A Forgotten Sword

How it was made

Reference study

To start off i went on pinterest and found some references for a stylized environment, but since it wasn't enough i went in the game and made some screenshots that i could use as inspiration.

After studying my references, i started modeling my main assets, the master sword and the rock. I modeled them to be a game asset so i decided to stay as low poly as possible.

Modeling and Texturing main assets

Modeling the asset wasn't that easy, but since it was for a game environment i used a lot of booleans and retopologized and left some parts penetrated with each other, getting the sword proportions right was the thing that made it the most difficult.

For the texturing: my workflow was going to be using just the base color channel to make a stylized type of texturing, and of course using normals too. so i started by making a base layer of roughness with 0.8 value.

Than i started with the base color, to which i added variations of color on top, darker and lighter. To make the painted style effect i used brushes that would be similar to a water color stroke, for example dirt brush or water color brushes from kyle. I used smart masks too, with the combination of ambient occlusion or curvature maps. But one of my most used effects for this project was the blur slope effect that added a lot the idea of the water color paint. When i reached this point of variations i added some more details: i added highlights to the edges of the sword where the light would reflect more and i added some scratches too. To top it all off: i made two layers, one for the shadows one for the lighting. For the shadows layer i made a dirt generator map, so that it would follow the borders of the mesh, and than i corrected it with a paint layer in multiply mode. For the lighting layer, i made a white fill layer in soft light mdoe, with a baked light filter in the fill, than added a blur slope filter to smooth it out. Reaching this point you can already see a realisitc kind of effect with only the base color channel active. I reapeted this process too for the rock, which i screen recorded so you can see in the time laps video. For the silent flower i took a 3d model online and textured it myself.

Here is the turntable:

Some of the renders i made:

Environment

When all the textures for the main assets where ready, i jumped into unreal engine to create a stylized envoirement. First thing first: the landscape. I made a small landscape with 4 color materials, that i painted using a water color brush alpha.

I than created the grass, i modeled it using planes, adjusted the normals to be all pointing upwards and imported them in unreal. I created a material that would make the grass take the color from the landscape, and of course i added the wind effect. Before modeling other assets, i modeled some flowers too, and i made a simple texturing, made the material on unreal engine and placed some in the map.

To make the environment even more stylized, i made some alpha maps some clouds and than added them in the scene.

When my landscape was ready, i modeled some trees on blender using the tree generator. To make the leaves i placed a lot of planes to make a shape of a ball and than i duplicated them to make the shape of the tree leaves. I textured the trees making color variations with simple maps in substance, than i added it in unreal engine. To make the leaves i made a material that used the alpha map that i made before, with a lot of controls that makes me change the color, wind force, thickness of the leaves. i added even an emissive so that the leaves would look more stylized since they have less shadow.

Okay, landscape ready, time to make some ruins.

I jumped straight to maya and i started modeling some temple ruins for my sword, it was pretty easy since they were low poly and after i modeled them i texture them by making a smart material so that i would have randomness in my maps and a lot of color variations. On top of all a layer of baked light.

Finalizing envoirement

To make my environment more interesting, i modeled some stylized rocks, some vines, and i lastly added some other ruins that are made by Conrad Justin. I than added more trees with different sizes and adjusted the fog so that it would make more god rays and a realistic look. One thing that i loved to make was the butterflies niagara particle system. It was quite easy, i firstly made the butterfly texture in photoshop, after that i made a plane in maya with only a couple edges where the wings start. When in Unreal, i made a material that made the part of the plane where the wings are move, and made the whole plane go up and down. After that i made a particle system that would make these planes spawn all over in a circle motion an that they would go at different speeds.

Other views of the environment:

here is the time laps where you can see glimps of what i explained:

Conclusion

Making this project was really fun, i learned a lot of new things on unreal engine, some really nice tricks when working with a sylized stle. What i loved the most is that when texturing in a stylized manner, it becomes sort of a real painting, where the canvas is the 3d model. And giving much expression with only colors it's a difficult but enjoyable thing.