Veronika Lian Showcase 2023

ABANDONED GREENHOUSE LAB

This is my latest project, made for my final exam after the second year of my studies. The scene is heavily inspired by The Last Of Us, where I wanted to make a scene that has that same overgrown and abandoned look. My favourite part about this scene is how it tells a story without using any words. I loved working on and adding all the little details and clutter around the room.

All assets in the scene are made by me, using Maya, zBrush and Substance Painter. I also used Houdini to simulate a broken flowerpot and the broken glass on the table. The final scene is built and rendered in Unreal Engine 5. 

BREAKDOWN

I used modular pieces to build the walls, roof and floor of the room. The foliage is hand sculpted in zBrush, and then baked down to low poly planes and combined to full plants.

I optimised my textures in the scene by using trimsheets. For example, I used a trimsheet to texture my flowerpots. By using just a single mesh and 4 material instances in Unreal Engine, I was able to add a lot of variation to the flowerpots in the scene with just one texture set. 

PROCESS

I used Lumen for lighting the scene, and added trees and bushes outside the windows to get some more depth and to block the light in certain areas. 

STYLIZED HOUSE

For this project, I wanted to challenge myself by making a stylized environment. I used modular pieces to build the house, and trimsheets to texture most of the assets.

All assets are made in Maya, some sculpted in zBrush.

BREAKDOWN

The walls are using tilable textures, and I used texture paint to blend between the two textures and give them the worn paint look. 

Almost all the wood in the scene is using a single trimsheet, with two different colour variations. I learned a lot about shaders and materials in Unreal Engine while working on this project. The grass, trees, rocks and the mountain piece are all using RVT materials, making them blend nicely with the material of the landscape it's placed on. 

I also made a tiling brick texture by using zBrush, and then baking this onto a plane in Substance Painter. 

For the rocks, tree trunks and the mountain piece, I used zBrush to sculpt on details that I then baked onto a low poly version of the mesh. The mountain piece especially is made in a way that gives all six sides an interesting look, making it easy to use this one piece over and over in different scales and positions to build the entire mountain range.

The flower are made by using simple planes with an alpha mask and a base colour.

TOY CAROUSEL

This toy carousel is one of the first hero assets I ever made in 3D, and since then I have learned a lot. However it is still one of my favourite models that I have made so far, as I am really happy with how this turned out visually. It was made in Maya and textured in Substance Painter. The goal was to make a clean and visually pleasing hero asset. The final render was made using Arnold. 

BREAKDOWN