Stylized MailBox Props Art Test
Art test conducted for a 3d artist position at piratknight games. Unfortunately I wasn't accepted but I was able to meet the criteria of the art test and it was a good opportunity to improve my workflow on stylized props.
Stylized MailBox Props Art Test
Final Render in Unreal engine 5.1
FIRST STEP : Breakdown the concept
First step, I take the time to study the concept and to read the brief again, this allows me to plan how I will model the asset.
I separate the concept into several distinct elements so that I can model them easily and then put them together at the end. This allows me to see if I need references to help me with the modelling of the head, especially its topology when I have to do the low topology.
Concept art provided by the studio to make the Art test
Several references on the anatomy topology of the face and ears, I haven't done much anatomy in 3d and this was something I needed.
Blockout on 3Ds Max
I decided to use 3Ds max for modelling, as it is the software I am most comfortable with.
I started by doing a quick blocking of each separate part of the asset.
This allows me to see the complexities of each part, but also to know which elements I should import for sculpting in zbrush and which ones I can afford to work on entirely in 3ds max.
I'm also thinking about which elements can be duplicated to save me space on the Uv. I decided to make four variations for the floor tiles.
I spented more time on the organic elements (head, ears, nose) to have a solid anatomical on zbrush.
High poly
For the High Poly elements I start with the face sculpt on Zbrush, this is what takes me the longest, especially for the ears.I have more difficulty with organic elements than with hard surface. I also had to imagine the look of the hair which was not really visible on the concept.
For the rest of the elements, everything went quickly on max I had no difficulties
Retopology/Low poly
For most elements the low poly was done at the same time as the blockout to save time.
As for the head, nose and ears, I knew that the sculpt would distort the blockout. So I used maya with the quadraw tool for a retopology of these organic elements
UV
To unfold the Uvs of my model, I preferred to use the maya tools, which I find more pleasant than the tools of max. I had no restrictions on the resolution or the number of possible UVs. As the model is supposed to be adapted for a game engine, I chose to group the whole model on a single UV of 1k px.
I added another separate UV for the vegetation in 512 px.
Baking
For the firing, I used substance painter. I had to do a lot of switching between the software to get the face elements to apply correctly, at the same time I reworked the topology of some elements to better optimise the polycount.
As I wanted all my Uvs to be grouped on a single texture set, I applied an id for each group of elements that would share the same texture. Once bake on substance this would save me time for applying the textures.
Really happy with the face detail bake
Texturing
I stayed with substance painter to texture the model, I separated my textures into different files for each element. My aim was to make it as stylised as possible to fit the concept, but I also wanted to be able to differentiate and identify the materials.
For each material I used a layer overlay with a lot of masks and blur to simplify the shapes and give a little brushstroke look.
For texture export, substance already has a preset to simplify this by grouping metalic, ambient occlusion and roughness into one map.
Import Unreal/lighting/render
For the material setup on unreal I didn't have a vertex blend to configure so the master material was simple.
I didn't add any other elements than the ones in the concept except a cyclo in the background to give a neutral side to the scene and to make the asset stand out better.
For the stage lighting I kept it simple with a directional light with the light from the hdri. I added two more lights, a blue spot light and an orange spot light to have a warm and a cold side.
Final Render
I touched up the studio clip renderings slightly by adding informative elements to add a more professional touch to my test art.
CONCLUSION
To conclude this art test was a very good experience.
I didn't plan to spend so much time on this asset, it took me a total of 33 hours to do everything. I was surprised by the organic modeling and the different bake issues. But I got some positive feedback on the retopology workflow on maya, the scene/lighting setup on unreal and the material rendering.
Thanks again to piratkngiht for accepting me for this test, I rarely had such a good contact with a studio.
Feel free to make any feedback :)
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