MAKE AN ARCHITECTURAL ENVIRONMENT IN VR
Martin Nebelong shares various VR sculpting techniques, including hard-surface modelling, sketching and kitbashing
Learn how to sculpt an architectural environment in virtual reality software with this step-by-step tutorial from Martin Nebelong, with tips on hard-surface modelling, sketching and kitbashing
i’ve had my Oculus Rift VR headset for around two years now, and to this day I’m still surprised by the flexibility and speed this new medium provides.
You might argue that I could do the same things I do in this tutorial from the ground up in Zbrush, Blender or another program. But to me, the joy of working freely in VR is much greater than pulling meshes with my mouse or pen. I usually compare working in VR with the freedom of sketching in your notebook… but in 3D.
In this tutorial, I’ll be taking you through how I built an architectural environment, inspired by ancient Roman architecture mixed with a sci-fi element, using assets that I make in virtual reality and optimise in Zbrush and Blender.
The tutorial will focus mostly on the process of building a custom kitbash set, consisting of modular pieces that can easily be used to build the environment in Blender.
I will be modelling in virtual reality with Masterpiecevr, a program that enables you to approach a project such as this one in multiple ways. I work part-time for Masterpiecevr, as their artistic director, and through spending hundreds of hours in the program, I know its strengths and weaknesses and will try to share them with you here.
I also recommend you take a look at Oculus Medium, Quill and Animvr. These are all programs that I use as an important part of my freelance work.
01 THE CONCEPT
I start out by drawing a (very) rough sketch of my idea for the 3D piece in Photoshop. From the beginning, I know that I won't be following the concept too closely, but I find it's always a good idea to jot down some initial thoughts and compositions before starting the work in 3D. Especially with VR, it’s very tempting to just jump in and create, without any prior planning.
Sometimes I do this initial step in 3D, as sketching in VR is very intuitive and fast. But for this piece, I went with good old-school Photoshop. I want to make a large, majestic museum where the walls are lined with sculptures, and light rays are coming in from outside the museum. The scenery should look classical, but with hints of sci-fi. As the main focal point of the scene, we’ll have two characters walking around, a child and his father.
02 BUILD ELEMENTS
For this scene I’ll use a modular approach, since the theme lends itself to a lot of repeating elements. I’ll be combining this approach with kitbashing, using objects from my kitbash library. My goal is to build the different elements for the scene in VR, and then combine them in Blender. I open Masterpiecevr and start sculpting the base of the pillars. If you find that the resolution you’re working at is too low, go into the Create>clay>sculpt Cube menu and up the resolution. I usually leave the setting at 7, which is a level where my computer still performs well. Basically, you should go as high as possible here and remember that the larger you sculpt, compared to the sculpt cube, the higher your detailed level will be. The sculpt cube is the grey box you see around your scene. I use the tool guides by clicking the Tool Guide button on my left-hand tool palette.
I enable the line guide, grid, angle snap and mirror. I then use the Clay tool set to square and draw out the base of the pillars. I use the Clay tool set to Erase mode to erase the sides of the cube. Since we’ll be having two pillars, I need a wide square base for them to stand on.
03 THE PILLAR BASE
I change the tool shape of the Clay tool to Cylindrical. I keep the tool guides on, except for the Line tool. I then place a single cylinder in the scene. I make sure to keep some distance from the base of the pillar since I don’t want to merge the two shapes, not yet at least. It’s very easy to move elements around in MPVR, so it makes sense to work on elements one by one and combine them when they’re finished. I erase the top of the cylinder, so I’m left with a thin ‘pancake’.
I shift to the Smooth tool, set the strength to around 50 and place it over the cylinder. I then press the trigger once to apply an overall smooth action to the shape. After that, I go into the Select tab, choose clay mode, a square tool shape and then select the round ‘pancake’ I just made. I make sure to let the shape snap to the grid when I make the selection. That way I’m sure I’ll be able to paste the mesh in the right spot compared to the grid. I hit the Copy button, and move the copy on top of the original pancake. We now have the base of the pillar.
04 CONVERT ELEMENTS TO MESH
By selecting the pillar base I made, using the Select>clay>cube function, I’m able to convert the selection to mesh using the button you find in the clay selection options. Once that’s done, I move the pillar base into place, above
the square box we made in step 02. Converting finished elements to meshes has several advantages. Most importantly, it works as a sort of layer system until Masterpiecevr gets a proper layer function. When you export your scenes, these individual meshes are exported as different elements that you can easily optimise, texture etc. Later I’ll talk about how to convert between clay and mesh and back again.
05 05 SCULPT THE PILLAR
Now that we have the base square and pillar base in place, it’s time to make the pillar itself. I do this by drawing a cylinder shape with grid, angle and mirror guides on. I then select the Smooth tool, set to around 50, and with angle snap and line on, I smooth out the top of the cylinder to get a taper effect on the overall shape. For now, the pillar is just a small cylinder shape with a rounded top, so I choose Select>cylinder and select the shape. I don’t need the rounded top, so I make sure my selection omits this part. I choose Cut, and then click the little blue arrow below my main controller. This enables me to change the dimensions of my cut element. I drag out the shape until it has the height I want.
