Demo Reel (Mid 2022) | Miquel Sallés

Spirit Village

This project I did along with my classmate Juan tejeira is hugely inspired by the traditional chinese style.  We wanted to create an environment that it looks magical and cozy but at the same time stranger.

We were given a month to learn the new tools and deliver the environment game-ready. Since we wanted to make a large environment filled with detail we went for a stylized PBR and lowpoly style.

Also, we knew the lighting and particles had to play a major role so we had to work hard to optimize every bit and make it playable at a 60fps.

The game engine was used is Unreal Engine 4.

The creative process started with a brainstorming of aesthetics and themes. We fell in love with this spiritual chinese idea pretty quickly and we started developing it right away. We got tons of references from real life pictures, concept art paintings, movies, animated cartoons, videogames, etc. 

The next step was creating a 2D map to visualize it better. And after lots of drafts we finally got the map you can see below.

Given the tight schedule we knew we had to work with complete organization and synchrony. So we started by listing and splitting all the work in two. Following our teachers advice we started with a very detailed blockout. Which it took days to finish but at the end it saved us a lot of problems and time. You can see a few pictures of it below.

We used a modular workflow for all architectural objects and some of the vegetation. With the set dressing all the assets gave life to the environment. Here are some of the most important assets we created.

After everything was set on the Unreal Engine 4 we still had to do the most important thing of our environment: building the ambience. For that we used volumetric fog, wich brought the mystical and spiritual feeling, all kinds of lights, to give the warm and cozy feeling we desired, apart from all the reflection system and post processing UE4 brings us.

And because we wanted to recreate the chinese new year's eve, we made fireworks and the traditional floating candles with the engine's particle system.

Here is the final result.

Light Only -> Final Render

Lord Nelson

This is my secondary project I did for my Higher's Degree. For this character I wanted to make a fantastic medieval armor. For the face I used my classmate Nelson as references.

For this project I wanted to try new things so I went for a more realistic look.

Closeups