Japanese Bakery Diorama

This is the final shot of my Japanese Bakery Diorama.

This is the second project that I have completed on my MA Game Art Course.

Prior to studying Game Art, I was employed within a completely different field so I only started learning 3D art in February 2020.

The brief was to create a diorama with a six week time frame, so I decided to create a traditional Japanese bakery which was heavily inspired by Studio Ghibli's 'Kiki's Delivery Service', Tokyo Storefronts By Mateusz Urbanowicz, and Pixar's short 'Bao'. During this project the FF7 remake was released which informed some of my lighting and prop decisions (particularly focusing on Aerith's home kitchen).

There had been a lot of trial and error in relation to getting the composition and lighting

These are the blockout stages of my project. One mistake that I made was completing all of the blockout in Maya rather than importing all meshes into UE4 so that I could conduct lighting passes and not waste time placing objects within the scene that would later be exported out and placed individually. 

After finalising my blockout in Maya, I began to bring my meshes into UE4 and get started on the texturing process and lighting passes.

The original lighting for this scene was very warm and orange which I later changed to be quite cool toned as it was set in the mid afternoon.

For the alcove above the cooking area, it took me a few attempts of trial and error to finally settle on the right material for this. You will also see that the UVs for this are stretching and are restricted, so I went back into Maya and fixed this!

I settled on using a basic material created in UE4 and applied a normal map to create that more rustic and traditional bakery look which was inspired by my references mentioned above. 

For the lighting of this scene, I decided to use the window to my advantage and as the main source of light that the diorama would be receiving. I placed some fog within the scene and also some point lights so that the light coming from the window would be bounced which is more accurate to how light works within the real world. This created areas of light and dark within the scene and leads the eye around the back of the kitchen to the front and finally to the cakes!

For the stove, I actually used several decals and emissives to exaggerate heat coming from the appliance. 

I created this by modelling multiple separate pieces and placing these around the oven. This is most prevalent for the doors.

The legs of the oven were modeled in ZBrush and then quad drawn in Maya for the low poly mesh.

I used the boolean tool to create the rounded pieces of the oven by the chimney.

For the rounded panels at the bottom of the oven I used the extrude and extract tools within Maya to create the desired shape.

This is the final outcome of my diorama which I am quite pleased about as it is my second completed project on the course that I'm completing. 

The closer I got to completion of this project, the more smaller details I could add which helped to complete the scene. I took a lot of inspiration of the posters from Pixar's short 'Bao'. The posters used on the wall have been taken from: https://ernie.exblog.jp/page/28/

I really enjoyed setting up the camera for this shot. I was using the rule of thirds here to create an image that leads the eye around the scene. The focal point is the wood burning oven, which then tails off to the stove, posters and windows. To create the heat effect on the wood burning stove, I used a decal and emmissive to exaggerate a dull heat coming from the stove. 

Okay, so every time I look at this I get instantly hungry. Because I was running extremely low on time, I completed the meshes for the cakes in about a day. They have been created using basic shapes with some bevels and extrusions. I then exported these and took them into Substance Painter so that I could texture them. Unfortunately, I did not have much time to create textures from scratch so I downloaded materials from Substance Share, but made tweaks so that the cakes had the desired look that I wanted them to have. To make the cakes, I used a lot of reference from instagram, pinterest, and food blogs which featured popular bakery items that are available in Japan. I wanted to make my bakery seem as authentic as possible, but also add a fun twist! 

This is a final high up shot of the diorama. To make the bakery look more lived in I added some barrels which hold bulk amount of ingredients for the bakery. I also added flour on the baking table to imply that the bakers have been creating their delicious creations. 

Overall, as this is my second project which has been completed in a short time frame of 6 weeks, I think this came out pretty well. 

What went right? 

-I was able to replicate a more traditional Japanese Bakery using references from the real world, games and animations.

- Used a colour scheme which fit well overall

-The food looks appetising

 -Attention to detail - e.g. posters, notes for bakers, money in till

-Set dressing

What went wrong? 

- My Art Bible was too vague when creating the props and lighting list

- Most of my time was dedicated to modelling assets

- My workflow could have been improved vastly

- I Could have used more material instances in UE4

- Too much time spent worrying if this would be my best work

- Some of the first pass textures are still on meshes because I ran out of time

- Could have spent more time on lighting