Next gen it up!

I finally picked upgraded from UDK and into UE4 the transition was rather simple and the new unreal feels very intuitive to me and more stable. I added some more props and textured the assets. I would like to retexture some of the assets that are in the scene that I already have a texture just to make use of Substance - unreal integration, which works seamlessly and makes texturing a breeze. It seems unreal now uses physically based rendering which looks great and uses 2 new maps (roughness and metallic) which is pretty intuitive. I find this way of texturing completely different from the photoshop workflow, perhaps a bit less artsy as it takes a lot of the painting by hand out of the equation however it is also a huge time-saver in the end because textures are procedurally based and once I create a certain type of material I can just easily reuse it with other items. I still need to experiment with substance more to take full advantage of its features (primarily wearing down materials) but this scene is a great way to get started because most of the textures are clean so I am essentially getting a solid foundation.

The first new item I created is this microscope, I went with the high poly workflow which took a little longer but I think in the end it was worth it.

I created new texture for the seating in the room, these 3 objects are sharing a texture/ substance.

Moving the scene to the new engine was pretty painless and I was glad that I initially was organized in the way I set it up. Its pretty alpha at this point but gives the overall feeling of what it will look like in the end. My goal is to get it as close to the concept as I can, I know in the game it was altered and brightened to give a different feel but I would like to retain the dark mess that is present in the original concept.

Finally I wanted to show a couple of substances that I created for this scene so far. They are the substance I use for seating (chairs and couch) and the substance that I use for the console screens that gives a brief overview of how the materials are set up. The modules into which the material is broken can essentially be reused, for example the brushed metal I used for the console I simply copy pasted into the chairs substance for the office chair.

Breaking down and rebuilding

I hit a bit of a stump motivation-wise after my last few attempts of getting a 3D artist job  didn't work out, I have to say I got discouraged and needed a break. I started working in QA as opposed to art due to the simple need to survive and the will to make it on my own. I needed to distance myself from 3D for some time as I felt like I was beating my head against a wall and needed a break to regain passion and motivation. I am finally working at Eidos Montreal which is where I always wanted to be as an environment artist, but being in QA there and seeing the amazing work that people there do is really quite motivating. Finally as I adapted I promised myself this new year that I am not going to give up and I will keep pushing and will keep my dream alive and so I resumed work with my Deus-Ex, Megan Reeds office piece, and the timing I would say was pretty good as there might be a position opening up soon, although I should have probably started pushing myself sooner, but this I think is the kick in the butt that I needed so much. Even though I haven't spent as much time in an environment production as desired for the position I sincerely hope that my efforts will not go unnoticed. I am challenging myself to put fourth all my effort after work and on weekends in order to Finnish up this piece in the next 2 weeks so I can give my application with more recent work. So the purpose of this post is to update on what I have done since the new year as I have promised myself to systematically keep working on this project.

 The only new things here are the two chairs and the couch, they are still untextured. This is probably the last screenshot I will make in UDK as my plan is to migrate this whole project into Unreal Engine 4, which I still need to learn in these two weeks. Since I am pretty comfortable with UDK I am hoping the transition will not be too difficult.


As part of my commitment to resume work I picked up myself a new piece of software (Substance Designer 4), and started learning it. I have to admit once I got used to it I find it really useful. It is a node based texturing application that acts as a middleman between 3d app, 2d app and the engine. The next screenshots will be presented in Substance Designer, I plan on using this software for the remainder of this project.

I wanted to limit myself to how many high-poly objects I will model for this scene as I want to be as efficient as possible. However this chair I felt like is one of the more attention grabbing objects in this scene so I think it needed a good highpoly and so I made one in combination of 3D max and Zbrush, made topology in topogun and this was the first object to go through baking and texturing in Substance Designer.

The console stations were a big part of me learning SD, as they contain a variety of materials and everything is sharing one texture. All the normal details were created using nDo2. 

That's pretty much what I am starting my challenge with, my next task is to populate the tables with some of objects. More specifically microscope and the computer set (for the next update). After that I want to start migrating the objects into UE4.