CG Generalist | Character Designer
Project 4 - Architectural Environment
For this project, we were assigned groups to recreate an architectural environment of our choosing. The final product would be a navigable scene within Unreal Engine 4. Alongside Beatrice Wells, Hunter Kordes, Brooke Floyd, and Celina Schuster, we recreated Eltz Castle of Germany.
Modeling
We began by splitting up the castle into different sections and assigning each member their own section, save for Celina, who was to go straight into making the textures. I took on the purple section seen in this picture.
From there, we all started working on our respective sections. I began modeling in Maya by blocking out the basic shapes with cubes while aligning it with an image plane of reference I had in the background. Then, I started detail work on the cylindrical portions of the castle, adding windows and extrusions. From there, I modeled the roof, the chimneys, and finally, the roof details.
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Afterward, I started modeling the other architectural features of the building, such as the cylindrical structures in the corner and the protruding white section on the side. Then, I used booleans to create the window holes in order to keep the poly count lower rather than using multiple edge loops.
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Finally, all that was left to model were the window frames and the arch details in the walls. For the window frames, I made one and duplicated it, UV unwrapping beforehand so I did not have to unwrap every single one later. As for the arch-shaped cutouts, I used stretched-out cylinders to perform a boolean difference on the tower-like area and the upper section of the building.
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After this, it was time to UV unwrap. I first assigned different lamberts to each type of material so they would show up as separate UV sets later in Substance Painter. Then, I unwrapped each piece and laid them all out in one UV tile. Finally, this building was done.
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The next step was to create the building to the left of the one I had just modeled. This building was much more simple, and I basically followed the same steps as the first one. I created the roof and main body using cubes, used booleans to create the windows, and added the details at the end. Again, I applied different lamberts to the final model before unwrapping and laying out the UVs.
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Finally, the last thing I had to model was the wall in front of the two buildings. It was a fairly simple shape, so it did not take too long to create and unwrap. After I had done this, I exported it, along with the two buildings, as fbx's to put them into Unreal. With that, I had completed modeling.
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Texturing
Once I had placed my models into Unreal, I hopped right into Substance Painter to begin texturing. At first I ran into a few problems as there seemed to be deformations on my mesh when I imported it into Substance Painter, but after going back into my Maya file I found that it was a problem with the UVs and was able to fix most of it. Celina had made the red and white paint materials, so I used them to begin texturing the cylindrical wooden sections along with any other part of the buildings that were red or white.
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Soon, I learned that the only other textures Celina was going to make were the bricks and the roof. So, I began to texture everything else. For the window frames, I began with a wooden material from Substance Painter and tweaked it to my liking. I then went into Substance Designer to create a window screen texture as there seemed to be a grid-like pattern showing behind the frames.
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After the windows were done, I moved on to the protruding structure on the wall. For the tan detailing around its windows, I began with a concrete material from Substance Painter, changing the color and painting it on with height. I then used a square brush to erase certain areas to replicate bricks.
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Finally, I finished off with the roof toppers and the chimneys. All that was left now was to wait on the roof and brick materials from Celina.
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In-Engine
Finally, it was time to input the texture maps into Unreal and attach them to my models. The textures went in smoothly, and once Celina put in the brick and roof materials, all that was left was to make tweaks.
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Beatrice and I decided that the bricks seemed a little too clean, so we decided to bring them back into Substance painter and add a grunge to them using smart masks. I was also having problems with the roof texture in Unreal, so I had to fix it in Substance as well. After I was done in Substance, I updated the textures in Unreal. Finally, once I and everyone else had finalized their textures, all that was left was for Beatrice to create the final build.
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Once the build was done, our final product turned out like this:
