Recreating the world of Hiroshige

The final Studio 3 team project 'Hiroshige' is an immersive VR experience, I enjoyed recreating the artist Utagawa Hiroshige's unique Ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings into 3D. The challenge was to retain the forms and keep the models as low poly as possible for optimal performance for our game. As 3D Modellers we tend to want to add as much detail as possible, so going back to basic block modelling in Maya was the best route.

Female Shopkeeper character concept art by my talented fellow student at UTSALA 2020 Chelsea Hocroft. 

Substance Painter is a very intuitive app to use for 3D texturing. The tools and techniques I've learned were simply by me playing around inside Substance painter and discovering things for myself. For 'Hiroshige' it was about respecting the source material and matching the original artworks as closely as possible. It was also very rewarding helping others on the team with Substance-related workflows even though I was a newbie to the app myself.

The Fisherman and one of many trees I modelled and surfaced based on Hiroshige's artwork.

For a few of the environmental objects and props, I was given photos for reference. I modelled them in Maya and gave them that distinctive Hiroshige style in Substance using different Fill layers and masks.

The best thing I've learned from this experience is that my time management skills have improved thanks to the guidance of my professional mentors at the academy. I was producing more models and finalizing assets much sooner than I was earlier in the course working on other projects. It's bittersweet saying goodbye to UTSALA 2020, this year has flown by! But it has been great collaborating with so many talented people, overcoming the challenges of this year, and meeting so many inspirational people working in the industry.