Creating Stylized 3D Environment Of Edo Japan Featuring Mount Fuji

Introduction

Hello everyone! I am Adrián García Muñoz, more known as AdrySixx on socials, a 3D Environment Artist from Spain. I've been inspired by the articles on 80 Level so many times, and I'm super excited to be here for this breakdown!

Actually, I started in 3D art at the age of 20, looking for Blender tutorials because I wanted to work in the industry as a dream, and 5 years later, here we are. I worked from interactive systems in Unity at TMB (Tren Metropolitano de Barcelona) to Unreal and full title development, such as Creatures of Ava, with the team at Inverge Studios. I acquired all my knowledge from the Internet and working experience. I am really a self-taught artist, and I encourage everyone who doesn't have the resources for studying or paid mentorships not to give up!

It's been a while since my last personal project, and I was very motivated to start a new one with my own art direction and workflow. I think of personal projects as live paintings and a form of expression, just like any other artistic discipline, even if they're designed to be playable games.

Organization

To keep things organized, in the beginning, I made a Google Sheet with some data and notes, and ideally, there would be another one where you write down the time that it takes each asset.

A Great View of Mount Fuji

This environment started as a test because I just wanted to replicate the amazing grass of Project Black and its fluffiness, and in the meantime, I was studying Hokusai's work, which I ended up completely amazed with. The idea of gradually making a larger environment was becoming more present in my mind until the day I saw 又韭又菜right's concept. I completely fell in love with it, and I started the project from scratch.

So, just to give you a bit of context, this project is heavily inspired by the vision of the great wave of Kanagawa following the concept of 又韭又菜right. The Great Wave off Kanagawa is one of the most famous ukiyo-e from Hokusai, but the main protagonist is not the wave, it's Mount Fuji. All elements point to the mountain and form part of a series of ukiyo-e composed of 46 works, each and every one of which is Mount Fuji, the main character. The beauty of these pieces isn't found in a first glance or their composition, they speak of Japan's beauty, history, and life through the eyes of the venerable Mount Fuji. With this in mind, I started to plan the composition.

I picked this concept because it gave off such a calm vibe and instantly takes you back to Japan's Edo era. Since I was building this vision inspired by Hokusai's work, I felt like I had to try it in 3D, playing around with different workflows to mix realistic and stylized ways. 

Gathering references is so important at the beginning of the project. In my case, I started building it with project concepts and images IRL that matched the main vibe and art direction that I wanted to create. This is going to be the core, and you shouldn't change it. From here, you can add as many references as you want because you will end up focusing on the core vision.

Modeling

The blockout phase was quite simple. I don't like making the initial blockout too detailed unless the project requires it because it really takes a lot of time to work on details that I already have in my head. This way, I can save several weeks of work. This is a personal project, so keep in mind that each project has its own needs. In this case, I only needed to get the scale and composition right. 

The House

I left the creation of the house for the end because it was something that was going to take me a lot of time, as it had some complex elements that I needed to experiment with and test. Normally, before starting any asset or kit, the first step is to identify how many materials the object or surface has. Based on that, I analyzed which parts could be tiling materials, trim sheets, or baked textures, and from there, I could use the shader to make color variations or add more details.

To create the materials, I usually use different programs depending on which one I think will be easier for the task. In this case, for the house, I used ZBrush for sculpting and then Substance 3D Painter for the texturing. I kept it fairly simple because I was planning to add more detail later in the shader in a non-destructive way.

To mention some of the key techniques I used for the house, the most notable ones are World Align, Vertex Paint, and an RGB mask with different outputs to add color variation and detail to the texture. I can't recommend any specific video because it all depends on your technical preferences and material setup, but I do encourage you to do your own research and check out the workflows of different artists to get familiar with the process.

For my texturing phase, I usually follow a few key steps that are always the same. This process is procedural, which helps speed up the entire workflow.

• Base Color
• Ambient Occlusion
• Filler Color Variations with mask
• Edges 

Once the texture has a base that I feel comfortable with, I start breaking up any noticeable procedural repetition and begin adding hand-painted details and texture.

Vegetation

Trees

To make the trees, I usually think in terms of tree kits, often with three sizes: small, medium, and large. But in this case, I only sculpted one tree and reused it for the other two.

Regarding the trunk, I started by using TreeIt to create the base shape and moved it into ZBrush. In ZBrush, it's important to focus detail only on the middle part of the trunk since you'll save time. The rest (the upper part and branches) will be covered with a tileable material. 

Just like the rocks, my texturing process is very similar: I relied on procedural methods and hand-painting to add details and break up repetition. The more hand-painting you do, the more unique it will be.

