Phoebe Lui - Game Environment & FX

Hey everyone! I'm Phoebe, and I'm here to take you on my journey as a Game Art student at Escape Studios. Before I embarked on this adventure, I had shallow knowledge about 3D game art. Fast forward a few months, and I here to present three personal projects that demonstrate my transformation from a complete newbie to where I am today. Enjoy!

Game FX & Cinematography - A Day of a Fairy in a Magical Forest

In my thrid project at Escape Studios I learned about game fx and cinematography. I came up with an idea of creating a short movie about a fairy exploring a fantasy forest and showcasinf different weather conditions, which allowed me to challenge myself in creating various kinds of game fx and lightings. 

Storyboard

I started off with creating a storyboard so that I could better visualise each scene of my movie and plan out my time allocation in different parts of the production.

Game FX

All of the FXs were created with Niagara systems in Unreal Engine 5.1. 

The movement of the fairy was controlled by a spline blueprint.

Sequencer

The below FXs were achieved by using sequencer in Unreal Engine.

Cinematography & Lighting Design

Visual Development Process

Screenshots

Shout out to Okanid for creating the beautiful wizard hat!

Game Environment - Space Bounty Bar

This was my first school project and first 3D project since I have started learning modeling. The aim of this  project was to create an isometric mobile game environment. I decided to make a neonpunk environment that sets in space combining the vibes from my favourite movie series Guardians of the Galaxy, Alien and the Hunt game feature from Final Fantasy XIV.

Floor Plan

The floor plan shows a clear division of areas: bar area, entertainment zone, VIP zone and information zone, which serve for social and mission purpose in a game.

Lighting & Colour Design

Lighting plays a vital role in my level. As neonpunk style makes extensive uses of vibrant neon lights and fluorescent colours, it is necessary to maintain a balance between the emissive colours and the environment light, while placing suitable amounts of lighting to make emphasis on areas and props in order to create visual direction to players.

Blue hues were used in the bar counter area and information zone as blue gives people a sense of calmness, whereas red hues were placed in the entertainment zone as red symbolises energy and stimulates excitement. Neon light strips of various colours were used to highlight shapes, frames and structures in the level.

Material Creation

A motherboard material that simulates the interior of a spaceship was created in Substance Sampler. A picture of a motherboard was taken and cleaned up in Photoshop.It was then imported to Substance Sampler for material conversation. 

After a few adjustments on its intensity of metallic, height and normal, parameters to control its metallic intensity and UV tiling were added. It became a highly reusable material that its material instance had been applied to the walls and the objects n the level.

Diorama - Victorian Train Carriage

For my second project at Escape Studios, I created a diorama that sets in the past. As inspired by the Victorian decorative style and the movie Murder on the Orient Express (2017), I decided to create a diorama that depicts the inside of a carriage in a luxury train in the 19th century.

Sketch, blockout, photobash and initial light pass

Lighting Design

It is essential for Victorian style to have light fixtures such as table lamps and wall lamps and they were the major light sources in the 19th century. Sunlight comes through the window and hits onto the dining table to make it the main focus of the diomara. The overall lighting in the diorama is dim as lighting tools in the past cannot bring up that amount of brightness.

Colour Design

The diorama is of warm colour tone with massive use of wood. Since the scene is lacking cold colour, I used forest green on the wall, leather on the chair and the carpet to make a balance. Forest green was one of the most popular colours being used in the interior and furniture design in the Victorian era.

Modelling & Sculpting

In order to archieve a better result in modelling decorative ornaments, I checked out how to model ornaments in Maya and took reference from a tutorial by Akmal Elgama. I created an image plane with my ornament reference image underneath a rectangular plane and started using Quad Draw tool to trace theshapes of the ornaments. 

After modelling in Maya I imported the ornament mesh into Zbrush to sculpt the details on the ornaments.

Thank you for reading! Feel free to check out my artstation for my latest updates and projects.

Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/phoebeluiart