How To Model & Render A Stylized Scene Featuring A Half-Timbered Magical Station

Introduction

Hello! My name is Shannon Welsh, and I'm a 3D Environment Artist for games based in Vancouver, Canada. I'm currently in the Mentorship term at Think Tank Training Centre — the last term of the 64-week program. About a year ago, I was learning how to use 3D modeling software for the very first time!

Prior to enrolling in the CG Asset Creation program at Think Tank, I studied Art History and held an assortment of different jobs. I found that I wasn't enjoying what I was doing or feeling creatively fulfilled. After doing some soul-searching, a lot of research, and talking to different people, I decided that I wanted to go back to school to gain some hard skills. Eventually, I discovered Think Tank and the world of 3D art. Looking at all of the students' work, I thought: "This is insanely cool — I want to do this!!" I enrolled in the program with no experience in 3D art — it was a steep learning curve, but I felt (and still feel) very motivated and passionate about developing my skills as an artist. 

The instructors at Think Tank have taught me so much about the workflow for game art, the different software used, and the qualities that make 3D art excellent. Additionally, I think my attention to detail and creative eye, which was trained during my Art History education, has contributed to my skills in 3D art.

What really drew me to environments and props for games specifically was something that one of my instructors said during the first term at Think Tank. They talked about how buildings and objects can tell a story, which reminded me of what I loved about studying Art History. This, combined with my love of beautiful environments that I've explored in Horizon Zero Dawn, The Last of Us, and Assassin's Creed, made me confident in my desire to pursue this path.

About the Adventurer's Rest Stop Project

My last project at Think Tank was more prop-focused in an interior setting, so for this project, I wanted to push myself to create an exterior environment. I love the look of half-timbered buildings found in Germany and France, and I wanted to create something that was medieval or fantasy-inspired.

After scouring ArtStation for ideas, I came across a concept by Panda Dao. The building looked very whimsical and charming! I also loved that the artist included notes talking about how the building would be used as a place for travelers to rest, sharpen their weapons, and gather supplies before going on their next adventure. For this project, I wanted to push myself to become more comfortable using Substance 3D Designer and try out making foliage.

After selecting my concept, I used PureRef to assemble my references. I separated my references into three categories: Architecture, Props, and Foliage. From there, I studied my concept and made a list of everything that I needed to make in each category. I try to be very intentional with my reference collecting, as there's no point in having an image clog up your board if it's not going to help you in some way. This mindset helps keep the board clean and legible.

Composition, Blockout & Modeling

The first thing I did was set up my camera in Maya to match the angle in my concept, which I would return to and tweak throughout the blockout process as needed. Next, I imported a mannequin from Unreal Engine to assist me with assessing scale. It was helpful to have a person depicted in the concept to assist with assessing the scale as well. A good rule of thumb that I used throughout this project was to focus on tackling things from big to small: buildings first, then props and smaller details.

At this stage, I focused on getting "something for everything" in my scene — meaning I wanted to get some kind of representation for every aspect of the scene (minus the ivy and grass — I used Maya paint effects to create simple blockouts for the trees). I worked in centimeters and referenced real-life measurements for assets when I could (such as for doors, stairs, barrels, etc.). I keep the forms very simple at this stage as I know I will return to everything to polish it. I also assigned different colored materials in my blockout to help me get a better idea of all the materials that would be needed. I also find it helpful to have some ability to distinguish everything so I wouldn't be looking at a big mass of grey. 

Once I had "something for everything," I imported all the assets as one combined blockout into Unreal Engine (version 5.4). I set up a scene with my camera and put in some very basic lighting. After the blockout stage, I began polishing assets, importing them individually into Unreal, and assembling them. Once the scene is re-assembled in Unreal, reimporting assets after making changes in Maya is very straightforward. I'm always keeping the words "big to small" in mind, so I focused on polishing the larger assets before moving on to the smaller props.

Throughout the modeling process, I try to reuse assets where I can in order to get things done quickly and efficiently. There are a lot of repeating elements on my screen, which I used to my advantage wherever I could. The Duplicate with Transform tool was very useful for assets like roof tiles, stair steps, and wooden planks.

My supervisor (Johnny Malcolm) advised me that for a project like this, I should opt for modeling over texturing to enhance the realism and believability of certain assets. For example, I had initially tried making a brick material for the building in Substance 3D Designer, but because the bricks were so large, the texture lost its believability behind the wooden planks, and they looked pretty flat. I tried using the Convert Texture to Geometry tool in Maya to achieve the look I wanted without losing all the work I had spent on my material. This isn't a tool I would necessarily recommend using as it created some messy geometry that required a fair amount of clean-up, but once it was fixed, it achieved the desired look and allowed me to use my existing texture. Similarly, I opted to model aspects, such as the broken plaster over texturing, to help the building pop and not look flat.

