Rookie Awards 2023 | Worlds of Juthapat (3D Game Art Showcase)

During the summer of 2022, I had the opportunity to revisit 'Dishonored,' the game that solidified my decision to pursue a career as a 3D Environment Artist, and I thought to myself that it would be fantastic if I could create an environment that exists inside its universe while adding my own 'twist'.

Pre-Production

I gathered a few photos from the internet, as well as screenshots from the game that I captured throughout my playthrough. I tried to be as specific as possible about the objects I'd use in the scene, but as the program goes, I found myself adding additional references along the way.​

"The foundation to all existence comes from 'The Void', so do my concept."

I made an illustration in Photoshop to visualize the world I'm going to create. I was originally troubled by how muted it looked, so I made some iterations based on feedback from my colleagues, also to help the modeling process by improving various item silhouettes.

Production

With a modularity mindset, I grayboxed the scene in Maya while keeping the proportions accurate. Later, I run them through Unreal Engine with simple directional lighting.

Modular Buildings

"Corvo saved Emily Kaldwin by becoming an assassin, I saved myself from strict deadline by using modular buildings."

If I had to build a portion of a city in a short amount of time, modularity will be my hero. The rule is simple: search for buildings online and divide them into modules.

​However, modularity is followed with repetitive textures. In real life, you are unlikely to see five buildings with identical grimes.

Height-blend materials come into play at this point. In Substance Designer, I created two tileable materials, then used a HeightLerp node in the editor to blend them with RGB channels input from Mesh Paint.

​Different materials versions are shown below.

Props

My approach in creating props is quite simple. I started making a base model then put them in Zbrush for higher resolution sculpting. Since most of the props are simple geometric shapes, I could easily get away with poly grouping based on normals, creasing polygroups border, then subdividing.

Organic-surface objects

Because I was racing against the clock, I thought the character to be an excellent time-trial challenge. I finished modeling to texturing in around 4 hours.

I begin with the DemoSoldier project in Zbrush as a base and work my way down, modifying and sculpting features to my liking.

Graphics

I had quite a few experience working with vector graphics software like Adobe Illustrator, but in this project I chose to do them in Photoshop since this doesn't need to be printed.

Some graphics were extracted from photos found online using color range selection and edge masking and some are taken from in-game screenshots.

Compositions and Storytelling

Throughout the process, each composition was iterated multiple times to improve the story-telling aspect. I was first focused on the primary composition, and the rest were lacking, so I added objects that leaves trail to the story behind them.

"KILL THE RATS graffiti, a precursor to the Rat Plague, as appeared in Dishonored."

​(No rats were harm in the making of this project)

"Light poles with gold-plated bird sculptures, influenced by the reign of the Royal Palace, that seemed out of place with the worn-down structures may indicate a lack of proper sighting of outskirts well-being."

"OBEY THE CITY WATCH!, A fortified wall that seals off the city's outskirts. It appears that someone attempted to confront the citywatch, and the outcome was not pleasant."

"A man sitting in shade of a building seeking for help with his sickness, and right beside him is a sign written with a left-over Tuna tomato can."

"When everything is normal, the market must be bustling with shoppers, but right now it seems so empty."

Floating Market - Conclusion

That's quite a journey! I am so happy with how this project turned out. This is the first first outdoor scene I've had the opportunity to create with this degree of freedom and there are so many new things I've learned for the first time, such as Substance Designer, Water System, and Height-blend materials.

I've always wanted to create an environment full of shiny, luxurious things, as well as to break away from old and lived-in places that I used to do many times in my portfolio. Art Deco is exactly what I was looking for, and what would better setting to represent the wealthy, extravagant lifestyle than a New York bar in the 1930s? And, of course, a glimpse of what's left after a New Year's Eve.

Pre-Production

Because most of the photographs I've seen are in black and white, this scene will be made up of recreations of historical designs as well as my own interpretations on Art Deco elements such as lavish decorations, rich materials, shiny surfaces, and geometric patterns.

I created an illustration in Photoshop to express what was happening in my head as a type of quick layout defining the focus point and listing everything I needed for the atmosphere. I got a lot of inspiration from the Hotel Cortez lobby in American Horror because I think it's so aesthetically appealing with the ceiling lights and gorgeous wall plaques.

Production

With a modular approach, I grayboxed the scene in Maya while maintaining accurate proportions. Later, I created composition cameras so that I could focus on what should I add to continue developing with storytelling aspects.

