliant lily
Its around this point where I bring in a light blueprint which includes a flickering Niagara flame which for some reason was rendering with a black background where it should have been transparent. Troubleshooting that on voice chat was hilarious, in that for once everyone was stumped.
Me: "Plz halp"
VC: "It shouldn't do that."
Me: "I know!"
VC: "No, it REALLY shouldn't do that."
Fortunately I tested a hunch and when I turned off an experimental translucency rendering setting it fixed the whole issue.
pliant lily
In adding the candle emitter and point light now associated with the lanterns, the rest of the lighting needed an adjustment. I used light to bring out the space between the bookcases and cast a cozy warm glow.
I remove the roof because it isn't adding to the scene and is leading the eye off the piece. Then draw over in Lightshot to determine next shapes.
As I add more to the scene I'm working around the shot, making sure what I add works at other angles besides my primary. I bookmark another shot for my focus areas which you can see here with new Megascans foliage and props in.
pliant lily
I systematically went through the general shapes and gave them uses. I'd planned to use a flag or pendant for #2 but when that wouldn't work I did some quick sketches in Procreate.
I combined the best parts of the sketches creating a stack of exotic goods, haphazardly awaiting storage near the edge of the scene. The collapsing railing broke up the boring straight line that had previously composed the corner.
pliant lily
There were two other hard straight lines that needed breaking up in the piece. The first hard line on the right side of the scene I masked with a deformed curtain from the Sicka Mansion asset pack. On the left side a cloth covered mirror would provide a similar softening.
pliant lily
I modeled the piece from the same pieces as the other furniture and used an extruded spline, beveled with a custom profile, and a symmetry modifier to create the mirror in the middle.
pliant lily
If you look closely at the fabric on the mirror you can see a bit of a raincoat look going on. That's the post processing volume. I ran into this problem when I exported my scrolls, which, I did just prior to bringing in the mirror. They all looked oddly shiny.
It turned out that the Ambient Cubemap Intensity was too high. I'll show you what the difference looks like here.
pliant lily
The scrolls miraculously appeared in the scene above. That's because I lost track of them while writing all these work in progress updates. They're one of the more interesting bits though, and take advantage of non-destructive editing.
I researched scrolls a bit, and learned two heart breaking things. First, we aren't 100% sure how historical Roman, Greek, and Egyptian scrolls were constructed. Secondly, that much of what I know about Hypatia is potentially a children's book fabrication?
More importantly, here are the reference photos I found.
pliant lily
Rather than create one mesh, I built on one single scroll generator. The generator was made with a combination of modifiers and deformers which allows for wide amount of future variation. With the single scroll generator I made 15 total scrolls.
I added my new scrolls to the asset library seen on the left for future use. The material texturing the scrolls can be seen in the bottom left as well.
The resulting scrolls were used to create all of my arrangements.
Check out the scroll generator settings in this video, it's short but you get the idea.
pliant lily
To place the scrolls into the diamond shelves I used a tool called dynamic place. This simulates physics quickly in real time. See below for what I mean, it makes life much easier.
As an experiment, I set up soft body colliders for about 100 scrolls and dropped them to the ground before importing them into my scene. Beautiful.
pliant lily
I added in the scrolls and began adding the small props. Most of the museum scans needed texturing improvements, I made sure if needed they had a basecolor, normal, and/or ORM. Where scans looked too clean I added scratches, tarnish, and dirt in Substance Painter. Everything looks better with dirt and god rays. 😉
Fabric simulation began once all the props were placed. I added runners to the tops of the bookcases.
The rolled carpets were the scrolls scaled up. I ran a fabric simulation on some of them in C4D to get the wrinkles and creases of a rolled up rug. Their textures came from museum images of Persian rugs.
The rugs on the floor come from the Sicka Mansion pack on the Unreal Marketplace. They were intended for a flat surface but I wanted them to drape off the side so I ran a fabric simulation on them, and maintained the texture as it was except with some albedo and saturation adjustments in the shader.
One of the last things I did was replace the art on the walls. The frames came from the Sicka Mansion pack and the paintings were almost all one portrait of a man. I replaced those with public domain images from the 1600-1700s and my own digital paintings of unicorns and one fishy cat.
Before taking my final shots I did another lighting pass and adjusted camera settings to display the library at it's best. Here's the final results.
pliant lily
You can see the rest of the final images on my Artstation post. If you found my WIP helpful, please like or share my Intrepid Library scene, it's very helpful.
Again, thank you for the support I'm so glad I timidly asked voice chat for help one day.
Note: @wary widget this is basically the wallpaper I went with in the scene.
wary widget
*Note: <@248115058775687168> this is basically the wallpaper I went with in the ...
Shoulda sent you that scan 😄
analog vector
hybrid smelt
lighting is 👍🏻
pliant lily
Shoulda sent you that scan 😄
It worked out good regardless.
wary widget
pog
wary widget
Yes
chilly ginkgo
🤟
atomic venture
This is amazing, love to see the process and the in-depth breakdown of this piece
pliant lily
Next, I'm dropping the library into the jungle. I did a couple very rough mood concepts, the day and night below.
Building off the rough idea above I created more polished concepts, this time pulling in elements of story to explain why this library has landed so far from Kansas.
hybrid smelt
looks great 🙂
neat jolt
Such love of detail and creative execution. A true joy watching it come to live. Great job! May i ask if you studied or if you are selftaught? Regards
pliant lily
Such love of detail and creative execution. A true joy watching it come to live....
Thank you, I'm glad you've taken a look. Regarding my education, a bit of both. I have a BA in Design and am a classically trained 2d artist, however, my game art studies were heavily self driven. Three years ago I started asking for information interviews and attending networking events to learn more about the industry. At the recommendation of another artist who transitioned into games, I chose to take courses at CG Master Academy.
Group class structures, deadlines, and investing my 💰 kept me very motivated, making CGMA the foundation of my education.
Learn.unrealengine.com, GDC Vault, Conferences, FlippedNormals, my CGMA study group, as well as many of the Slackers/Sourcerers who hang out in voice chat also taught me so much. You're always welcome in VC if you dropped in there yet.
half swallow
It will looks so awesome!
neat jolt
Thank you, I'm glad you've taken a look. Regarding my education, a bit of both. ...
Very interesting to know, what path/story sits behind such planned creative execution, I appreciate you sharing these sources and experiences. No wonder it looks as good as it does!
Keep up the great work and thanks for the invite I might lurk in some time ^^
hybrid smelt
like this progress 🤩