Plan for the finals

Having a decent idea of the final output for the project at an early stage is another big advantage to knowing what will be important to the environment. If you never really see something, don’t waste time polishing it up.

01 BLOCK-OUT THE DESIGN

Using basic primitive shapes, block out the scene as best you can. It’s a good idea to get in a standard character at this stage to keep things to scale along the way; it can be easy to veer off track without one. If you don’t have a figure to use, you can either export the robot dummy from Unreal Engine, or simply create a cube with the dimensions of 180H x 60W x 30D.

02 PRIORITISE ASSETS

Once the block-out is complete you should have a much better understanding of which assets are the most important to your design. These will be the larger models, and models that are to be used over and over throughout. Focusing your energy on these first will make the environment come together far quicker than spending hours on a small asset you may only see once or twice.

03 DEVELOPING AN IDEA

Websites like Artstation help a lot with finding inspiration, but it really can come from anywhere. Concept art is usually best – turning someone’s design into 3D can be very satisfying and is good practice! Once you have something you like, fleshing it out with your own ideas can go a long way. Often you find elements need to be changed to make sense in 3D.

It’s important to start with at least a vague idea of what it is you want to display as a final product.

04 UNIQUE LARGE MODELS – HIGH POLY

Starting with your largest and most used assets, begin developing the high-resolution models. For most of these models I created a base mesh in Maya, then took them into Zbrush for sculpting in details. Once you have your final high-poly mesh, you can start creating the game-ready version which will be Uved and have the normal information baked into it. If you’re coming from Zbrush it’s usually a good idea to use Decimation Master to decimate your mesh for other applications like Maya to make better use of.

05 UNIQUE LARGE MODELS – LOW POLY

To get your low-resolution mesh I find it’s often better to just model over the high-res version with fresh, clean geometry. Maya’s Modelling Toolkit makes short work of this process, allowing you to easily snap to the source mesh and make sure you’re tracing it effectively. Use reference of current-gen game assets to see what sort of polycount you should be looking for.

06 SET UP YOUR UE4 PROJECT

You can quickly find yourself with a folder full of mess if you don’t plan ahead here. Create a new Blank Project in Unreal, and head over to the Content Browser. Ideally you want to set up a folder for Models, Materials, Textures, and Blueprints. Within the Models folder, I often create separate folders for models containing many meshes for more granular organisation.

07 GET IT INTO ENGINE

It is time to get what you have into Unreal! Doing this early on can show you where your design might be falling short, and help you get a better sense of scale and atmosphere. Bring your models and textures into Unreal in the respective folders. I have a master material that I instance for each new material I need, linking up my textures along the way. Don’t be afraid to get some basic lighting and post-processing in at this stage to help you visualise where you’re going, but don’t be too precious with it yet.

08 PLAN TRIM SHEETS

For this scene there were two main trim sheets that covered a lot of ground on both the large hero assets and secondary assets. Depending on your design you may need more trim sheets, more standard repeatable textures, or more unique textures. It’s a good idea to figure things out by colour-coding over any concept work you have to make sure you don’t miss anything.

09 CREATE TRIM SHEET BLOCKS

Once you have figured out what will go where on your trim sheet(s), start developing them. I usually start out working to a 400cm x 400cm plane and cutting it up equally. I find cutting the plane along grid lines easier to later snap UVS to the correct locations. Model a high-res mesh for each component, making sure to equally split them up and chamfer the edges to subdivide correctly.

10 SCULPT YOUR TRIM SHEETS

Much like with the high-res unique meshes, start with large strokes and move down to finer details on your trim sheets. Make use of the Brush>curve> Wrapmode in Zbrush to make your brush strokes repeat across the meshes as desired. Be aware that this does need to be enabled per-brush that you use, and turning the number too high can cause performance issues on very high-res meshes. Avoid creating large details that will be easily noticeable when used as a repeating texture.

11 COMPILE TRIM SHEETS

Decimate your final high-res sculpt data and save it out from Zbrush. Import them into your modelling package of choice and combine all smoothing groups. It’s also a good idea to duplicate the high-res models in every direction they will be used to repeat in before exporting as the final highres mesh. Bring your 400cm x 400cm plane into Substance Painter, and bake mesh maps using the high-res model as a source file. You may need to play with min and max distance settings in the baking options to get a clean result.

12 FINALISE UNIQUE ASSETS

Apply textures and materials as required to your baked trim sheets, keeping colour palettes in mind and being careful not to add any large details that will be noticeable when repeated. You can start to split up your final meshes to effectively apply your trim sheets, or create unique maps. Make use of saved smart materials in Painter to keep things uniform throughout the project.

13 BUILD ASSETS TO TRIM SHEETS

For smaller or less common assets it’s worth trying to see if you can build and texture them entirely within the confines of your trim sheets. Doing this makes their creation process sometimes take minutes instead of hours, and if done well, can look just as good as any uniquely textured model. It’s also worth noting that doing this brings a lot of cohesion to the project as a whole, making more items share the same materials and look, instead of trying to re-create it each time.

14 UPDATE YOUR SCENE

Taking your new textures and re-exported models, you can start to replace your assets in Unreal Engine by right-clicking and choosing to reimport, or by following the prompt from Unreal when it notices something has changed in the source files. If models have been crafted from several meshes, it’s often better to create a new Blueprint Actor that has them prefabbed for easy use.

15 REFINE THE DESIGN

Take the time to bring together your final scene, paying attention to atmosphere and lighting. When finished, take a look at your scene in Unreal and try to be subjective. Having a fresh pair of eyes on the project can go a long way here also. Locate any areas that don’t work the way you intended. Sometimes texture resolutions don’t hold up as well as we’d like in certain areas. For this environment it made more sense to set the scene deep inside a temple instead of it being outside with pyramids in the background.

16 PLAN YOUR FINAL SHOTS

If you haven’t already, now is the time to really start planning for your final shots. The outcome of this piece was to be a set of renders from UE4. Set up Cine Camera Actors and take control of them to get some nice angles of your work. Play with depth of field and framing until you’re happy. Always be willing to change them in the future; this is just getting some ideas for now. Get as many as you can and if possible, get them peerreviewed to see which ones might work best.

17 LIGHT THE SCENE

Once your scene is laid out, finalising lighting and atmospherics should take it to the next level. Add Exponential Height Fog to your scene and play with the settings to get something you like. Messing with the start distance can be helpful for pulling more objects to the foreground, while hazing out more distant assets. Fog plays well with lights and can add a lot of depth to your scene. Use fog and light colours to focus attention. Again, be aware of the colours you choose, opting for contrasting colours where possible.

18 POST-PROCESSING

Adding an unbound Post Processing Volume will give you control over the look of your scene as a whole. Two settings to change in the volume that can help make your scene look nicer (at a cost to performance) include changing the Bloom type from Standard to Convolution and Reflection type to Screen Space Reflections, as well as boosting their quality to 100%.

19 FINALISE CAMERAS

With your scene lit and atmospherics down, you can start to finalise which cameras you want to use and alter them as necessary. Try to make layers of scenery between the camera and the object in focus to give a sense of depth to the scene. Play with focal lengths too, using higher focal lengths to flatten the scene down and increase the effects of depth of field. Using targeted depth of field can be very useful in conjunction with the debug plane to see exactly where the camera is looking. Rendering out a final image at high-res to realise it isn’t sharp where you wanted it to be can be a pain! •