Cyber Alley - A One Week Environment

Hey there! I'm Noah, and my journey into VFX started with my love for video games and movies. The idea that I could be part of creating the worlds I adored pushed me into the vibrant realm of Visual Effects. It was at Pixl Visn that I found my groove, focusing on texturing and shading to breathe life into digital creations.

In our coursework team, we dove into developing a cyberpunk-themed environment. I pitched in by crafting a particular section of the scene. I aimed to make assets that could be reused to enhance our overall vision.

To kick things off, I began by creating a rough layout of my scene, striving to closely resemble the references I gathered. Once that foundation was set, the hunt for usable assets commenced. Surprisingly, finding suitable elements was smoother than expected, thanks to Kitbash offering Cyberpunk-related items in their free rotation. This meant I only needed to model a few specific elements—a garage, dumpster, walls, pipes, and miscellaneous items for scattering. It wasn't overly complex, thankfully.

Since my main focus is on texturing, I wanted to invest most of my time there. Once I finished the basic layout and models, I dived into texturing my hero asset—the dumpster—using Mari, my go-to software. I spent a good chunk of time browsing online images of dumpsters, noticing many were covered in graffiti, fitting perfectly with the alley atmosphere I aimed for. I also aimed for a weathered, damaged look to make it feel authentic.

Stumbling upon material nodes in Mari through some awesome tutorials was a game-changer for me. Once I got into my project, I gave them a try for the first time to level up my textures. Gotta admit, I loved how they kept my nodegraph neat and tidy—made things a whole lot easier!

I was genuinely excited to give EmberGen a go, thinking it could bring some real magic by making that smoke rise from the manhole. But when I placed it in my scene, it didn't quite catch the eye as I had imagined.

The most daunting task was ensuring the render's lighting was free of noise, especially when using Arnold. It consumed a significant amount of time, particularly with the mesh lights also the VDB from Embergen didn't do me a favor. To meet deadlines, I had to compromise and reduce the resolution to 720p.

Full workflow overview in that order:

1. Blockout, Modelling and UV unwrapping - Maya

2. Texture baking (AO / Cavity / ID) - Substance Painter

3. Texturing - Mari

4. FX - Embergen

5. Shading, Rendering - Maya Arnold

6. Compositing - Nuke

7. Video Editing - DaVinci Resolve

This project was a treasure trove of new discoveries, especially in navigating the workflow from Mari to Maya. Exploring the exciting features within Mari was an absolute blast! Your time invested in reading about my journey here is truly appreciated. I'm all ears for any feedback you might have!