[Fanart] Control: Prime Candidate Program

This is my final project for 2023 intermediate term in Think Tank, a fanart based on Remedy's game, Control. The amazing original concept is from a level in the game, Prime Candidate Program. My final project is assembled in Unreal 5 and rendered with Lumen. The time span is 5 weeks, so in order to meet the schedule, I create modular kits for efficiency of assembling inside engine. Artstation post: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/04EvG5

Comparison to the original concept reference from Remedy:

Here is a video breakdown showing weekly milestone over the 5-week time frame.

In terms of texturing and material, due to my schedule is tight, the cardbox mesh is from Megascan, and I just added the logo of Federal Bureau of Control directly onto the carbox's texture in Photoshop. Some generic textures, like plastic and metal, are from Megascan as well. I create tilling concrete textures for all modular kits, and here is a Substance Designer graph of concrete wall texture:

For tiling master material, I primarily use vertex painting for large modular kits in this project, because I want to test out using tilling masks for dirt masks and let vertex color to control where the mask will be put on. 

In the screenshot example here, the section on the wall where yellow pipes connected to has been vertex painted with grunge and dirt, so as to get a more realistic and natural looking. If I want to move the pipe elsewhere I can erase the paint and adjust accordingly, so that is why I prefer using vertex painting for getting a better interaction with the scene. 

Although for smaller assets, which are yet not small enough for a unique handpaint texture, usually I'll make a much simpler master material for them without vertex painting functions, and just use blend masks for creating texturing variations with second UV-set method.

The blue paint on the wall is vertex paint as well, and the basecolor can be changed via parameters in material instance.

For tilling masks used in vertex painting (dirt/grunges/etc.), I create them in Substance Designer and use RGBA merge to graypack them to a single image. The masks are set up with static switch parameters, so for example, if a certain modular mesh doesn't need vertex painted dirt, the dirt mask can be bypassed with the dirt switch unchecked in material instance.

As to achieve the final deformed look like shown in the original concept, the end of hallway is deformed by lattice tool. So for ease in projection onto deformed floor, I create the carpet as a blueprint spline decal. The projection height is set to a low number (in my case it was set to 0.01), so that the decal carpet won't be projected onto other large meshes close to the spline. The scattering paper in the scene has unchecked "receive decal".

As for lighting and rendering, it is the hardest part for my project and I struggled the most with. I'll say the overall lighting still needs a long way to go even though the project is called done for now. William Faucher's UE5 lumen guide still helps me a ton throughout this project. 

Many thanks to my supervisor Nikhil Kedige who always gave me so many great advice!