Modular Kit

I planned the room to be made up of repeated and reusable building structures that can be divided into modules. And with the use of tile-able trimsheets, I can easily apply them on bigger objects like ceilings, walls, and pillars.

The majority of the textures and trimsheets are created by creating a high-resolution model in Zbrush, then using Marmoset Toolbag to bake all of the mesh maps to low-poly objects and texturing them in Substance Painter.

Props

Lighting & Reflections

In this project, I used high contrast lighting since it is visually appealing and emphasizes the shine of the materials quite nicely.

I used Unreal Engine 4.27 for my project, and I wanted my scene to have a lot of reflective surfaces to avoid the dull and visually dated look.

Although this version of the engine features some lighting shortcuts, such as Screen Space Reflections and Raytracing, I ended up not use them in order to learn and understand the basics of lightmaps baking and reflection capturing.

Liquor Bottle Shader

I made a translucent material to mimic the liquor bottles.

Using Material Instance, I was able to create several variations based on a single material in Unreal Engine. As I was creating the shader, I included some parameters such as colors and the Fresnel level to be exposed so that I could adjust them afterwards.

Maya MASH (Tinsel Foil)

I used MASH in Maya to help with the modeling of the tinsel foil on a Happy New Year banner. Although it is a VFX tool, I believe it offers a really good feature such as stackable nodes that could be put into a modeling pipeline to create a high number of polygons in such a short amount of time.

Happy New Year - Conclusion

When I was almost done with this project, it was getting close to the end of 2022, which worked out perfectly! So, I think everyone is having a great time in 2023 so far! I started this project at the same time as the Floating Market, and it was a blast switching between the two because the engines were so different. I think it all worked out really well and I had a lot of fun!

When I started this project, I wanted to make a story that would be meaningful to me and serve as a reminder of this time in my life. Since I was finishing up school and about to start a career in game industry, I chose to write about a traveler going on an adventure across worlds.

"Sometime in the future, somewhere among the woods, there was an inn called 'Midwood Inn' where travelers would rest there before continuing on their journey across worlds. The inn was known for its cozy tent-shaped rooms and special connection to Starlink Station used to travel to distant planet

One morning, a traveler woke up excited for his adventure. He packed his things and prepare to hop on his red scooter bike."

Concept

Since most of my previous work has been realistic, I went for a cozy stylized look for this project. And to learn more about the process of creating vegetation, trees, and flowers.

I started gathering references to create a visual library as a foundation for the look I want.

Then I use Photoshop to create an illustration of the main composition. As the project progresses, I find myself iterating more to improve the storytelling.

Production

Progress of each iterations from grayboxing to finalized version are shown below.

Modeling

Texturing

My approach to texturing was focused on procedural material, allowing me to quickly texture every single object in a short amount of time.

In Substance Painter, I built a smart material with layers that produce a foundation grayscale value as you would in traditional painting, then adds a simple color gradient overlay with a color variation filter.

Finishing it off with hand-painting layer on top of everything.

I called this one the "overpaint effect". I had a lot of fun experimenting with this effect recreating the brush strokes that wraps around the base mesh of the scooter bike. The process is shown in the photo above.

Runtime Virtual Texture

In the concept, I have a specific style of grass in mind, and it must be simple to hand paint colors onto the spots I want.

I used Runtime Virtual Texture to get a nice soft blend of colors on the grass and the ground. The following video is a demonstration.

Foliage

I painted flower parts in Photoshop on a texture sheet before modeling small low-poly clusters of flowers to populate the area. I was able to add some life to the scene by simulating a simple wind effect with the SimpleGrassWind node in Unreal Engine's material editor.

I also set vertex normal on Y axis to 1 and other to 0 like the photo shown above to get rid of dark shading on flat meshes like grass and flowers.

Midwood Inn - Conclusion

To sum it up, I have a great time working on this project! Because it was so different from what I usually do, I still remember how everyone in the class reacted to my first concept :D.

Looking back, I believe I'm proud of my decision to step outside my comfort zone. I also had the opportunity to try out different new approaches, such as runtime virtual texturing and creating foliage elements, which allowed me to expand my skills and explore new styles.

That's my adventure throughout the past year at DigiPen Institute of Technology!

And lastly, I owe a huge thanks to my friends and professors for their valuable feedback and support. Without them, I wouldn't have made it this far. I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to read my entry for this year! If you enjoyed what you just read, I have more of my works available on my website and Artstation. Don't hesitate to check them out!

Additionally, here's my Linkedin profile. Feel free to send me a connection request or leave a comment below!