Rookie Awards 2022 | Portfolio

Hello, my name is David-Moïse dos Santos Nascimento. I am a last year student at Howest : Digital Arts and Entertainment ( DAE ) in Kortrijk, Belgium! My main goal and focus is to make realistic looking environments, models and props. I have learned a lot during my time at school and cannot wait to improve and learn even more!
I am currently finishing my end of study internship at Reikon Games in Warsaw, Poland.

Great Inagua Mansion

As a long time fan of the Assassin's Creed series , I wanted to re imagine or remake the mansion of legendary pirate Edward Kenway from one of my favorite games : Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. This was a lot of fun to do because it let me replay the game again to gather reference shots of the mansion, which still looks great in the game. In this project I was only focused on the exterior ( front ) of the mansion. Perhaps in the future there will be an interior remake as well.

Overgrown Bridge

The subject of this project was to make a realistic looking overgrown setting. I chose to base my composition on an amazing existing concept art by Lorenzo Lanfranconi . I made the lighting and color a bit less saturated to give it a little bit of a more realistic look. All this was done real time in Unreal Engine.

Sci Fi Spacestation

This project was also done for the most part in Unreal Engine 4. Here I tried to make use of the modular asset creation workflow. The main goal was to make a sci-fi themed environment with all textures, models and lighting done by myself. For textures and materials I mainly used 2 or 3 different trim textures as this was to optimize the scene as much as possible. Most of the lighting is also baked so that this area is actually playable.

One of my favorite game franchises is Mass Effect and I had a lot of inspiration from the games for this project. Also looking at how games like Star Citizen are made, helped me through the level building process. This project in general was actually my first look at Unreal Engine 4 and all of its amazing features. The first couple of days and weeks I did a lot of research and got used to the software. After a couple of months and more experience in Unreal Engine, I can see multiple things to improve the overall scene and project but I am still very happy about the end result so far!

The video below showcases some other rooms and small areas of this "level".

Beretta APX

The purpose of this project was to make an in game model with enough complexity ( like this pistol ). I made a high poly and low poly model so i could bake normal, curvature, AO maps etc... In the end , the texturing was done in Substance Painter, a great tool to make all the textures of your models stand out. Finally the rendering was done in real time in Unreal Engine. I did my best to capture all the important elements of the model.

In the end this model could be used in game as well because it is optimized appropriately and scaled to fit a realistic setting.

Weapon Based on Concept Design

This weapon was made in a similar fashion as my Beretta Pistol. High Poly / Low Poly baking and textures in Substance Painter. I am certainly satisfied by the model and textures but looking at it after almost a year, the real time renders or lighting could use some improvements now that I am more familiar with Unreal Engine and lighting in general. Overall I am still very happy with how it turned out! The concept behind the gun was done by Takayuki Satou, the link for the concept can be viewed here. I tried to stay as true as possible to the concept as this was also a learning experience to be stuck to a certain art style and concept. These limitations often can be challenging but overall makes you a better artist in a team of really skilled and talented people. 

You have reached the end of my entry, thank you for coming this far and hopefully you liked some of my work!

The last 18 months I have learned a lot, ranging from using different software to learning some new techniques. Since I started to use Unreal Engine 4, I really began to appreciate the software but also all the talented artist that can create beautiful pieces and projects with this. Next step is to start and begin my career in the Game Development Industry!