For a Diorama project in my Video game art classes, I choose to work with the concept of the Eastern air temple, from the Avatar animated series. I started with analysing the shots and architecture from the series, and saw that a few doors, towers, … are similar. This could be used as a modular system. The modelling happened in Maya and will be exported back and forth to Unreal Engine. At the moment I am learning more about materials, instances, and decals to be able to texturize the assets later in the process.
This week, I have been working on the blocking for the air temple, as well as the hero asset. This is a statue that can be found in this location. At the moment, I am still working on the asset in Zbrush. Getting the right position, in the first place, takes some time and analysing. Right now, I will give the model a tone like look with the brushes, and add the details it needs. For the face, I started from the one available in Zbrush. This I am modifying, so the features look like they are carved out of stone.
The blocking is needing some more buildings and details that I can partly recreate from the ones I already made. Overall, I am enjoying the process of this project, even tho I would have liked to be finished with this modelling part.
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Hi there @Sara_Verschueren,
Hope you’re well and having a great week so far 
Also, huge WELCOME to the Unreal Engine forums! So nice to see a new face around here.
Just wanted to pop in and say these reference pictures and models (so far!) look great 
I’m a total sucker for Avatar so the temple made me completely nerd out. I genuinely cannot wait to see what the final product ends up looking like. Good luck!
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Hi, thank you for your reply 
@PresumptivePanda
Yeah, I understand, I guess that’s why I chose this concept
I will be posting updates every week and learn in the meantime, until the temple is ready.
Greetings!
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Last week I have been working on searching materials that could fit the buildings, and adding bevels where needed in the scene. I used Substance sampler to be able to create maps from a rock and tile texture I searched online. After that, I used the color maps in a Trimsheet and measured my UV’s according to the sheet in Maya. When the texture and UV’s had a good scale, I reimported them in Unreal to see how it really looks. This week, when the rest of the UVs are done, I will connect the rest of the texture maps in Unreal.
The scene is starting to get more whole. The UVs are all done in Maya with trim sheets that I made in Photoshop with different materials. Then I cut the Uv’s so they would fit the right place on the sheet. After that, I made the same trim sheets for all the different maps and connected them to the right materials in Unreal. A few of them still need some checkup as well as vertex painting to change the repetition of the textures. It is getting closer, but still have things to do to give it a finished look. The first thing I am doing this week is finish the texture and add some foliage, and insert the hero asset again, which was finished after some complications with Zbrush. Then I will make or search a dense cloud where the white plane can be replaced with, and finally get the best light/atmosphere that is suitable for the scene.
