The Lost Temple / Rookies Award 2020

Hello everyone, I'm going to present you here, step by step, the scene I did to participate in the 2020 Rookies Award competition. 

Day and night cycle presentation

 I spent a lot of time working on the general atmosphere of the scene, both in its day cycle but especially in its night cycle. I wanted to work on the lights to make it as visually interesting as possible. 

I modeled all the scenery, mesh and props in Maya. I made several tests during the modeling phase in order to get as close as possible to my sketches and references. Then I switched to Zbrush to make the different High Poly Mesh. After making clean and optimized U.V., I made a baking in Substance Painter, to finally be able to texture them, based on my references. I did a lot of texture variation tests, in order to get the most convincing visual and the most faithful to my expectations. After various tests of textures and integration, I got down to the level design and atmosphere of my scene.

Here is a small step-by-step explanation of the creation of my scene, how I managed the collisions, my management of lights and reflection, my scene in "Unlit" and the final result.

Here's the wireframe detail of my scene. I tried to optimize as much as possible while keeping enough details so that the final visual after integration in Unreal Engine 4 is quite satisfying. I went through several optimization phases to reach a good compromise between polycount and nice visual.   

I did all the level design and layout. Based on my sketches that I made in order to have a clear and detailed view of what I wanted as level design, and based on the references I found on the internet and in different art books. Here too, I made several attempts to make the level design as clear and realistic as possible, and then I arranged and filled the level with props and decals for more realism.

(some images come from the World Of Warcraft games, others come from The Elder Scrolls Online or Tomb Raider games. The other come from the Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia)

Here are some sketches that I made in my spare time in order to have a clear and precise idea of the scene I was going to create. I thought about the layout of the level, I made different tests of plants and stone / bricks, textures and materials that I could use in my scene.

Well, this is where my Rookies Award project presentation ends. 

Thank you for taking the time to read me and see the work I've done for this Rookies Award 2020. 

Frydman Mathias, Junior environment artist