Terrain Workflow Exercises // Unreal 4 //

With the weekend coming to a close I wanted to post the results of the Terrain Exercise I have been working on.

Unreal 4 Captures

 

Terrain material setup in Unreal

-Setting up the Terrain PBR Material was my favorite part of the process. It took several hours of tweaking and revisiting maps in Photoshop to hone in the desired look.

-The only problem I ran into was with the Roughness map. Unreal 4 requires you to invert the red channel of your control map by utilizing a 1-x node within the material editor.

-I also recently learned that Substance Designer has a plugin for Unreal which allows you to update your catalog of texture maps in real time, assuming it works without issue you could really reduce the time spent on adjusting textures.


 3rd Person Camera for scale-

Aerial shot 

Wrap Up


1. Zbrush or Mudbox // Create rough displacement maps to be utilized in World Machine
2. World Machine // Node based authoring to generate various maps |height|normal|flow|splat|
3. Photoshop // Authoring, Organizing, and Finalizing .tga files for engine.
4. Unreal 4 // Import height map for terrain tool, import texture maps, and create/author terrain PBR material.

Terrain Workflow Exercises // World Machine // Mudbox

Nothing spectacular at this point, generating some terrains out of World Machine and spitting out some displacements for use within Mudbox. Next will be getting these maps into Unreal 4

Terrain 01

Terrain 02

 

Vector Displacement Map usage in Mudbox

 

 

During production of Halo 4 I had the honor of working with some amazing concept artists.  This door was Designed by Josh Kao, who is still rocking it here at 343.

Out of all the assets I modeled for Halo 4 this one was by far the most fun. The high poly never received a proper render in production as the schedule had all of us moving right along.

I'm looking forward to showing the work I have completed on Halo 5. But until then, here is a proper render this asset deserves. 

 Prop exercise // Ear Defenders

Overdue for some new exercises so here is a speed sculpt from this evening.

 This scene has evolved many times over and it feels like things are finally coming together.

Its time to show some love to the focal point. I tied my hand at some paint over work to help resolve the design of the door, I want the door to feel utilitarian while very much grounded in a sci fi genre.

Breaking up the hard surface work, I dived into zbrush this past week. Head busts are always fun as they allow for quick exercises in anatomy. // Here are the results

Latest WIP // Finally coming together

 Trying my hand at more paint over work to help resolve some of the undefined shapes

Texture sheets are up next for the project

Additional WIP Shots

Environment WIP

This is the latest environment I have been focusing on. This has gone through many iterations, so many that I got fed up with it at one point, left it alone for a few months, and now revisiting. 

Unreal 4

Unreal 4  Materials // Snow


Setting up materials for a project I am currently working on in Unreal.

Getting light to react to snow in Unreal is tricky. The secret however is utilizing a "bumpoffset" node in conjunction with your texture's normal map.

Hard Surface / Portable Fuel Container

I was always fascinated by the aesthetic of military equipment. Set aside the over done weapons and vehicles, and you still have an amazing catalog of equipment to use in hard surface studies.

During my deployment, patrols would utilize these portable fuel depots. Fuel, like many other mission vital liquids were often transported in these containers with varying designs.

 Color Variations

Starting the new year off with some exercises

Marmoset with PBR approach

 

 Color variation and scale

Modo

Love me that Lord of the Rings.

I have always been a huge fan of the Elven designs that Alan Lee and John Howe have laid down in sketch books, and of course with the insanely talented hands over at Weta these designs were brought to life for the big screen. These iconic assets scream everything Tolkien, and I had a need to study them.

 I had a blast studying in Tolkiens universe, certainly looking forward to visiting it again.