Stylized 3D Environment Collection

Desert Workshop UE5

"Legend held that this land was once the very center of the world. No trade was conducted unless checked, and certainly taxed, by the ancient Sharaathien. Position alone did not guarantee their status though, the legend tells of an ancient crystal the Sharaathien learned to harness."

Very excited to share this environment. I built it all from scratch in Unreal Engine 5 with the conceptual inspiration of Andrew Porter's "The Reach" (PHANDY - Senior II Concept Artist @ Blizzard Entertainment)

As I mentioned, it was all build from scratch by me. I wanted to create a stylized environment that was a new area for me, and a sandy environment seemed like an excellent challenge. I ended up creating a modular building design, and a very robust master material that made use of RVT and Z-Up blending to seat everything in the sand. From blockout to completion the project took a month and one week to complete including reference gathering, blockout & design, texturing, trimsheets, modeling & sculpting, feedback, VFX, lighting and rendering.

For the final look of the piece, I was originally drawn in by the fantastic colors from movies such as Dune. The cinematic feel seemed like a great place to begin, and from there I worked my way towards a more stylized approach. The reason for the stylized lighting approach was because it allowed me to leverage the fantastic new UE5 lighting engine Lumen. I was able to control everything from real-time ambient occlusion to subtle fog details. 

Trims, props, decals, and reference.

Valorant Icebox Warmup Map | 1 vs 1 Map UE5

Valorant's Icebox meets CS:GO's warmup maps. I wanted to challenge myself to create an environment based on a highly stylized game such as Valorant. Combining that with CS:GO's warmup maps was a great way to bring a practical purpose to the environment while keeping the project scale down.

I got the idea while looking at Michael Shinde's Dust 2 Reskin in the style of Valorant, and ended up referencing his work and the shots provided by Riot Senior Lighting Artist Eric Durante. I made this project in Unreal Engine 5 as it is the future of game engine tech, and has amazing features such as Lumen and Nanite. A great resource for navigating the project also came in the form of Brandon Wang's Riot Games Technology article on the Valorant Shaders and Gameplay Clarity. This definitely opened my eyes to the possibilities of shader utilization within a stylized Unreal Engine project. 

All meshes were modeled and sculpted in Blender. Textures are created from a combination of my own Smart Material Toon Shader in Substance Painter, and tiling textures created in Substance Designer. The shipping container, crates, buildings, and most of the crane are High to Low poly baked, and the concrete is my own tiling texture edited in Painter. 

Valorant always does an excellent job of creating story within their competitive environments. Lydia Zanotti did a great job of explaining in her Dev article, The Art of Valorant Map Environments, the complexity that comes with combining story telling within a shooter that is meant to have a high level of competitive integrity. This became a challenge because it means moving story telling assets outside of the area that would distract from playing the game. So, I wanted to make sure that I followed a similar line of thinking while placing my story telling assets. 

At the end of the day, I'm very happy with how this environment has turned out, and look forward to using what I've learned in my future projects. Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

The Kalu'ak Condos

 World of Warcraft Student Art Contest Submission 2022

"Everyone in Azeroth deserves a vacation. That's why the Kalu'ak founded this iceberg community. Unfortunately they forgot to account for the ancient ruins atop the nearest mountain. Let's just hope whoever lives there isn't as interested in fishing as the Tuskar . . . " 

The Tuskar must be my favorite denizens of Azeroth. Every time I get the chance to do a quest with them I'm reminded of how awesome they are. Did you know it's disrespectful to show up to a Tuskar village without a fish in hand? Anyways, I'm excited to share this submission for the 2022 Blizzard Student Art Competition! I was inspired by the return of the Tuskar in Dragonflight, and knew that this would be a great opportunity to show how I've grown as an artist over the past year.

Created over approximately four weeks using Blender, Maya, Photoshop, Unreal Engine 5, and World Machine. My Intro to Maya course with David Mooy has really helped my grasp of the toolset available in Maya, and it's shocking how much is available there compared to Blender. This project was also the first time I did a lot of Hand Painting, and I must say it is a ton of fun. Hand painting really gives you a ton of control over how the final mesh appears, albeit at the cost of time spent.

Much appreciation and love to my partner for the countless critiques along the path to finishing this piece!

UV mapping for hand-painting textures and reference.

Villain's Forest Hideout UE5

This project originated as a way to develop my foliage and organic modeling. I wanted to create a forest, and found excellent reference from the Hitman series that inspired this setting. I made significant use of photogrammetry and texture samples from hikes near where I live for the ground, stone, and tree bark textures. That reference also informed the tree species and variation.

 Modeling was done in Maya, sculpting in Zbrush and Blender, texturing was a mixture of Substance Designer, Substance Painter, and Photoshop, and then everything was brought into Unreal Engine 5 for lighting and renders. I wanted the entire scene to be game ready, so all models have been optimized considerably and use packed A.R.M. maps.

Stone, fern, and tree closeups as well as reference.