Lost and Found (Ancient Cave Environment)

This environment was created using Unreal Engine 4 as well as Maya, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, and Zbrush. This project, in a way, is the culmination of everything I've learned over my last four years in college. From creating materials, texture painting, sculpting, baking high to low, you name it. This was an extremely fun project that game me the chance to work with more organic assets and a chance to sculpt things like rocks, walls, damage, and it gave me a chance to play with foliage as well. Being able to tell a story through just visuals is something that has always been of interest to me and I love everything about it and about what I do. Below are some beauty shots as well as some up close and personal shots as well.

Lighting was a huge part of this project, as it is in most. Using fog and volumetric lighting for this scene paid off in a big way as having the fog present, it does most of the work creating a mystical feel as well as creating some nice light shafts. It gives this scene its overall dramatic feel.

Using foliage assets like trees, logs, and grass helps break up the view when looking up and the trees create a nice silhouette grounding the space. 

I wanted to keep small details in mind anywhere I could and you can see some of that here. Although it is subtle, when taking dramatic shots like this it helps add visual interest and it breaks up the surface quite a bit. Same goes for the puddle decals, which provide great subtle reflections of the light around it as well as add more visual interest.

This reverse shot just shows what the environment looks like when viewing from the entrance pillars you see in the first beauty shot.

Creating props that the explorers would've brought is of course essential and it helps push that narrative that people are still here, exploring and that this is clearly where they've made their home base. From the map to the books and lights, small items like those always help the story you are trying to tell. The necklace with the norse symbol pushes the idea that they were here before the explorers way back when and that now they've found evidence of that.

These two shots below show the majority of the items the explorers brought with them, crates with light equipment and portable generators to power everything up. Tarps are always essential when brings your own gear.

These last two shots are of my hero asset, a vintage Nikon camera that the head of this group takes everywhere with him. Although it is a small asset, it is definitely one I wanted to have because this is an item that is very important and valuable to this explorer. It's more important than the findings themselves as this is how he gets to show his findings, taking images. It's seen better days but it never misses an expedition. 

Here is a model sheet for the Nikon as well. Simple model to create and let the texturing do most of the work.

I've also included a few detailed lighting renders as well, these really show off the detail baked on from the sculpts I've created.

This project had tons of iteration over the time that I worked on it. The numerous light builds for subtle changes, and just the overall set dress of the scene saw change almost everyday. It was very important to listen to feedback and to make this scene the best it could be. I've included a process view to show the big chucks of progress overtime from my two main angles.

Now this scene isn't made up of to many parts. There are more props then there are environmental assets just for variety sake. I wanted the scene to be super modular in terms of structure. Here are some of the modular assets used as well as additional assets and props. (Some are scaled up to show better).

That about wraps it up! Thank you judges for taking the time to review my entry and look at my work. Creating this project was a blast and I couldn't be happier with it. Creating visual narratives and telling a story through just visuals is something I love to do and it's something I always strive for. Thanks again for checking this out, and I hope everyone stays safe!

-Christopher Griffin