Old Growth, New Growth

My main goals with this project were to learn to translate an illustration's look and feel into 3D, and to learn to meet deadlines (even if I set them). I believe these are fundamental skills for aspiring 3D artists. I also wanted to try my hand at a more complex stylized, hand-painted project, since I only have experience with making smaller, singular props.

This project's concept comes from many walks I've had through old cedar forests near where I live. Strewn with logs and stumps, overgrown with moss and ferns, I've thought for years that they'd make a great theme for a 3D environment.

I wanted to make everything in the project, including the concept art. I settled on the strong focal point of an old stump with a sapling growing out of it. I quickly blocked the scene in Maya, moved it into Marmoset and lit it to match the concept art. I found out that my concept's shading wasn't completely accurate, and kept the Marmoset scene as a reference since I would be painting the entire project's shadows by hand later.

I organized my workflow around finishing groups of props that shared a texture map. I started with the stump as the hero prop - which also acted as my quality "bar" for the rest of the scene. Trying to blur the edges and connections between props through my textures, as well as lining up particular details - especially shading - proved to be the most time-consuming and difficult aspect of the whole project. I learned a lot about things like texel density, being aware of the relationship between an asset's surface, its UVs and the texture, and really thinking about where you place your UV seams.

To create a sense of congruity between the concept art and 3D scene, I used the same brushes for the same parts - even down to the little moss-tuft poly cards that stick out of the stump.

This project wound up being a solid learning experience not only for some of my initial goals, but also through teaching me important lessons about workflow, compromise and how to tackle a large number of props.

Thank you for looking at my submission!