Staicu Teodor | 2020-2021 works
I am a self-taught hobbyist and i enjoy doing anything real-time 3d. My main passion is modeling but i started to develop a crush on material authoring. I also enjoy creating logic (scripting) in Blueprints. In this two-part entry (Enviro. Art and Technical Art) you can find my top works from the past year or so.
Hindsight
This is a beach telescope or sight that i started modeling in Rhino a long time ago. I came back to it at the beginning of '21.
The low poly i optimized and UV'd in Max. Looking at it now i could have done a better job at the optimization step...
Texturing was done in Substance Designer completely starting from the bottom layer of metal working outwards to the final (newest) layer of paint. The substance material was a stacked one, each layer being a separate node graph referencing the previous layer. The reason for using Designer instead of painter was that i wanted full control over the material layers and material masks. Instead of creating my own smart masks in designer then exporting them to Painter i just moved the entire material creation process into Designer.
Final render is done in UE4. With the help of the Substance plugin for UE4 i was able to have full control over various parameters of the final material.
Mykonos 2020
Next up is a reproduction of a beautiful painting by Cerutti Felugo Bruna. I saw this painting when i was in Mykonos, coincidentally and i immediately knew i had to bring it to life.
This scene is more of a render than a playable level but i managed to squeeze in a few interesting angles.
The scene is made from one large mesh as i wanted to get nice smooth transitions from buildings to floors. Materials are blended through a mix of vertex colors and texture masks. Textures are mostly megascans.
Lighting is mixed (stationary) - baked GI and raytraced shadows.
Various materials and models
Modular buildings
These are some materials and models that i have done for my current project. The project is work in progress so i decided to share what is finished or almost finished.
The below textures are atlases and in combination with special UV mapping can produce believable buildings in a relatively short time and with great re-usability.
1940s modular car
The model is supposed to be viewed at medium to close range and its not the main focus of the scene. Also, given the amount of time available to work on that project and due to the fact that i wanted to do a few car models, i decided that i should take a different path with modeling this car.
Rendered in UE4 with Raytracing enabled.
The car body is modular in order to get more variation out of it - you can see an example of modularity below.
The different body parts are detachable for modularity. The door sills and body part transitions are separate meshes that with the help of vertex colors have a faded opacity. In Unreal this is used with a (dithered) masked material for performance reasons.
This workflow provided very quick iteration time as well as a clean mesh as is needed with car bodies. However, this is not recommended if the car needs to animate or deform. It is better suited for static decorative meshes.
Dynamic Global illumination
This is a UE4 system done entirely in blueprints. It simulates global illumination by doing one lighting bounce for a specified light source - this could be a directional light (sun) a spotlight or a point light.
About the scene, it was inspired by the UE5 trailer and its all Megascans assets.
The technical side of this is based on a pretty simple idea: the system uses an array of un-shadowed spot lights to fill in an area. Unshadowed to keep the performance up and spotlights because i can control the angle of the bounced light and stop light bleeds. The lights are created and killed depending on a number of factors. Their intensity and radius is directly proportional to the intensity of the direct light for which they are spawned.
Below you can see some comparison shots with and without this system.
Performance was good and apart for some limitations the solution had potential but was abandoned because it wasn't a viable alternative to other real time GI solutions like RTX and LPV.
Physics-based placement tool
This is a tool for placing objects inside an environment. Was developed for UE4 in blueprints and is in final stages of development.
The placement mode can vary from "painting" on a surface to spawning in a volume. It can place a wide range of objects - from basic meshes to fully scripted actors - even decals.
Actors can be placed as well and custom logic can be triggered on the spawned actor.
It has an option to render a texture set (material) from the area covered with the placed actors. Good for making debris and similar materials.
Thanks for watching!
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