The Okiya's Fade Pt.1

The project "The Okiya's Fade Pt.1" is my very first personal project realized during my internship as a teaching assistant at Skyup Academy. The inspiration came to me while watching a film that I loved very much as a child, "Memoirs of a Geisha". The project was designed to be divided into two parts: an interior zone and an exterior one. Here, I showcase the first part, in which I wanted to recreate the ambiance of a Maiko’s room within a traditional Japanese Okiya during the transition from the Meiji to the Taisho era (1900 ca), and let the character walk through the scene as if it were a psychological journey of her. With this aim, I animated a first-person camera that traversed the house, revealing it through the eyes of the woman.

For this project I was responsible for all the aspects. I created everything from scratches and build the entire scene myself: from the environment composition, to modeling, to texturing and lighting etc.

1. Gather references

Since the historical importance for the scene, I spent lot of time gathering references and studying the Japanese culture and usance of Geishas and the specific era, such as the clothing and jewelry differences. I then dedicated myself to the furniture and various objects of the scene, trying to remain as faithful as possible to the historical period and the location.

2. Blocking, Modeling and UV

For the next phase, I put myself into creating the volumes for the blockout of the scene. Not having a specific reference, the composition of the Okiya and the position of the various props has been changed several times. After deciding the overall position of the assets, I was ready to move the scene into Unreal and start the modeling phase.

I intentionally avoided using pre-modeled assets and textures. Instead, I meticulously modeled and textured all the intern assets myself. Given the need to produce a large number of objects, I had to find a way to reduce the map’s overall complexity. To achieve this, I grouped the UVs of various objects together, creating blocks of assets while maintaining consistent texel density across these blocks.

Most of the elements were modeled in Maya. For some objects, such as the brush stand and the armrest (located on the Sumi-e table - see below), I added additional details in ZBrush. All the clothing elements such as the kimonos , the curtains and various drapes scattered throughout the room, were created in Marvelous Designer. The retopology of these elements was also performed using the software’s tools.

Thanks to this project, I also delved into SpeedTree for the first time to create plants. In this regard, I modeled the leaf and berry meshes, ensuring they were oriented correctly and placing the pivot where the mesh would attach to the plant branches. Given that it was a plant with many berries, I paid careful attention to avoid using excessive polygons for their construction

3. Texturing and Pbr material in painter and designer

The texturing phase was both enjoyable and demanding. Throughout this project, I worked on texturizing various elements, including wood and clothing. Additionally, I created numerous alphas and stickers using Photoshop.

(Ai generated alphas)

(Kyodai Tensu - Make up station)

For the Furisode Kimono in particular, I embarked on a quest to find cohesive and fitting floral patterns. Given the intricate decorations of the kimono, I employed multiple layers and folders in Painter to seamlessly blend everything together.

Since I needed to speed up the texturing process, I took advantage of the opportunity to study PBR materials on substance designer. I thus created three main materials, of which I produced some color variations. This is how I realized the material for the tatami, the wooden parquet and the ceiling. Starting from the parquet wood, I made different wood variants without paneling that I used for the furniture.

Tatami Material

Wood Floor Material

Wood Ceiling Material

4. Props

Here I show most of the props and the modular pieces I’ve made for the project:

5. Some Final Renders