06 SCULPT TOP
For the top of the pillar, or the ‘bell’ as it’s also called, we need a bit more detail. I make sure to sculpt a bit larger here, to get more voxel data. The basic process behind this is rather simple, starting out with making one of the small round elements. I then use the Select tool to copy and paste that object around in a circle. I use the angle snap set to various degrees to achieve this.
Once I’m happy with the element, I select all of it, making sure I have angle and grid snaps on, and then select Convert to Mesh. Now I can scale the element down to fit on top of the pillar. In hindsight, I would have liked to make this part even more detailed and polished, but for the purpose that it serves in this piece, this will suffice. Since the pillars won’t be the central element of the overall scene, there’s no need to spend too much time on them.
07 DETAILS ABOVE THE PILLAR
Using a combination of the box clay tool, with guides and the cylinder brush set to Erase, I make a small part of the top, detailed border of the pillar. I then copy and paste that small element to form the border. Using a combination of cut and paste actions and the tool guides, it’s a painless process to make architectural details like this. Remember that the more detail you need, the larger you should sculpt compared to the overall sculpt volume. Once I’m satisfied with the result, I convert the piece to mesh and place it on top of the pillar.
08 FINISH THE PILLAR
Now that all the parts of the pillars are finished, it’s time to bring it all together. I move the different meshes into place and then convert all the elements to clay. I could also just export all the sub-meshes, to retain as much detail as possible, but I decide to merge the elements to make things easier for myself. Having one element means less fiddling around with individual items in Blender or Zbrush when the time comes to optimise. For this, you have to balance fidelity and time spent on a piece. I’d rather spend time working on the central elements of the image, so I save my time for those. If there are any lastminute changes to the form, now is the time to make them. I make a large selection of the whole pillar item, and convert it to mesh.
09 SKETCH THE FIRST SCULPTURE
Next up, we’re going to be making the first of the sculptures that will be in the background of the image. I want the sculpture to have a sci-fi feel, and I’ll be sculpting it using a combination of manual sculpting and kitbashing. First, I sketch in the overall shape using the Create> Mesh>draw tool, set to Ribbon. Making a sketch like this in VR is an easy way to ensure that your figure is dynamic. Basically, like doing a rough sketch before a final drawing. Using the mesh tools also has the benefit of letting you edit the strokes after you’ve started building up the form using clay tools. That way you can edit your sketch later
on in the process, without having to start over on the sculpting itself.
10 ADD FORM
I use a combination of clay and stamps that you can find in the Stamp category under Featured stamps. When you’re using these stamps, you have the option of pasting as either clay or mesh, and depending on your needs you can switch between the two. When you paste as clay, you can go in and edit the stamp after pasting it, but you lose some of the sharpness of the model and need to work at quite a large size compared to the overall sculpt cube to retain enough detail.
If you paste as a mesh, you can always move the parts around independently of each other, and you retain all fidelity of the model you pasted. You won’t be able to edit the model unless you convert to clay. When pasting mesh stamps, make sure Follow Model is turned on. If you don’t enable this, your model will stay fixed in space as you move your scene around. This can be useful for cases where you need to load in meshes as reference. For the sculpture, I use a combination of both techniques.
11 FINISHING TOUCHES
We’ve finished the first sculpture, and I’ve turned clay into mesh along the way where it made sense. So the cape is one conversion, the body another. In the example screenshot, I went into the ‘view’ mode in MPVR, to get a better look at the model with multiple light sources and shadows enabled. It’s also from within this view that you can save out screenshots from the program.
12 SECOND SCULPTURE
Using the same technique, I sculpt a second figure. I imagine both of them are depictions of great heroes who fought for their people and left enough of an impression to have their sculptures in a museum. To get the tapered effect of the base of the model, I use the tool guides and the Shrink tool.
13 Floor
I sculpt the floor of the museum by making one tile using the Clay tool set to square, and by cutting away the edges at a 45-degree angle. I then copy that tile, scale it a bit and lay it on top of the first tile to give it a more interesting look. Then, using the grid guide and angle guide, I make a few copies to have a larger block of tiles. I make smaller tiles in between to get an interesting pattern. Once I have enough pieces, I convert all of it to mesh.
14 Display tank Frame
While making the two figures, I get the idea that they might be hunters. So to elaborate on that idea, I decide to make a display of what they’ve hunted in their time. For that, we’ll need a giant display tank with a strange, prehistoric monster inside. I start out by sculpting the sides of the display tank, using mainly the clay Cube tool, with angle/grid and line snapping turned on. I also leave the mirror turned on, so I only have to worry about one side of the tank.
15 Display tank elements
I imagine some of the elements will be metal and some of them will be wood or some kind of similar material. So to make it easier to separate materials later on in the process, I break the tank up into elements where it makes sense.