Retopology

Most of my assets are quite simple in shape, so I usually started with an automatic or camera-based projection in Maya (depending on the asset) and made adjustments as needed. I find that automatic projections often make more cuts than needed, so I always check to see if the cuts make sense. Sometimes, I find that it just makes a mess (especially with more complex assets), which is when I will switch to a camera-based projection and make all the cuts myself. As stated earlier, a lot of my assets are repetitive, so the Transfer Attributes tool came in handy for unwrapping one asset and then transferring the UV set to the duplicates.

I mostly used mid-poly assets in the scene and then retopologized anything that was sculpted using Quad Draw in Maya. I used ZBrush as a sculpting software for the more organic elements, such as the rocks, the tree stump, and the fabric on the carriage. I don't have much sculpting experience, so I kept it simple: I sculpted two rocks in ZBrush and then decimated them to a lower poly count before retopologizing them by hand using Quad Draw in Maya. I was able to get a lot of variation just from the two rocks I made by simply rotating them and slightly adjusting the scale. The entire forge was constructed using only two rocks with this method. My supervisor advised against relying on using a decimated mesh from ZBrush as a low poly object, as you can get a much cleaner version with Quad Draw. I found this to be particularly relevant to my tree stump. 

Texturing

I decided on a texel density of 5.12 px/cm for this project. For texturing, I once again worked from big to small, so I focused on creating the tileable textures first that occupied the majority of the scene (the wood, stucco, brick, and roof materials) before moving on to other materials (such as tree bark, metal, and rocks). Adobe's learning center has a lot of great resources for its Substance software. For example, I wasn't sure how to go about starting a tree bark material, and they had a great article that helped me get started. I did a first pass of texturing the larger assets (namely the architecture) before moving on to the props. My goal was to get some kind of texture on everything so I tried not to spend too much time on one thing, as I could return later to further polish assets I wasn't satisfied with.

The wood texture was the material that I used the most in my scene, so it was important for it to be adjustable. I started by making the wood based on my references and how I wanted it to look for the planks on the buildings. Once the graph was done, I exposed and grouped parameters that I felt were important for adjusting the wood to other assets: color, roughness, grain, and knots. This made the material very versatile; I could use the same material for any asset that contained wood with just a few adjustments in both Designer and Painter!

For the props, I largely used Substance 3D Painter so that I could use a combination of procedural texturing and hand painting. I used a mix of my own materials imported from Substance 3D Designer and materials that were available in the Substance 3D Painter library. In Unreal Engine, I made Master Materials as needed and Material Instances that allowed me to easily adjust parameters. For my next project, I would love to learn more about building more complex shaders in Unreal!

Assemble the Final Scene

A great technique I learned from my supervisor to enhance an environment is taking advantage of vertex colors generated in Maya. For the forge, for example, I wanted the rocks to have a variety of colors, but I didn't want to have to make five or even ten different colored materials. This would get very messy and time-consuming. By using random vertex colors generated in Maya (which creates a lovely mess of clown colors), I was then able to create one material in Unreal with an assortment of different colors. In Substance 3D Designer, I created a LUT (Look-up Table) with a sample of colors I wanted the rocks to reference. Back in Unreal, I used the vertex colors of the mesh to drive the LUT by using numbers generated in the red and green channels as UV coordinates. This means that the vertex colors would randomly reference different colors on the LUT and, therefore, randomize the color of the rocks that were using the same shader (I had two shaders, one for Rock A and one for Rock B). I used this technique throughout my scene, which was great for reducing the amount of materials needed. 

For the foliage, I used Maya paint effects as a starting point and then made adjustments to get the look I wanted. The grass and branches were baked onto a plane and textured in Substance 3D Designer. I also found random vertex colors very useful for baking color maps in Designer. For example, this came in handy for achieving color variation in the grass and, therefore, more depth. I then cut the planes into shapes and assembled them in Maya — in the case of the grass, I made a few clusters with size and density variations.

In hindsight, I could have baked the ivy onto a plane as well, but at the time, I thought using the leaves as cards rather than the whole vine would look better and, being a student project, that I could spare the geometry. I textured a single leaf in Substance 3D Designer and used the random vertex color technique discussed earlier to add color variation later in Unreal Engine. For the flowers, I decided to make a simple flower atlas of African Daisies (since the environment is set in a fantasy world, I mostly based this decision on what flower looked simple to make and came in lots of colors). I used a mix of modeling in Maya and sculpting in ZBrush before baking them onto a plane and texturing them in Substance 3D Painter. Then, I assembled several iterations in Maya as there would be flowers both in plants and on the ground, so I wanted a fair amount of variety.

