Designing Mountain Shrine Environment In Traditional East Asian Style

Introduction

Hello! My name is Yanely Villanueva, and I'm a first-generation Hispanic artist currently studying at Gnomon School of Visual Effects in Hollywood, CA. Growing up in a creative household with artistic parents, I feel very fortunate to have been in an environment where art was accepted and encouraged.

I always knew I wanted to pursue the arts from a young age and was especially passionate about traditional painting and drawing. At 7 years old, I realized I wanted to become a 3D artist after watching the Pixar movie Cars and realizing that people could do this for a living!

As I got older, I began exploring the digital side of art, experimenting with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator. In my first year of high school, I was introduced to Cinema 4D and Maya, which really sparked my devotion to creating in a 3D space. Since starting at Gnomon, I've had the opportunity to collaborate on group projects, where I've focused on developing a more organic approach to modeling and sculpting.

Echoes in the Mountain Shrine

When getting started with my project, Echoes in the Mountain Shrine, I wanted to set a goal of what I was aiming for. Every project, I try to set a goal of what I believe I should push myself in and for this one, I wanted to push my environment more towards realism.

For this project, I was inspired by East Asian architecture and was pulling references from Chinese and Japanese culture. I also looked at references from Black Myth: Wukong, including its in-game environments and the concept art developed for it. My reference gathering included a mix of real-world photography, traditional architecture, and in-game environments to help guide the themes and direction of my scene.

Composition

When planning the composition, I started by gathering a lot of reference images from other artists' work to get a sense of what resonated with me visually. I focused on applying compositional techniques like the rule of thirds and, most importantly, the golden spiral to guide the viewer’s eye through the scene.

For the blockout, I created a basic layout both in Maya and Unreal Engine to start visualizing the overall structure and framing. This helped me establish where I wanted to lead the eye and how the elements would interact within the space. I, along with my teacher Jon Arellano, did a few paintovers on top of the blockout to explore placement, tone, and the overall look I was aiming for. 

Modeling

When creating the assets, I started by making a breakdown list of everything I would need in the scene. From there, I prioritized the hardest and largest pieces first, then worked my way down. After gathering references, I jumped into Maya to begin blocking in shapes and experimenting with silhouettes until I found something that felt right for the scene.

For the main structure, I spent a lot of time studying references to flying eaves, trying to understand how they were built. This was one of the more challenging parts of the project, as I needed to figure out how all the architectural elements came together and connected under the roof. I ended up watching several architectural videos and studying Blueprints to get a clearer understanding of the construction.

Once I had fleshed-out models, I brought them into ZBrush to begin sculpting, depending on what I was working on. For example, with structures, I started adding wear and damage, while for the rocks, I continued sculpting on top until I found a silhouette that felt the most natural and visually appealing.

In ZBrush, when sculpting the rocks, I created a Surface NoiseMaker file decal that I could place across multiple rock assets to maintain a consistent visual theme. This helped tie all the pieces together and gave the environment a more unified look. I also used brushes like Trim Dynamic and Fast Mallet 2 on all the rocks to further reinforce that consistency in surface detail and form. 

Retopology

For retopologizing from ZBrush, I used the Decimation Master plug-in to quickly generate a lower-resolution version of my sculpt, which I then brought into Maya. Once in Maya, I either unwrapped the UVs directly or manually retopologized the mesh to get a clean, optimized, low-poly version of each asset. I kept the texel density consistent across the scene and organized my UVs to make the most out of my texture space. This workflow helped ensure everything was clean, optimized, and ready for baking and texturing in Substance 3D Painter.

Texturing

For texturing the scene, I wanted to create tileable textures to keep consistency across large surfaces. To achieve this, I used a combination of Substance 3D Painter, Substance 3D Designer, and ZBrush. In 3D Designer, I created tileable materials that I could reuse throughout the scene, which helped keep the visual language cohesive. I used 3D Painter for detailed texturing and material blending on specific assets, while ZBrush allowed me to quickly sculpt materials to bring into 3D Designer to build on top of. 

Lighting & Rendering

Lighting is one of the most important elements I try to plan from the very beginning. It plays a huge role in storytelling and mood, and from the start, I knew I wanted the scene to have a low, moody atmosphere with bright pops of color. Throughout the project, I was constantly experimenting with the lighting setup.

I tried to have detailed lighting in place early on, as this helped me better find the tone of the scene and also gave me a better sense of how my props and textures would look in context. 

Conclusion

Creating this project was a really fun and valuable learning experience. I challenged myself to create a full rock kit and aim for a more realistic look throughout my environment. The entire project took around 9 weeks to complete, and one of the main challenges I faced was learning how to sculpt large-scale rocks, as well as understanding the complex architecture of flying eaves in Chinese and Japanese culture. It pushed me to think more critically about the silhouette and how smaller details come together to create a cohesive scene.

I believe that challenging myself and experimenting with new approaches in each project is what allows me to grow as an artist. One of the biggest factors that helps me improve is actively asking for feedback, whether it's from friends, teachers, or anyone willing to give a fresh perspective. Getting that fresh perspective after staring at a project for so long, really helps me see areas for improvement that I might miss.

With that, I'd like to thank my teachers at Gnomon, Jon Arellano, for his detailed and constructive feedback on my scene, and Anton Napierala for always answering my technical questions about Unreal Engine. I'm also extremely grateful to my friends for constantly offering insight, fresh perspective, and encouragement to keep pushing forward!

Yanely Villanueva, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Amber Rutherford