Turning a Cardboard Mold Into a 3D Environment Using Polycam & Unreal Engine

One of the most important qualities an artist must possess is, without a doubt, the ability to see beauty and inspiration in common everyday objects. A couple of weeks ago, Senior 3D Artist Tyler Muehlen, most commonly referred to as Von Pixel, demonstrated a perfect example of that by showcasing a fun and unusual way of creating 3D environments.

Shared via a series of Twitter posts, attached above and below, Von Pixel's method resulted in a great-looking ancient ruins environment and consisted of scanning a regular cardboard mold using Polycam, a 3D scanning application for iOS, Android, and the web, importing the result into a texturing software and retexturing the scan, adding vegetation, water, and other smaller details in the engine, and rendering the scene. Besides Polycam, the creator also utilized Modo, Substance 3D Painter, and Unreal Engine.

In the future, the artist also considers sharing a more in-depth breakdown of the project and covering "some basic stuff", so we highly encourage you to visit Von Pixel's Twitter, ArtStation, and LinkedIn pages so as not to miss any future updates.

If you would like to learn more about Polycam, here are some great tutorials that might help you get started:

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