Adam Dencker Rookies 2022 Entry

Night Street

Night Street is the second of my three portfolio projects at The Game Assembly. Based on a concept by Sergey Vasnev. I had a lot of fun focusing on efficient workflows during this project. The project has taught me a whole lot about efficient workflows and reusability using midpolys, korean bevels, tilables, masks, shaders and Houdini. It's also taught me a lot about how to create shapes with lighting!

All assets were made by me apart from the Megascans trash and the Unreal Marketplace packs: "Decal Designer", "Realistic Starter VFX Pack Vol 2" and "Paragon: Drongo"

Below follows a breakdown of all the Houdini tools and shaderwork I did to make this project become a reality. The shader itself is driven by a unique RGB mask per asset baked out from Substance Painter, which controls the placement of different tilables created in Substance Designer. The shader is complete with in-engine controls for what tilables to use, their tiling, rotation, color tinting, breakup with a world-aligned noise, as well as detail normals.

Reference Board. Original concept by Sergey Vasnev: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/8eqZP6

1900s Dentist Office

The Dentist Office is the first of my three portfolio projects at The Game Assembly. Based on a concept by Dai Nguyen and rendered in Unreal Engine 4. It was a lot of fun and I've learned a ton of new skills, especially lighting. I also got the opportunity to really push my texturing skills, as well as getting more comfortable doing highpolys in ZBrush while learning how to improve my level of fidelity in my art!

Made using Unreal Engine 4, Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Marvelous Designer

All assets were made by me apart from the Unreal Marketplace packs: "Cobwebs Pack, "Decal Designer" as well as the portrait painting which is a scan from a museum I then processed in Substance Alchemist.

Example of my props. Using 2:1 textures where I'm able to. All props are using a 10,24px/cm texel density.

Hero Prop Breakdown

Highpoly sculpts for my tilables. Sculpted in ZBrush and then baked down in Designer/Painter. Other tilables were created using Substance Designer.

World Position based Tint for smaller objects which are repeated a lot in the scene.

Master Material

Reference Board. Original concept by Dai Nguyen: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vL2R6

Wilkerson Dental Chair

The Wilkerson Dental Chair is a project I was working on for quite some time. The purpose of it was both to improve my skills in texturing and sculpting, but also serve as a quality bar for the Dentist Office. It was quite a challenge, but I learned a lot, including dipping my toes into detail normals for the first time. I'm definately gonna have the same approach for environments and dioramas going forward, first making a benchmark prop as a quality bar for the rest of the project before tackling the other assets.

As there weren't references for all angles of the main ref I chose to bash together several different references to make the chair into my own thing, a process which was fun to go through with, and taught me a lot.

Made in Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, rendered in Unreal Engine 4

Prop Breakdown

Reference Board

Levin LG-8

The Levin LG-8 is a guitar that's been in my family for three generations now. So for my third and final portfolio project I wanted to recreate it in 3D. I had a lot of fun remaking it one year after first making an attempt at creating it. I wanted to challenge myself and only use Maya and Painter, without any ZBrushing for damages. It was really a process that made me learn a lot and really improve in texturing. I also made my own alphas using photos I took of my guitar. A first for me, and I'm looking forward to doing more of this in the future!

Furthermore, it also gave me a chance to see how much my hero prop lighting skills had improved since making the Wilkerson Chair some months earlier as well as finishing the Dentist Office and the Night Street project.

Made in Maya and Substance Painter, rendered in Unreal Engine 4

Breakdown of the maps and alphas I created.

Reference Board with photos from my own guitar, as well as inspiration shots for my renders and more material references.