Cathedral in a Cave
I am responsible for all elements. I created a modular kit modeled in Maya and textured in Substance Painter and Substance Designer. I then generated elements in Houdini to experiment with destruction and tiling materials. I sculpted natural elements in ZBrush. I then compiled all pieces and lit the scene in Unreal Engine.
Callouts for pieces of the modular kit created for this environment
Use of Houdini in this Project
In Houdini, I created an HDA to generate bricks on specific walls procedurally and add surface weathering and damage.
I added divisions with point jitter to split the walls into bricks with size variation. In the HDA, you can adjust the number of rows and columns the mesh is divided into.
I then created more polygons to subtract from the brick walls to create realistic wear and tear. I applied blast and fuse nodes to make these polygons more organic and true to walls falling apart.
Lastly, I created a mesh for mortar between the bricks.
I also used Houdini to fracture some pillars and simulate physics to add debris to the scene.
I then cleaned up these meshes in Maya.
I originally planned to use Houdini to generate physical geometry for the brick walls.
However, to prioritize in-game performance, I created a tilable material using the Houdini bricks as a base for the final result.
Wireframe view of some pieces
When starting this piece, I planned out the proportions of each piece of the modular kit to make sure everything fit together. I gathered references from Gothic cathedrals for the architecture and materials. I also gathered references from ArtStation and Pinterest for the environment's composition and mood.
Coral Reef
I created a rock and coral bash kit by first sculpting in ZBrush, then retopologizing and UV unwrapping in Maya. I then created materials in Substance Designer and textured assets in Substance Painter and within Unreal Engine. I also created the sculpture with this workflow. I compiled this scene together in Unreal Engine.
development of the environment
rock and coral kit pieces
A few of the materials I created for this environment. I first created various materials separately, then blended them together in Substance Designer to make implementing them in Unreal Engine and handling the transitions between materials more natural
photos of the statue and the sculpt in Zbrush
Lilypad Shrine
Modeled in Autodesk Maya, textured in Adobe Substance Painter and Substance Designer, and Unreal Engine
wave material set up with Gersner wave model, scrolling blended normals, and camera position-based depth
Ceramic Strawberry
Modeled in Autodesk Maya, textured in Pixar's proprietary software
Moving On
I collaborated with five interns on this animated short film during my internship at Pixar. I was primarily responsible for environment modeling, set dressing, and lighting during production. I also contributed to environment shading and layout. We collaborated on story and visual development.
Motorbike
Modeled in Autodesk Maya, hand-painted texture done in Adobe Substance Painter and Photoshop
final turnaround rendered in Blender