Clayton Huber 3D Game Art Showcase

Cowboys & Aliens

Cowboys & Aliens was inspired by the extensive and unpredictable world of Red Dead Redemption. For this project, I used Gaea to create the mountains, Substance Designer to create tileable textures, Maya to model modular assets, and finally, sculpted in Zbrush to create a more lived-in environment. I loved the idea of incorporating both warm and cool lighting and, in this piece, I did this by juxtaposing the warmth of Christmas to the impending threat of the spaceship.

I was responsible for all aspects, except the Speedtree trees.

I found looking at my work in black and white helped me understand what my eye was drawn to and where in my environment the lighting was looking flat. 

Cave Dwelling

I was inspired to create Cave Dwellings after seeing the set design of the new Star Wars show, Andor. I wanted to reflect the down to earth nature of his community and create a cozy home environment within the dark, cool cave system.

To create the environment I first used Megascan cliffs to line the cave, and then sculpted the stalagmites, stalactites, large rock columns, and rock dwellings. For the steps leading up to the center dwelling, I sculpted four stone slabs that I then was able to move, rotate, and group to achieve variety. To texture, I used an RGB workflow to simplify the process. For the rocks, I looked at references of speleothem in limestone caves to help create a material in Substance Designer. I was then able to use that material in Substance Painter as well as vertex painting in Unreal.

I used a wide variety of Star Wars reference including Andor, Ralph McQuarrie art, and pictures from Disney parks.

I sculpted the Shoebill Smuggler in Zbrush and decimated it to bring in as a Nanite mesh. However, Nanite does not support transparency for its materials, so with help from a teacher, I created a material that utilized the opacity mask that achieved a similar result. Finally, I created a collection parameter to have the ability to turn the holo-table on and off in sequencer. 

Ancient Ruins

To create the landscape for Ancient Ruins, I used Houdini to create masks and a height map that allowed me to place landscape textures on my environment. I then utilized Unreal's foliage placement tools to scatter rocks, trees, and flowers. For the river, I used landscape splines, and created the water with the help of FluidNinja. Finally, I used Megascans to help further develop the scene. 

King of Souls

My project King of Souls is based on concept art by Raf Kayupov that can be see in the bottom left of the posted video. I used Zbrush and Maya to model, Substance Painter to texture, Marvelous Designer for the cloth, and Marmoset to render.

Thank you so much for taking a look at my work! Its been a lot of fun creating these pieces and I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my process!

-Clayton