DLC Overwatch: Italian village

[AlvGC]

Hello everybody and wellcome again to a new entry of my portfolio. This time I am very exicited to present you the development process step by step of how to create an Stylized environment following Overwatch style. In this thread I will explain my workflow step by step as well as some tips and tricks that I used during the creation of the scene. So let’s go!

Starting a project

First thing every 3D artist do in every project is findind references. Such references help us to visualize what are we looking for as well as speeding up our modelling, texturising and composition process. But in my opinion references is not a step to only do at the beginning but a task that follow us over the entire project depending on the needs of itself.

For that reason my first references are always related to the overall look of the project, tryng to define style, help with the blockout/level-design and ideas about the main assets and materials to be used in the project.

As mentioned before, during the process of gathering references I like to start working on the blockout, just trying to set up interesting level design that will make my modelling process easier in the futre, specially in a project like this where modular assets are very important. Ensure the right size and proportions of the elements is a key factor.

Materials

Once having a main idea of how I want the project to look, thanks to the references and the blockout I like to start working a bit in the materials that I will use later in the project. Making the materials at this early stage of the project help me a lot to define the style of the project, but due to possible future changes I always work in a not destructive workflow that allow me to add changes at any point.

Here you have some of the materiales that I considered important for this scene:

As you can see in the last material I also decided to export diferent versions of the same material to be used with vertex painting in the future to avoid patern repetition when using the material for big surfaces such as the floor will be.

First steps inside of Unreal Engine

Before to even start modelling and texturising assets for the project I like to create certaing shaders inside of Unreal Engine that I know I will need in the future. Some of this shaders are basicaly a Master Material that could be used either for tileable textures such as for individual assets/props.

Master material remains simple at this stage, but you can see some interesting features such as the use of the BumpOffset node to fake displacement thanks to the Height map. And you can also see that the Albedo node has been multiply with the Ambient Oclussion map to again achieve a more bumping effect due to the lighting method of the project will be lumen and no static shadows are generated.

I also created a Vertex Painting material and a water shader:

Modelling the floor

When building cities I like to start created a solid mesh for the floor of the scene. Exporting out the blockout from Unreal Engine into Maya I created a unique mesh for the floor of the entire village, adding extra geometry for future vertex painting and taking into consideration the UVs due to the use of a tileable material.

I hope you can notice vertex painting in some areas and the rotation of certaing UV shells to give directionality to the narrow streets. I also modeled stone bricks to hide the UV seams and to add step in the slopes.

Artistic BlockOut

Once happy with the floor it is time to start working on the buildings. Before to actually start modelling an entire house it is important to improve the blockout to make sure that the dimensions of the building, the size and position of doors and windows are correct.
In this case I decided to go for 4 different house layouts that I will modify with different materials, colours, vertex painting and modular assets to generate about 20 different houses out of only 4.

Here you have some of the layouts that I have made so far.

[AlvGC]

Week 2:

This week has been focused on the blockout of the buldings. Previously I mentioned that I wanted to do 4 different types of buildings that with textures, vertex painting and modular assets such windows and doors I would be able to achieve a big number of different buildings. However at the end I decided to do each set of buildings split amoung modular floor plans, something that allowed me to achieve even more different buildings.

In the image above you can see all the blockout of the different modules, and below you can see some of the variations achieved inside of Unreal Engine:

Once happy with the houses I placed them all over the scene trying to create an interesting arrangement.

The next step was to improve the blockout of the church and the council which will be the two main buildings of the scene.

With the improvement of the blockout of this buildings I had to made adjustments in the floor aswell.

Last but not less for this week was to set up the bookmarks to start focusing the level of detail in certain areas. Thanks to the bookmarks I also added some extra blockout at the front of certain houses.

[AlvGC]

Third week of the proyect:

Hello everyone again!

This week I have been working in the blockout of the two main buildings of the scene: the church and the council. I just added some more details and improved the proportions inside of Maya.

But also, as you can see in the image above, I expent some time working in the final meshes of the modular buildings. I just added bevels to make smooth corners, deleted extra unnesesary geometry, and added some extra geometry such as the roof tiles.

I also worked in the UVs of each modules and assigned different Vertex Painting material instances with a range of worm colors taken from the references to achieve an interesting randomize look. In the images below you can see some of the Vertex Painting done in some of the buildings.

