Check out 5 awesome junior environment artists that are ready to jump into your project!
With the launch of 80 Level RFP, our internal collection of employment-ready artists keeps getting bigger. In these posts, we'd like to highlight some of the cool specialists, who shared some of their wisdom with us in the production interviews. These amazing artists are equally confident working on environment design, using ray-tracing technology and procedural software. Although all our guests are at the beginning of their careers, they would become a worthy addition to any team.
Abandoned Throne Room
Every project starts with the references, understanding the general idea, choosing the mood, and so on. A clear idea is an essential part of the production. James Ward has given a nice thought on the references and idea of the design when you are working on the scene.
There’s a whole psychology behind their design that targets the subconscious that is really interesting. For example, Thrones are always raised up from the floor (particularly in the older medieval era Throne Rooms) because it forced the individual to look up and see that the owner of that throne was higher than them, more imposing, more powerful, etc. This was something I knew I had to include if I was going to try and attempt to make it work.
James via interview.
Honoring the Gods
Lorenzo Trionfante has shared some details of the production of his truly majestic scene that he worked on during the course at GAI. He's got an awesome approach to master materials in UE4 and to creating realistic vegetation of the scene that he used.
"I'd say the key to a good looking organic texture is controlled randomness. Nature and organic forms are chaotic by nature but always follow the rules and patterns sometimes. Master materials are Unreal's big thing. Being able to create the main material with control parameters and share in with multiple material instances give you great control over the look of the material, and changing the values in real-time is the key to rapidly see what works and what doesn’t. It also allows you to break the monotony and repetitive look of vegetation. The color variation node is really handy for that. For the main terrain, I used three different materials heights blended in one shader. Then, instead of painting with landscape layers, I used vertex painting to paint out the different materials on the terrain".
Lorenzo via his breakdown.
Braided
You're a lucky person if you have a technical person in your team. Thilo Seifert knows how to combine artistry and programming skills, and, for sure, knows how to work in Houdini. Houdini is one of the hardest tools to learn and requires some technical skills for it. In the interview with us, Thilo shared his approach to creating a terrain in Houdini, which might come in handy if you want to recreate the scene we suggested or a similar one.
"Houdini has a feature called HeightFields that allows using 2D volumes for the creation of terrain. I had some experience with it previously, but unlike with the other projects I did before, I didn't want to split the landscape into multiple objects. Splitting landscapes up into different tiles is a clever way to save on simulation time, but it's a bit of a struggle to get all that heightmaps together, especially if you are working on the project in spare time. Like other terrain generation tools, Houdini also allows you to simulate erosion which is great, but for my case, I wanted a more direct method without spending hours on simulation. Luckily, I found a way to generate main rivers with a spline and “auto-creation” of side channels in Houdini".
Thilo Seifert via interview.
Desert Mirage
Michelangelo Cellini talked to us a while ago and shared his ray-tracing workflow in Unreal Engine 4. His article on our website has a step-by-step tutorial with examples on how to set it up and make it work and also gave some needed tips for those, who want to try out the ray-tracing technique in UE4.
- Top Tip 1: Generated LODs. I highly recommend having different LOD (level of detail) meshes for each of your assets. Fortunately, you can generate them directly in the Engine from the Details panel in the Static Mesh Editor.
- Top Tip 2: Color Grading. To improve the quality of your renders, a wide array of tools are available in the Post Process Volume. I recommend starting from the Global Color Grading settings inside the Details panel of the Volume and always having a reference at hand to match.
- Top Tip 3: Show FPS. A crucial tool to keep you in control of the performance in your scene is the FPS counter. Press Ctrl+Shift+H in the viewport, and you will now have a constant indication of how the level will perform once you build the project, press the shortcut again to hide the counter.
- Top Tip 4: View Modes and Buffer Visualization. In the Viewport, you have access to a wide array of View Modes, the ones I use the most are Roughness and Ambient Occlusion, found inside the Buffer Visualization category.
Ruined Lab
Color tones are responsible features for the mood and atmosphere. We've already mentioned Michelangelo's ray-tracing workflow in UE4, which will definitely set the right level of the expertise shown in your scene. Cody pays more attention to the colors and its tones, and how they correlate with each other, especially, the colors of objects and the lighting itself.
If there is a cool color on one side of the pod then a warm color hits the other. I think it gives a nice blend and really adds to the composition of the scene. Plus doing warm and cool lights to offset each other was an easy way to break up the sameness that my scene had. The majority of the lighting is warm because I wanted to play off all the cool tones that were in my materials, plus it also gave a sense of the nature coming in and taking over the scene.
Cody Hewitt while discussing his Ruined Lab scene.
If you're interested to check out more amazing concept artists, environment artists, designers and VFX magicians, check out the 80 Level RFP website.