Johan Gunneröds 2023 Entry

Hey everyone! Here's my entry for The Rookies 2023. For this one I'm showcasing a character, a complete environment and a standalone prop. These are all made to be game ready and it's been a challenging and rewarding journey for me to really dive into all these different workflows.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

I created this project to practice making a larger game environment and trying out new workflows. I wanted to focus on the bigger picture, trimsheets and modularity rather than spending a lot of time on unique assets. The environment and assets are inspired by the Boralus region in World of Warcraft and Bilgewater from League of Legends. I painted a skybox and a couple of cloud textures with alpha applied on planes with panning UVs for motion. This is also how I created the swirling winds VFX.

Most of the materials used a Zbrush to Adobe Substance workflow. with the landscape materials applied with Vertex Painting.

A focus on modularity - a majority of the assets were made using two trimsheets. Only a handful of the props were actually unique bakes.

The Dreadlord character (below) was a blast to work on. It's based on a concept by Thomas Guedes (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/LexgxR). I wanted to create a game ready character with handpainted textures. I was fortunate enough to have Aaron Morse from the World of Warcraft-team as a mentor to guide me through this. This was a great learning experience for me as we worked mostly under the assumption and guidelines that this character could be a game ready boss in a WoW-dungeon. First I sculpted a high poly version in Zbrush including some of the the details to bake AO and use as a guide for me to texture. Then I made a low poly version and hand painted everything in 3Dcoat. I also created a rig and some simple animations.

For the skull (below) I was Inspired by Baldi Konijns concepts and sketches while looking for opportunities to practice my sculpting. The embers are a simple Niagara system and the flowing lava is a combination of handpainted textures and patterns created in Substance Designer. This is a game ready asset rendered in Unreal Engine.

Thanks a lot for taking a look at my projects!

/Johan Gunneröd