The glass of the tank will be made in Blender as that’ll be easier and more efficient. Making it in Blender will ensure that the part is low poly and easy to texture. Everything you sculpt in voxels will automatically get a small bevel. The size of the bevel depends on how small or large you sculpt. I actually like this effect, as the bevel will pick up specular lights well in your renderer of choice.
16 Mythological creature sketch
For the creature on display, I use the same technique we used earlier for the sculptures. I sketch in the spine of a dragon-like creature and make some small rings to indicate the overall form. I use the Cylinder mesh tool for this. You can move strokes by either using the Grab tool or by going into the Select menu and choosing the Ribbon category. The benefit of using the Grab tool is that it can only grab mesh strokes, and not imported meshes or mesh stamps. For stuff like clothing, it can also be useful to use the mesh tools and then convert to clay. You can also keep the mesh strokes of course, and include those in your export. I always use the standard material for the mesh tools. There are several options under the Materials category, but they don’t change the export, so there’s really no need to use them unless you want to make your finished presentation within MPVR.
17 shape and colour the Dragon
Once I’m happy with the sketch, I start sculpting the creature using a combination of the clay tools and the Select>copy>paste technique. For making small details like the spikes on the back of the dragon, or its scales, copy/pasting is ideal!
When the sculpting is done, it’s time to move onto colour. Switch to the Color submenu and select the Paint tool. I set the opacity to 100% and lay down the base colour. Then, I paint in smaller details. For this, I switch the tool shape to Cube which gives you more control over sharp edges. VR tools really shine when it comes to colouring, as you have a 3D brush that you can twist and turn using only your hands. Using the edges of the cube allows me to get quite sharp colour details. You can also quickly build interesting textures by using the pointy edge of the cube, or by switching to the Splatter colour tool.
18 optimise Meshes in Zbrush and Blender
We now have all the elements we need to start bringing the scene together in Blender. Elements that I want to retain their vertex colour need to have a quick pass through Zbrush. For some reason, Blender doesn’t support the vertex colours natively from Masterpiecevr, but Zbrush does. If you import to Zbrush and then export as FBX, the vertex colours work in Blender.
In the example, I’ve imported the display tank and dragon into Zbrush, and decimated the models as much as possible, without losing important details. I often find that I have to go into the topology submenu in Zbrush and merge vertices. I’m talking with the developers at Masterpiecevr about why this is, and I hope we have a solution to that soon. You can also add or modify vertex colours in Zbrush. I sometimes use the spotlight feature in Zbrush to add photo textures to my models without having to worry about
UVS. If you want to optimise your models in Blender, add a Decimation modifier to the mesh. If you experience problems with holes in your mesh, go into edit mode first, select all, then Mesh>clean up>remove doubles.
19 Bring the elements together in Blender
Once I’ve taken all the elements through optimisation, it’s time to set up the scene in Blender. It’s outside the scope of this tutorial to cover all of this process, and since I’m using the Beta of Blender 2.8, things are likely to change in the program before launch. I do hope to be able to go into more detail about this at some point, and you’re always welcome to hit me up on social media for a chat about my workflow! I only started using Blender after the release of the Beta, and I’m really liking it so far. One thing I do want to mention though is that for vertex colour from Zbrush you’ll have to add an Attribute Editor to the node tree in your Shader window. Link that to the Color input, and write ‘Col’ in the editor. For imports from Quill, you have to write ‘rgba’ in the Attribute Editor field. If you haven’t already, I recommend you play around with the different options in the node editor. After having used it for only a short while, I must say I’m really impressed with the versatility of it.
20 the Final Details
As you can tell from the example, we can get quite far just by using the few elements we made up until now, but we still need a few final items for the scene to be complete. I need the two main characters and a few items on display, to enhance the sense of depth and reality. So from Blender, I save out the current scene as an OBJ, grab my VR headset and jump back into the rift!
21 head Back to vr
Back in Masterpiecevr, I import the model I exported from Blender, and place it using grid and angle snaps. I sculpt it so that the sculpt cube covers approximately the area of the imported model, where I want the characters to be. Using the same technique I used for the sculptures, I make the father first and use a copy of him to make the son. I also make a power converter of sorts using a combination of clayto-mesh and mesh tools for smaller details. I make a piece of a spiral staircase, a few abstract sculptures and a piece of wall to cover up some of the background. I then export these elements and optimise them in Zbrush.
22 Blender wrap-up
The spiral staircase was tweaked in Zbrush by duplicating the piece I made in VR a few times, and then applying a Bend Arc modifier to make the spiral effect. Back in Blender I bring in the last elements and place them all in the right position. I add lights, atmosphere and tweak materials and UVS in Blender. By using the node editor, I’m able to avoid too many repetitive textures by using a combination of noise modifiers and textures scaled independently of each other to give a more natural effect. I render the scene using the new real-time viewer in Blender, EEVEE. I bring it into Photoshop, tweak a few small details, and the scene is done. •