Todd Fraser | Environment Artist

Abandoned Laboratory

This first piece is the final project at Think Tank for the Advanced Term.
It is based on a concept from Rainbow Six Extraction by Kevin Macio.

The goal of this piece was to push my capabilities for a full real-time scene in Unreal by tackling something that had many more props and materials than my previous work. Proper time management and prioritization was going to be key to completing this on time.

Story

First, let’s set the stage with a little narrative.
Something that helps us understand the mindset for why we are walking into this room.

We didn't see it coming. We didn't have time to react. We had lost before we knew what was happening.
Rumors of victories and progress feel like myths to just keep a sense of hope.
They say there's a neutralizer being worked on. Our best people are on it. Best or just who's left?
I can't believe I found one. A lab. Hidden in the basement of a derelict university.
Everything is here. Equipment, supplies, specimens. Even the monitors are still running.
Except people.
Where is everybody?

Note that this backstory also helps to explain why I am not including characters in the scene.

Final Scene

Without further adieu, here is the final scene from 3 angles.

Props

Now let’s take a look at the props that went into building the scene.

Scene Evolution

Here is the development of the scene through block-out, modelling, texturing, and lighting.

Unique Challenges

The Hero Prop, in particular, presented some unique challenges for me. The original concept’s center canister was a prop designed to be walked by quickly. This scene needed something more interesting so I created a new one based on a set of references from another concept.

This resulted in something helped be a centerpiece for the scene and fit the milieu of a high-tech sci-fi lab.

The second challenge with the Hero Prop was learning how to create a multi-UV setup that allowed for a trim-sheet along with tilable or custom textures.

First, I needed to setup Maya so I could create a second UV set and preview the trim-sheet UV in the viewport and play around with positioning.

With the baked Normal texture plugged into a basic Lambert as the Bump Map (set to Tangent Space Normals), I could then use the UV-centric Relationship Editor to connect everything up.

This was great for aligning the trim-sheet UVs in Maya, but what about in Unreal? The trick here was to use a BlendAngleCorrectedNormals node to keep the details of the tileable texture and have the trim-sheet on top. The new Normal texture was also set to the second UV set and the baked AO was Multiply+Lerp’d into the Base Color so the details would stand out more to the camera.

Since there were a few smaller lights added to the scene, it was worthwhile to do some quick optimizations such as reducing Light Complexity by narrowing the Outer Cone Angle and Attenuation Radius on a few lights.

Keeping focus on the middle of the scene meant updating colour temperature to create more contrast between the cool middle around of the Hero Prop and the warm surrounding area.

Fog adds a bit of depth to the scene too. In Unreal, this is using Exponential Height Fog with the Volumetric Fog enabled and Volumetric Scattering Intensity cranked up for just a couple key light sources.

A full breakdown of this project with even more detail can be found at this Play-by-Play on Rookies: https://www.therookies.co/projects/47645

High-Tech Server

This next piece is the final project at Think Tank for the Intermediate Term.
It is based on a concept from Star Citizen by Chris Doretz.

Chris was awesome and helped me figure out where to find this server in Star Citizen.

Turns out, you can't! It was part of a showcase by Cloud Imperium Games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tB3cark5lA&t=1454s

The final render is 100% real-time running in Unreal. All depth-of-field, color correction, and exposure adjustment is handled by a Post-Process Volume.

The server racks use trim-sheets combined with Parallax Occlusion to create realistic depth with minimal mesh detail.

And the decals were created in Figma.

Arcade Machine

Lastly, this piece is a hero prop project at Think Tank for the Intermediate Term. It is based on an actual in-game prop for Cyberpunk 2077 by Wojciech Chalinski.

Thank you for considering my work and huge thanks to my friends and supervisors that provided feedback and support through this journey! 🍻