[AlvGC]

Fourth week of the project!

This week has been focused mainly in finising the buildings, making sure every module had the right UVs and geometry needed for the future vertex painting. Once happy with the final mesh inside of Unreal Engine I also finished painting all the houses.

An extra task for this week was to work in the windows, for that I first create the window frames to placed them all over the different modules and then the blinds. Again all the windows have modularity so I can play with them to create more variables and void repetition.

And here you have how everything looks together:

[AlvGC]

Week 5!

This week I have been working on the doors and the balconies. Everything has been done in a modular way again so I can place them where needed.

To see the result here you have the bookmarks again:

[AlvGC]

Week 6!

This week has been mainly focused in the development of one of the main buildings, the Church. I did also play a bit with the cameras and I started to set up the sequences that I will record in the future for showcase purposes.

Here you have the final result of the Church, as you can notice I am using many Material slots to combine tileable and baked textures.

[AlvGC]

Week 7:

The task for this weeks has been focused mainly in improvement of the actual content, for that I decided to give a go to the landscape and to the creation of certain simple modular assets such as the wooden beams and the street paviment to improve the overall look of the scene:

You can also notice an improvement in the set dressing of the scene with the addition of the blockout of the street lights and the seats.

Here you have the bookmarks:

[Astrotronic]

Beautiful Bellissimo

At the end, I’d love to see gifs where you can watch the progression from Greybox to Final. (It looks like you already have the preset camera angles!)

[AlvGC]

Week 8:

This week started finising up the council as one of the main building of the scene and also with he creation of a modular set of stairs for the entrance of the houses. This task also made me create a few new materias in Substance Designer to give more variation to the scene.

I also worked in the creation of the arcs to connect the buildings to achieve a more interesting look in the narrow street giving me that village feeling. But also to cover up some empty spaces of the scene I decided to create some plant pots for the entrances of some of the buildings:

And last I also improved the boundaries of the level and the wooden structures:

[AlvGC]

Week 9:

Very important changes made this week, first of all I created a foliage brush with some Ivy leafs to fill up the fachade of the building and the wooden structure. I also improved the vertex painting of the houses including an extra layer with some noise to avoid a flat looking:

I also decided to improve the floor material de to the contrast and the repetition of the paterns was taking to much attention. So I created this more smooth and interesting looking material, the one that I also modify a bit with some moss material in vertex painting:

I also worked in some trees to place them in the plant pots made them the last week and used the foliage brush created also last week to draw some fallen leaves in the floor:

And last I started working in one of the hero assets of the project, the fountain:

Here you have the updated bookmarks where you can also see some lighting improvement, increase of the fog, decrease of the saturaturation, reduction of the directional angle and increase of the intensity of the sky light:

[AlvGC]

Week 10:

Second to last week of this project, this week has been focused in details to improve the quality of the map. For that reason I decided to create a bunch of different assets to fill up the scene giving it a lot more life.

The main assets to develop were the bike and the flowers due to the complexity of the models:

A lot of time was also consumed creating the sequencers for the different cameras and the set up of the different clips inside of Premiere Pro to get an aproach to the final showcase video (which I will show you once is finished next week).

And again, here you have the bookmarks:

[AlvGC]

Last week of the project.

After 10 weeks this project comes to an end. This last week has been focus in final touches of the scene, such as a bit of set dressing and improvent of certain areas of the map where details were needed. But mainly this last week has been focused in presentation. I wanted to show in a clean and organized way not only the final result of the project but also a bit of breakdown behind the scenes. So here you have the final renders and assets breakdown:

3D Environment Art - SottoSole

SottoSole GamePlay

SottoSole Work in progress.

Thanks for following this great process with me, hope you like it or even learnt something new!

[AlvGC]

Hey! Check out my last update so you can see the progression video! Thanks for the idea!

[JaredTherriault]

■■■■, this looks good! Thank you for sharing your talent with the community!

Personally I’m familiar with putting assets together to create levels, but where I falter is in the design of the levels. I’m a programmer with an art background, so my levels tend to be more realistic and less fun to play. I’d like to strengthen my design skills to be able to create fun and imaginative levels like this rather than just using Google Maps as a reference. For a future series, could you take us through your thoughts and rationale vis a vis level layouts and creating something that serves the gameplay, the game context and looks interesting to boot?