Diana Karakushyan 

Silent City

This scene is heavily inspired by an outstanding game Stray (2022) by BlueTwelve Studio.  
I've tried recreating Stray's lighting style without copying any particular scene from the game. I created most of the assets in the scene and used a few Megascans to add more details. 

Process Breakdown

I've created modular pieces for the buildings and pipes to assemble a scene from. The hardest part was to make sure the textures tile seamlessly. Then I started creating some props to make the scene more interesting and break the straight lines in the composition. I also needed some light sources to emit light in the scene like vending machines and the neon cat sign. I set the camera and started blocking out the scene using simple shapes and then replaced them later one by one when everything was modelled. I added wires and pipes to break the verticality of the scene and make it more dynamic. 

For the modular pieces, I made a Trim-Sheet in Substance Designer and laid out the UVs on it in Blender. To add variations on the walls I vertex painted on top of my trim material using a few Megascan textures. Then I created decals of puddles, graffiti masks and papers on the walls to add some smaller details and make the scene more realistic.  I also used Megascan Decals to speed up my working process since I had limited time for creating this scene. The props were all uniquely textured in Substance Painter with the help of Substance Designer and Photoshop. 

Lighting was the most interesting part for me to work on. I've gathered many references both from the game and real life. The Kowloon Walled City was a big real-life inspiration which I learned later was the inspiration for Stray artists as well. I wanted to create a dark scene where only artificial light exists, however, I didn't want it to be spooky, that's why I made it quite colourful. I tried to achieve a mysterious calm atmosphere which will encourage the viewer to want to explore and learn more about the world. The scene has Lumen and additional RayTracing enabled since I wanted to experiment in UE5 and get the best result out of it with all the bounced light and reflections, it still runs at 60fps, but obviously, such a set isn't optimised for a game.

The last but not least, I felt like the scene requires a bit of motion because it felt quite still and dead, so I added a simple animation for some of the air conditioners, a bit of wire wind and cloth simulation and vapour particle effect (which is a default UE particle emitter). All these made the scene more alive and interesting to look at with some subtle motion that doesn't distract the viewer's eye too much. 

Hope you enjoy this scene and thank you for reading :) 

Third-Party Assets:
Quixel Megascans
Music: Ashot Danielyan at Pixabay.com

The Light of Hope

This is my submission for Unreal Challenge: Better Light Than Never. The brief was to produce a 10-30 sec video to showcase lighting skills using Unreal Engine. No post editing is allowed, so this is the raw render from Unreal Movie Render Queue. I challenged myself to model a spaceship because I am lacking hard-surface modelling practice. I've also gotten more confident UVing hard-surface objects during this project. I've learned more about lighting and rendering in Unreal and gotten used to working with sequencer and movie render queue plugin. A huge thanks to Nachshon Rubel for allowing me to use his concept art "Crushsite" as an inspiration for this project!

Old Statue

This is a personal project of mine. I've challenged myself to create a high-quality realistic statue which later will be a part of a small scene in Unreal Engine. I tried to push myself to the best quality I can produce at this stage. 

Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out! Now I'm going to start working on a scene in UE4 and have some fun with lighting and weather fx.
 

I'm always happy to receive constructive feedback! :)

Spring

This is our 2nd-year Game Art project - Spring. The brief was to create a game level and make a trailer for it in 3 months (We are a group of 5 people and several freelancers).

My responsibilities: 

• Environment Art (excluding Temple)
• Lighting (Lead)
• Asset Layout/Set Dressing
• Materials/Shaders/Texturing
• Art Direction

What went well: the team responded well to the feedback and was able to improve the project; good communication. I've learned a lot of new techniques and shortcuts that improve the quality and speed of my work. 

What could be improved: better planning and organizational skills would help the team to work more effectively and under less stress. From my side, the assets should be split into small/medium/large shapes to break down the silhouette and improve the details of the environment as well as the texel density of some objects. Lighting can be improved in several shots to create a more appealing image. 

If you are interested to see more, please, visit my ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/sabretooth