This method gave me certain advantages in the project, such as:

• Saving time by focusing the detail on the middle part of the trunk;
• Achieving higher resolution in the UVs while maintaining texel density;
• Reusing the middle part of the trunk by changing the mesh at the top.

Doing all of this using only two materials (Trunk and Leaves) also helped keep the draw call optimized.

Leaves

I kept the leaf texture really simple, only adding a bit of depth and color since they were going to be seen from a medium to long distance. It's important to keep the texture readable and avoid creating excessive noise.

Each leaf card is hand-placed, making sure it keeps the shape I wanted. I experimented quite a bit with the normals, and I recommend you do the same because vegetation looks different depending on how the lighting hits it. In this case, I used an oval shape to transfer the normals to each tree individually.

There's nothing too special about the material, just make sure you have good SSS, wind control, and solid color control, too. 

Grass

The grass went through a lot of iterations until I was happy with how it turned out. As I mentioned, it started as a test to replicate the grass from Project Black, but it later evolved and developed its own style, more in line with the project. 

Here is a bit of the process of the grass, color, lighting, and variations. The trick to making this grass is a combination of a good ground texture, a good setup on Runtime Virtual Texture, and color variation. I used only four packs of plane cards with normals up and a trim sheet mask to define the shape and dress the scene based on their size.

To break up repetition in some areas that look too flat or when I wanted to add a bit of storytelling, for example, near the flowers, the grass is different because it has to share nutrients, so it adapts and takes on a different color, I used decals. That way, I don't use up a terrain layer, which would be more costly, and I keep the scene and terrain optimized. 

Flowers

For the flowers, I used a workflow where I painted them in Clip Studio Paint, and from there, I generated the normal and roughness maps. All the flowers are made using two trim sheets, one with smaller flowers and the other with larger ones. After that, it's just a matter of setting them up in Blender and playing with the normals like in any typical vegetation process. 

Breathing Life into the Scene

For the falling leaves, I created a particle effect using a different leaf texture that I used in trees for better readability. I made sure they fell in the same direction as the wind that moved the koi flag and grass, just to keep everything consistent. I created some butterfly VFX to add life to the scene. I really recommend this video from Pierrick Picaut:

For the smaller props, I set up a Blueprint that simulates motion directly in the material, so there's no need to animate the meshes themselves. This works using the Rotate About Axis node. The Blueprint finds the center of each object and passes that into the shader, which then rotates the mesh around that point.

One of the last things I added to the project was a bit of animation to bring everything to life. I used the Simple Grass Wind node to add movement to the foliage, and I applied it to the trees as well, but with a different wind weight to break the repetition and make it feel more natural. The grass also has a wind panning effect built into the material, which gives it its own subtle movement and helps everything look more organic. If you want to go for a more professional approach, you can use Pivot Point Painter and a global wind to control everything, but this is not the case.

Lighting

For the lighting, I did a fairly simple job. I used Lumen, and in terms of art, I followed the rule of warm lights and cool shadows, with the Directional Light having a slightly orange tint.

This lighting makes the place feel warmer, and the shadows feel like a resting area. Shots taken from there make you feel like you're in a cozy place.

Some technical changes that I made for lighting. Directional Light: Intensity 2.0 Lux, Use Temperature, Shadow bias 0.3, Cast shadow on clouds. ExponentialHeightFog: FogDensity 0.029. Second FogData: Fog Density 0.05, Fog Height Falllof 0.34, Start Distance 5000. As for Lumen, you should have this code active because it makes a weird occlusion between grass, and it happens only in shadow. r.Lumen.ScreenProbeGather.ShortRangeAO 0 

I didn't use any heavy post-processing because I don’t like altering the environment's colors since that changes all the colors of the assets that you will add to the scene. In this case, I just adjusted the shadows a bit to make them lighter and shifted them toward a cooler color.

Conclusion

This has been one of my biggest projects because of the complexity and amount of work I had to do. In the end, the bigger the environment, the more work it takes, but it's the closest thing to a real production, and the satisfaction of finishing a months-long project is indescribable. This project taught me how to apply all the knowledge I have, but above all, how to organize myself and meet deadlines. Also, after finishing it and looking back, it taught me that if you set your mind to it, you’re capable of anything.

In the end, this project is art, it's my way of expressing myself and sharing a vision that fascinates me, in this case, the vision of Hokusai. Many artists lose sight of why they do what they do and end up abandoning their projects. Don’t forget who you are and why you started your project.

The goals that are hardest to achieve are the most rewarding. Keep it up! Thank you for reading, drive safe!

Adrián García, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Emma Collins