Creating Korean Buddhist Temple-Inspired Fantasy Gates

Introduction

Hello! I'm Maxx Ortiz, a 3D Environment Artist based in Los Angeles, California. My background is in Fine Art, graduating from San Francisco State University with a BA in Studio Art. I found myself unfulfilled with where I was professionally after graduating, so I did some research and came across Gnomon School of Visual Effects, where I graduated from the two-year certificate program in 2023.

I became trained in 3D at Gnomon and began my career working in television as a 3D artist at Studio Connelly. There, the team worked on designing sets for shows like Top Chef, The Voice, Dungeon Masters, The Roast of Kevin Hart, American Culinary Cup, and more. Where I fit into the pipeline was turning the concepts into 3D environments in Unreal Engine, which we'd show studios prior to them buying materials and building them out. My favorite shows I got to contribute to were definitely Top Chef and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Reunion - shows I got obsessed with during the COVID lockdown, which made these opportunities full-circle moments for me.

The Jade Portal

Originally, Jade Portal was very different from what it turned out to be, visually speaking. I shelved the project for some time once I started a new job and came back to it when I signed up for a mentorship from Vessel Forge. Conceptually, I kept the meat and potatoes, but my mentor, Jonathan Benainous, helped me really edit and clean up what I had going on. I was initially inspired by artist Do Ho Suh's piece titled Portal, where he takes a scan of a real gateway in Korea and creates a clear acrylic resin sculpture of it. All his work has such an etherealness to it, and I wanted to get some of that into this environment.

As far as the technical side, I wanted to get more comfortable sculpting rocks and creating detailed forms in Substance 3D Designer, exhibited in the wood throughout the piece. I used pictures from sites like Sugwangjeon Buddhist temple, Bukjijangsa Temple, and Woljeonggyo Bridge. Starting with Do Ho Suh's work, I went down a rabbit hole of traditional Korean Architecture and came across these places. The saturated, vibrant adornments really drew me in and felt like a good challenge to implement into this piece.

Workflow

For the composition, I played with simple shapes and early blockouts of rocks in Unreal until I got something that felt appealing and had a brutalist sense to it. I wanted the composition to lend to the grandeur of the scale, and to me, brutalist forms naturally speak to that. Once I got my composition nailed, I began getting everything modeled in Maya, breaking up pieces as needed for my kit, and color-coding them to keep track of which textures would need to be made. When it came to the rocks, I started them in Maya so I could gauge how the shape language would read with the rest of the environment, then I transferred them to ZBrush and got sculpting.

For retopo, the only things that really needed it were the rocks, which were decimated in ZBrush. Anything that isn't sculpted is carefully modeled as I go, that way, I don't have to double back and retopologize something I could've just built the first time correctly. For the rocks, I decided to try RizomUV for unwrapping, and I'm glad I did, as it's a brilliant software for this use and saves TONS of time here while giving you optimal control. Modeled assets are pretty straightforward when using tileable materials, as long as the appropriate UV islands are straightened and match texel density, we're good to go. Modeled assets were all UV'd in Maya.

My texturing workflow here was entirely done in Substance 3D Designer. Most of the general materials, like the rocks and various bricks/blocks, I created variants to use in vertex painting. Once the first version is complete, it's quite quick and simple to get a variant in 3D Designer, with just the toggling of a few sliders and editing a few values, you have another layer of detail you can customize as needed.

When it came to my trim sheet for all the wood, I first made a basic wood grain texture to then build my painted patterns over. I really had to work closely with my reference here, so I stuck to only a handful of images that I tried to replicate via manipulating and stacking shape nodes. Once I had a couple of simple node streams that gave me good results, it became a simple matter of tweaking and stacking them into larger streams.

Creating this trim sheet was probably my favorite part of the process. Once things sort of click, it gets very easy to become obsessed with your texture and almost becomes a bit of a game.

Scene assembly adjusted my composition slightly once things started coming together, but this is one of the fun parts of making any art – you get to go with the flow, see what works best as you progress. With this in mind, I placed details where I did so that they would enhance the composition and give the eye some rest space.

For the lighting, I began by getting a very general lighting setup where everything is visible, just until I reach a point where I know I've touched everything that needs attention, then I start dialing it in. My first step after this was to dim the environment down to near-dark, then I made sure the focal point was well-lit from my primary source – the sky above the cavern. After this, I made sure the other lights complemented the composition, and this is how I chose where to place my pinkish/reddish lights. I did minimal post-processing, as I want to make sure the real-time rendering is represented well. I only boosted the saturation a bit and nudged some values.

Conclusion

This project took about six months in my spare time after long work hours. My main challenge during production was pushing through and putting the time in after work, to be honest.

Something they don't mention too much in school or in general is how important it is to keep growing and honing your skills outside of our jobs, and this project served not only as an opportunity to learn and reinforce new skills, but also to jumpstart getting into good habits when it comes to making time for my art. I definitely learned that it's easier to keep habits going than to stop and start again later. Every day might look different in terms of time put into a project, but even putting in 15 minutes gets you that much closer to where you wanna be.

Maxx Ortiz, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Emma Collins