Room 101 - Abandoned 1984 Inspired Diorama

Room 101 - Abandoned 1984 Inspired Diorama

This is an individual project I worked on during my time studying at Escape Studios. It was inspired by George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984. It is set in an abandoned brainwashing room. This is where people suspected of thought crime used to be arrested and brainwashed.

Project Overview

I created this project using Unreal Engine 4 during my second module. Recently, I revisited and redid the project in Unreal Engine 5 to utilize Lumen and Nanite. I applied feedback received as well as new skills and techniques gained since the initial creation.

I would like to thank everyone who has given me feedback especially my instructor, Christian Avigni during my time studying at Escape Studios.

From Old to New

This is a side-by-side comparison that shows the progress of the project from its state during my studies to the revisited version done later in Unreal Engine 5. 

One of the main goals I had for redoing the project was to improve my sculpting skills, create tiling materials in Substance Designer, and learn new techniques for modeling and texturing. I also wanted to focus on environmental storytelling through set dressing and lighting. 

Breakdown

Environment

I sculpted the damaged environment pieces in ZBrush, and utilized shaders in Unreal to create RGBA texture masks. Additionally, I created tiling textures for the plaster, tiles, and grout using Substance Designer and developed a blend material shader in Unreal for vertex painting. Finally, I used Megascans for the remaining tiling textures, decals, and foliage.

Props

I created all the props using subdivisional modeling in Maya, and baked and textured them using Substance Painter. To increase efficiency and maintain consistency in the environment, I created a smart material library to be reused on all the props.

Stencils were created using photoshop to add wear and tear details such as the rust and peeling leather effects.

All props use 2K textures. Grouped props are all packed together and use one texture set.

Tiling Materials in Substance Designer

One of the main feedback I got on the old version of the project, was that my tiling materials were not blending correctly using vertex painting, due to the fact that I simply used two different materials from Megascans. The main example was when I tried to create a broken tile effect with some grout showing behind. It was clear that the tiles and grout did not fit on one another. 

I decided that in the revisited version, I will improve my skills in Substance Designer to create my own Wall tiles, grout, and painted plaster materials. 

Clean and damaged Trim Sheets

Damaged Walls and Floor

High Poly Sculpts and their Low Poly Version

RGBA Mask and Normal Bake

Master Materials in Unreal Engine 5

My main challenge was figuring out a way to apply both the trim sheet on the undamaged section of the wall and the broken details on the damaged edges. I created an RGBA mask after baking the low poly wall with the high poly damaged details in Substance painter. I used this mask inside of a master material along with the trim sheet to determine which areas will have the baked normal details and/or dirt.

Another challenge I faced was creating a blend material for the wall tiles. I found that when using vertex painting, the transition of the broken tiles was either too sharp or too smooth. It didn't look realistic as the tiles should be completely removed. I ended up creating a mask in Substance Painter and using that to remove the tiles and show the grout material.  

RGBA Masked Material 

Material Blend with Puddle and RGBA Mask

References

Thank you for reading.

Please feel free to check out this project on Artstation