Swamp Hut

3D Environment - Capstone Project

This is a work in progress environment modeling and texturing project that I will complete in May. The concept is by Jenny Brozek on Artstation

Example Deliverables

Purpose

An offline rendered modeling and texturing project with the goal of creating a hero asset based off of a concept with pbr materials.

The hero asset is the swamp hut based off of the concept by Jenny Brozek
Software used includes Maya, ZBrush, Substance Painter and Renderman
The goal deliverable is a single frame render of the scene with lighting.

The purpose was to allow an opportunity to gain more experience taking a pre existing concept of an asset and both model and texture it.

Asset Prioritization: A, B and C priority assets from left to right

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Week by week modeling breakdown

From left to right, top to bottom modeling progress over the course of 11 weeks

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Clips and Cuts Modeling Process

Here's a step by step breakdown of the clips and cuts that I modeled into the majority of the meshes by hand.

ZBrush Alphas

I used illustrator to draw some of the shapes seen on the main body of the hut
I then took the pattern into Photoshop to add an inner glow to the shape in order for the shape to naturally bevel when used as an alpha in Zbrush

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Thank you to My Mentors

This is a full breakdown of my visual progress over the course of the semester, including my modeling and part of my texturing and lighting process. I would like to thank all of my mentors who helped me over the course of this project.

My mentors included Caleb Meine, Kamryn Massey and Amanda Blettner for modeling feedback during the first half of the project.

For second half of the project I received surfacing feedback my mentors Lauren Sudak and also Amanda Blettner.

For lighting feedback my mentor was Luke Bailey.

References

Below is a collection of some of the references I've collected for texturing purposes.

Shader & Wedge Test

At first, I broke everything down much too granularly. I was worried about having different shaders for surfaces with different materials.

However, after receiving feedback from my mentors, I decided to split my assets based on shader type, not texture/material type (i.e. birch and oak objects were on the same opaque shader whereas the leaves were assigned a subsurface shader).

For the subsurface shader, I performed a wedge test pictured on the right to determine what Mean Free Path distance I would need to have on my leaf models. The numbers on sticky notes showcase what Mean Free Path number I used within the wedge

Project Management

To keep organized, I created an asset list and production schedule for myself in order to stay on track throughout the weeks. A copy of my schedule and additional project management documents can be found here.

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