Nguyễn Châu | Game Development Entry

The First Journey

A real-time scene I created based on the illustration from the children book The First Journey by Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien.

All the materials used are procedurally generated to most extend, with many being 100% procedural. Thanks to that, the textures are flexible and adjustable even in the engine itself.

Researching

The project is started with researching and comparing different methods of achieving the same visual effect to find one that is the most sufficient.

In case of procedural texturing in Substance Designer, problems are mostly about the aesthetic, i.e. how to achieve the closet result to the illustration. For example, figuring out how to procedurally map the texture onto the mesh correctly, to achieve the desire wave pattern or dotted seam for an alpha mask.

On the order hand, the problems in Unreal Engine's shaders are more technical, i.e. how to simultinously achieve all the visual goals without conflicting with each other.

Textures Pack - Substance Designer

First, all the style's signature elements are made into Source Graph. These were used later on as foundation for the actual textures, making the textures pack optimal and easily expandable.

All graphs can be driven by both randomized or specific custom inputs. On the right is examples of procedural masking for the algae.

Shaders - Unreal Engine 4

After that, multiple shaders are created in Unreal Engine 4 to further support translating the illustration into 3D. Down below are the shader graphs for water (using @MaxMakesGames's ripple technique) and algae.

Scene Compositing

This is a really straight forward process with primitive assets.

Asylum Nurse

Character created based on Maxim Verehin's concept. My first time got to do a full pipeline of creating a character. It was a fun challenge and I learned a lot through this.

I used 3Ds Max (modeling and repoto), Zbrush (sculpting and posing), Substance Painter (texturing ) and Marmoset Tool Bag (rendering).

Comparasion between the model and concept.

Into the Cave

A quick scene I put together to familiarise myself with Unreal Engine 4 using the Marketplace's assets. Also made a simple leaf material to try out Substance Designer.

The Art of Mr. Pumpkin's Potionary

I created a set of procedural materials and used it to set up a smart material in Substance Painter. This pipeline helps pushing the texturing process for 3D assets from taking hours to a matter of seconds. On top of that, the assets now have a sculpted feel to them, making them higher quality just by dragging and dropping the material on top.

I was also responsible for dressing and lighting the scene.

Ruby Rhod Bust

Highpoly sculpt (rendered in Zbrush) and lowpoly model (rendered in Marmoset).

Base Camp

A Boderland inspired scene. Assets are from the UE4 Marketplace and Quixel. I made the sand materials

Others

You can find out more about these props on my Artstation or Sketchfab.