I made three materials for the ground. I referenced this YouTube video to help me make the grass: Grass Material Breakdown. 100% SUBSTANCE DESIGNER!. Then, I made two dirt materials: one that was a bit drier for the path and one that was a bit wetter with more rocks to act as a transition between the path and the grass. In addition to looking at references, I also spent some time in The Witcher and Assassin's Creed Odyssey to study how the artists made their paths. I used vertex painting to make the paths and blend the wetter soil along the edges. Placing the foliage was a challenge in itself, as I wanted the grass and flowers to look natural in their placement. I found that size variation and patchiness (in other words, not completely covering the ground with grass) helped to achieve this.

I also used some vertex painting with a very rough stucco material to add some extra damage to the walls and blend between the cracked-off portions and the brick. To add even more detail to the textures, I made a few decals in Substance 3D Designer. Some dirt and cracking helped the building look a bit more weathered and blend in with the rest of the environment.

Lighting

The lighting was actually quite simple, being an exterior scene on a bright, sunny day. The main light sources are a directional light and a skylight. I used temperature rather than color for my directional light at 6000 Kelvin and used a very small amount of indirect lighting. To help the indirect lighting and shadow match the concept better, I adjusted some of the settings in the skylight. I changed the skylight color from the default white to a light blue, which aided the directional light in making the overall environment a bit cooler. I then changed the lower hemisphere color from the default black to a light yellow, which helped make the shadows lighter and softer. I also tweaked the environmental height fog density and height falloff so that the horizon line was much less intense.

I made some adjustments to the Volumetric Cloud parameters to make the clouds puffier and less hazy — this took a lot of trial and error, but eventually, I achieved a result that I liked. I tried to use an HDRI, but I found that it contrasted way too much with the dreaminess of the scene — it was also important to me that the clouds had some movement, which was achievable with the Volumetric Cloud.

If there was going to be enough wind to move the windmill, then everything else that could be affected by wind should move as well. This mentality really brought the scene to life as I made sure to add some movement to the foliage, flags, and windmill. The last piece of movement I wanted to add was leaves blowing in the wind. I used a Hanging Particulates Niagara system with a single leaf mesh that added some more visual interest to the scene.

The post-processing was also quite simple. I added a bit of bloom and a subtle vignette and tweaked the exposure. Most of the adjustments came from a LUT (Look-up Table) and really helped make the scene look a bit more magical. I enjoyed this method of post-processing because it allowed me to make color corrections in one place (Photoshop): vibrance, contrast, photo filters, etc. After applying the adjustment layers to your LUT in Photoshop and importing it into Unreal, the effect gives an extra boost to the scene. Epic Games explains this method in detail in their Unreal Engine documentation.

Summary

I think my main challenge was creating the forge because what was depicted in the concept doesn't exactly exist in real life like a barrel or a flower pot does. I had to do a lot of searching on Google Images and Pinterest to find similar-looking structures. Because the brick wall and the broken stucco behind the forge were modeled, I thought it would look best to also primarily use modeling to create the forge rather than rely on vertex painting or decals to achieve the look of rough construction (though I did add a few decals later).

For the rocks, I had to be careful with how they were stacked so that they actually looked stable and somewhat balanced on top of each other. I used the sculpting tools in Maya to make the top portion of the forge look rougher and less even. Lastly, I pushed some of the mesh with the stucco material on the bottom half out a bit more to reduce the harsh contrast of being all rock on the bottom compared to the top.

The ivy, props, and some decals provided the finishing touches! Bouncing ideas off of my supervisor helped a lot to bring this asset to fruition, as he had great advice for things I could try. If I could push it even further, it would be great to explore in greater depth how the props and wood planks interact with the forge — are there hooks for the weapons, and how are the planks attached? This is a tip my supervisor gave me to enhance my environment even further: think about how objects interact with or are attached to each other to avoid crashing or floating objects.

This project took about four months to complete, from choosing a concept to editing the final video. My advice for beginning artists is don't be afraid to show your work! I think something that can hinder a lot of new artists is being hesitant to show your work to other artists for feedback. This is something I've really tried to push myself on, and I am so grateful to be a part of a community of artists at Think Tank who are so kind and want to help others improve. Getting feedback from others is one of the best ways that I've been able to learn and grow as an artist. Be open and curious, try different things, and don't be afraid to ask for help!

I'd like to extend my thanks to Gloria at 80 Level for taking the time to conduct this interview, my supervisor, Johnny Malcolm, for being a great teacher, the Think Tank community for being so kind and uplifting, and my partner Matteo for his loving support and for always believing in me! Thank you for reading my breakdown of Adventurer's Rest Stop. Check out my ArtStation page for more projects and breakdowns. If you have any questions for me or would like to connect, please don't hesitate to reach out!

Shannon Welsh, 3D Environment & Prop Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine