Caleb Spanier - 3D Environment Portfolio 2024

Hello, my name is Caleb Spanier! With my junior year at Champlain College coming to a close, it is time to showcase my strongest environments. The Abandoned Shopping Mall, Fisherman's Lighthouse, and Office Hideout. I am very proud of the final results with how far I have developed as a 3D game artist. I aimed to focus on full realism by thinking about how to utilize different techniques and learn new pipelines to strengthen my skillset.

All shown below is created by myself unless specified. 

Abandoned Shopping Mall

"Overtaken by the wilds, Planet Plex was the largest shopping entertainment center in the nation. With efforts to salvage items, all operations were left astray, leaving once a place of happiness, frozen in time."

The idea of abandoned locations within a specific time period has always fascinated me. The idea of a place becoming left behind to be reclaimed by nature has this eerie presence that I wanted to integrate within my idea.  With this, I explored the late 90's and early 2000's to capture the nostalgic feeling while also wondering about the story of how the mall closed its doors.

I am always focused on incorporating a captivating narrative within my work. While creating the scene, I asked myself "what was the forklifts being used for?" or "how does the foliage spread in this area?". I grounded myself in reality to be conscious on how certain structures were knocked over, destroyed, and shattered. Incorporating areas of rest was a large priority to ensure balance. With abandoned scenes being very cluttered, I made it one of my main goals to create a visually appealing focal point tied into the narrative I am showcasing.  

With this project that took over 200 hours of consistent work, I strived to consistently update meshes, composition, textures, and lighting to reach the highest quality. My main reference I used is Sean VanGorders 3D Environment work with The Last Of Us: Part 1, specially the Colorado Mall Atrium. The shape language, atmosphere, and color palate is something I wanted to achieve early on in development. 

Creating the modular pieces proved to be a challenge. Understanding the scope of the mall size was crucial with what I wanted to implement. Using modular walls to map out the perimeter for the block out in Unreal Engine aided me to begin importing non-architectural pieces to solidify the interior. I looked at 3D environments from games such as The Last Of Us and Five Nights At Freddy's: Security Breach to understand the composition, lighting, and texturing of how abandoned environments work in games and how I can showcase that with my skills. 

Modeling was created in Maya and Zbrush. Assembly of composition, lighting, VFX, and scene is built in Unreal Engine 5. All posters and a few decals created in Photoshop. Megascans were used for high quality decals and foliage. Planet Plex logo was created in Procreate. All textures were made in Substance Painter and Designer.

Office Hideout

"The streets of Miami are ravaged from a devastating plague. You make your way to your hideout to gather your equipment and ensure your survival. The only way out is to remain vigilant, or get drawn into the madness that's consumed all."

With this diorama, I aimed to create something within a much smaller scope while also implementing heavy details on the texturing and pricing set dressing more while keeping the entire scene visually interesting to the viewer. The lighting was also very crucial to this project. Solidifying a vocal point with the volumetric fog and spot lights with different hues and values helped with the contrast of the scene.

During the course of creating the environment, I dedicated my time to sharpening my skills more with lighting, texturing, and set dressing. Focusing on realism helped me learn from my pervious pipelines with my other projects and refine them. While updating the textures, It required outside the box thinking with how rust spread on a file cabinet and how I can create sharp splinters on wood.

With the lighting, I used two spot lights. One controlling the volumetric fog and the other for adjusting the intensity. For all angles, I used multiple spot lights and some rec lights to brighten up some of the props to showcase the details like the file cabinets and dilapidated debris near the walls. 

Creating the props and set dressing the diorama was one of the most enjoyable parts of this project. Going into high detail with the telescope, shotgun, and radio wanted me to incorporate the same level of care into the rest. I thought about the narrative with what would be on the corkboard. Since I was going for a space where someone is surviving, it made sense to have maps spread out all over the wall marking locations to figure out what's safe, dangerous, and where to find the next batch of food supplies. 

While pushing the realism, the curtains became a challenge modeling since there were so many methods I could try. I needed to consider my scope in order to make this feasible. That's when I found Marvelous Designers capabilities with cloth simulation. I was ecstatic to create different versions of my curtains to break up the reparation. Originally I had a pattern design for the curtains chosen, until I utilized a solid color instead. This helped the eye be directed to the other busy areas of the scene while the curtains now has a soft area of rest with the incorporation of the main spot lights and props on the desk.

All modeling done in Maya and Zbrush. Assembly of the scene, composition, lighting, and dust built in Unreal Engine. All textures created in Substances Painter and Designer. Majority of decals implemented from Quixel. Some decals created in Photoshop. Miami poster found on Adobe Stock. 

Fisherman's Lighthouse 

"The roaring sea is now calm as you make your way to the dockside. Once all the baggage is unloaded, you settle in, grab a couple crates and head up towards your sanctuary on the island. All is quiet with nothing but the rustling wind of the pine trees to keep you company." 

The Fisherman's Lighthouse challenged me to go out of my comfort zone and create an exterior environment with a completely different theme than what I am used to. This was my first attempt at creating a modular based building so I can experiment with the structure and silhouette. My main reference was Moon Hayo's concept art titled, "Medieval Lighthouse" on Art Station. The piece gave me inspiration to utilize and translate it within the 3D space of Unreal Engine. 

I made sure I was in scope for this project. With the complexity of the textures, I wanted to leave room to self teach myself Substance Designer while having all my assets game ready in Unreal Engine. The entire piece started to come together when I started implementing the rocks, foliage, and sand. Learning about the environment of a shoreside by looking closely of references on how rocks are stacked with grass stuck in between, and how foliage spreads and stops in one area. This gave me the opportunity to push the realism further.

This specific piece is a fully playable level. With different areas of interest, the goal was to make my Lighthouse the primary focal point. Within the last couple of weeks, I experimented more with exterior lighting in Unreal Engine. For the first time using lumen, I set out to create a dynamic lighting scene while utilizing lumen.

The largest hurdle I had to overcome was the modularity, lighting and learning Substance Designer. They were large priorities was required to take the learning curve in order to improve the complexity of the assets and understand where the lighting is coming form. Exploring the different settings on the lights and lumen gave me a better idea on how I can achieve the realism I wanted within the scene. 

I am very satisficed with my first attempt in Substance Designer. I was able to go out of my comfort zone by learning node based texture workflow and how to implement it into Unreal Engine. Finding out about different nodes to increase strength on normals and other areas on textures gave me more tools to not only improve my environment, but take them with me onto future projects. On top of this, using vertex paint was a huge part in improving my skillset. I was able to get in more details into the Lighthouse by blending stone and plaster into the walls.

All meshes including the grass modeled in 3DS Max 2024. Rocks created in Z-brush. Composition and lighting was built in Unreal Engine 5. Textures created in Substance Painter and Substance Designer. Trees and bushes created in Tree.it

I would like to personally thank my professor Jennifer Carlin, Jackson Keller, the Champlain Game Art tutors, and the incredible community of the Champlain Game Artists for pushing my skills further with every piece. It is surreal how my junior year is coming to a close and I am very proud of the progress I have made. For my final year at Champlain College, I plan to go out of my comfort zone more with new challenges to face to grow as an artist. I have gained so much experience and value this year by learning new software, utilizing new pipelines and adapting to change. I am excited to carry my newfound skills onto the next project.