Stylized Environment

Just finished my recent Environment project!
I dedicated all of my free time on finishing this peace and now that I get to look at the finished results, I could never be prouder of the outcome.

For those who are interested, here is the list of softwares I used to make this piece:
- Autodesk Maya
- ZBrush
- Adobe Substance 3D Painter
- TreeIt
- Marmoset Toolbag
- Adobe Photoshop
- Unreal Engine 5
I used Maya to blockout all of my props, make the low polys, open UVs and rescaling.
In ZBrush I made the high poly versions which I then transferred to Substance Painter to bake and texture them.
I imported all of the rescaled meshes and texture maps in Unreal Engine 5 to set up my scene. Since my scene was in a forest, I needed to make foliage to fill in the negative space around the cart.
With TreeIt I made some simple trees, then in Photoshop I made custom alpha masks for the leaves and the rest of the foliage like the flowers.

In Marmoset Toolbag I made some renders of my favorite props and the stand alone cart to show off the textures.
The textures are a mixture of generators and hand painting in the final touches. Never in my life have I textured wood for so long.

I saved the best for last, a short 10 second Sequence of the scene made in Unreal Engine.
I exported the frames in .EXR files to ensure the best quality images, which I then placed them in Adobe Premier Pro to create the animation.

For those who are interested in my full process of making this scene continue reading below!
I made the blockout in Autodesk Maya for the cart and all of the props. Getting the shape right on the cart was a bit tricky since I still didn't have a clear vision of how I wanted the final result to look like.
Below are a few images of the process for the cart in Autodesk Maya.

After finishing things up in Autodesk Maya, I took all the props in ZBrush to make the high polies for them. My biggest mistake would be not placing the props in groups, instead I took every prop one by one. At first it doesn't sound too bad, but I had somewhere around 20+ props and the process took longer than it should've.

I textured everything in Substance 3D Painter. I enjoy texturing, but I was a bit overwhelmed with how many props I had to handpaint. Again, if I've had grouped the props together the texturing process wouldn't have taken so long to finish. Never the less, I pushed on and textured everything in the project.

I placed everything in Unreal Engine once I was done with the entire pipeline. Placing everything down took some time, especially making Materials and Material Instances for every sing prop because of my poor shader management.
I left the foliage for last. I made trees using TreeIt, the rocks were made in ZBrush and the grass was made in Autodesk Maya.
For the entire foliage part, I followed the tutorials on YouTube from Victoria Zavhorodnia. They were easy to understand and great for beginners. Her work is amazing and I strive to reach that level of quality.

While working on this project I was getting feedback from every side from my peers. I am a person that loves to share what they're working on. It did feel discouraging to keep getting change after change on the project. It felt like I had to keep fixing it until EVRYONE was happy with it. That of course is impossible, I noticed this when I was getting conflicted criticism. One person would say change A, while the other person disagrees and states that A doesn't need to be changed. This can be very overwhelming and confusing as a new artist.
What I've learned from this instance is, take the advice and criticism from everyone, but you decide which one fits best. Make the changes, if it makes the scene look worse, change it back to how it was.