Giacomo Sanguineti - 3D Environment Art & Assets

MODERN MINE TUNNEL

This project is my first attempt at making a complete environment. I decided to put to the test my modeling and texturing skills to create a scene. I am using Unreal Engine 5 to leverage lumen and nanite but I am also focusing on mastering traditional techniques. I took inspiration from James Lucas's work and wanted to create a game-ready environment based on reality following established production workflows.
I made all the assets and textures from the ground up, apart from the small yellow spotlight and the safety vest. Textures were primarily created procedurally using substance designer while for models I did a combination of hand sculpting and traditional modeling.

Walkthrough video

It was a major goal for me to make sure that the scene is optimized and playable in-real time. I captured the following video walkthrough while the scene is running on a Pascal GPU.

Scene Composition Progress

Global Illumination

Although I found that lumen enhances brightly lit scenes best, its impact on my environment is still tangible as it enhances the dark areas with bounce light. I settled on keeping the feature off since I liked the contrast from the original dynamic lighting better.

Assets

Models were produced using the standard PBR pipeline. I created a high-poly version for each asset and baked using Marmoset.

High-poly breakdown

Procedural Materials

For the stones laying around, I sculpted multiple high-poly versions in Zbrush and followed the workflow outlined by Ben Wilson in his talk For the Adobe Youtube Channel regarding the techniques used in Wolfenstein 2. I used mid-poly versions in physics simulations to create the tileable material. I took the modeling of some of the objects such as the petrol tank and the shovel as a traditional modeling challenge.

Texturing Breakdown

Techniques Used

Master material and ground plane material

General tunnel reference board

I have applied my newly acquired knowledge of compositional techniques to the assets placed in the scene. I tried to create abstract pointing lines to connect asset clumps and direct the viewer's eye to the focus area and along the illuminated wall, creating a journey for the eye toward the end of the tunnel.

Credits to Hippostance on Sketchfab for the work light model.