Ancient Serpent Gods: Reptilian Portal

Environment technical art project:

Ancient Serpent Gods:   Reptilian Portal

Presentation video

                                                                 Blocking

Blocking is for me one of the most important parts of the project, because it lays the foundations for all subsequent processes. It helps us to identify all the models that we will have to produce and to calculate scale.
We can create a blocking of practically any scene within Unreal Engine, using basic shapes; When necessary I use booleans within the Modeling mode, or import blocking elements from my favorite DCC.

The Cave creation modular workflow

The creation of the entire rock structure of the cave required a few modules that we will later instantiate on all the walls and ceilings. First I create a rough blocking of each module in my DCC and then on top of that, I sculpt a high poly model in Zbrush and do decimation to get the low poly model. 

The texture of rock modules doesn´t relys on UV coordinates. Instead I create a shader in Unreal Engine with the World Aligned Texture feature that allows you to project textures onto static mesh objects without needing UV coordinates. Using this technique we will achieve uniformity in the texture tiling in all the models and the seams where the models touch will not be noticeable.

The Reptilian Portal creation

For the decorative and architectural elements that make up the portal, I made the low poly and high poly models in Zbrush. From my DCC I export a very rough blocking that only consists of two or three meshes that I will cut and sculpt in Zbrush. I find the SliceCurve brush very useful for cutting the different stone blocks that the portal is built from. 

After creating the UV coordinates of the low poly models, I use Substance Painter to texture the models. At this point the first thing I do is to texture a single model and when I have achieved the look I like, I create a smart material that I will apply to the rest of the models. In this way we obtain speed and visual coherence.

Water shader

In the shader for the red fluid it is important to highlight the WorldPositionBehindFromDepth_experimental node, which will allow us to create a mask based on the depth. This mask will be important to interpolate 3 colors (darker with greater depth) and two opacities.

VFX and finishing touches

I like creating particle systems and VFX in Niagara because I find it exciting and I think they contribute a lot to storytelling. In this project for the portal I added several particle emitters to suggest movement and energy.