Environment Design: Complete Environment Design Bible

on

  23/04/26 - 15/10/26 (Week 1-Week 4)

Chika Clarissa Widjaja / 0378636

Character Design/ Bachelors Of Design (Creative Media) / Taylor's University

Environment Design: Complete Environment Design Bible


TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • INSTRUCTIONS
  • TASK
  • FEEDBACK
  • REFLECTION

INSTRUCTIONS


You are to polish and complete each 1 of the Exterior and Interior Design with a sufficient breakdown of props/asset concepts: hero asset, set design props, and details. Each artwork will be laid out on a balanced, well-arranged call sheet, which will then be compiled with projects 1 and 2 into a Complete Environment Bible. You are allowed to alter and upgrade each piece of content that has a strong design that effectively showcases its functionality. List of tasks to be completed: 

  1. (Individual Call Sheet) Polished Artwork: 2000 x 3500 pixels, 200 dpi for Interior, Exterior, and Props design (Jpeg and PSD) 
  2. Complete the Environment Design Bible in PDF format.  




TASK

In this blog, I will be explaining my process in making the props and room from a 1900's puppet show concept that I did on my last assignment which you can see here:



Workflow
This time, I'm trying a new workflow where I would be making the assets in Blender, moving it to Z brush for sculpting details (if needed), and texturing it in Substance painter, and bringing it back to Blender to render it. I've never done this workflow before, but I got help from a ton of tutorials in youtube, and from my friend that knows this workflow better.


1. Blender
First, I make the assets in blender. I started making the assets earlier, around week 10. However, I only made the assets that I was for sure going to use, like the boxes, and tools. This was also my first time making assets in blender, so I start off with easy assets to be familiar with it.


When making the assets, I try my best to keep it as optimized as possible by using less polygons.



UV Unwrapping

I uv unwrapped the assets in blender before moving it to zbrush to sculpt the high poly. I also made sure to make different objects in the same texture set so it's more optimized and efficient like the image below. When uv unwrapping, I made sure to not have any N-gons, grid filling the cylinder's cap so it doesn't distort when in Zbrush.





2. ZBrush

I exported the objects into an FBX file, and imported it in Zbrush. I dynamesh and divide each of the objects to around 1-2 million for the high poly. I used zbrush to sculpt details and use alphas such as wood alphas, and using trim dynamics to break off those rough edges in the corner that you wouldn't see in realistic wood.

I did this whole process for the rest of my assets.



I had a loooot of trouble doing the technical process, especially when I import it to zbrush, there would be problems like this where some of the asset had a hole in it, so I had to go back and forth from blender to zbrush to find out what's wrong. It was hard at first but once I know what could be causing this (N-gones, Backface cuiling, not recalculating normals), it was easy.





3. Blender ID Maps

Before moving it to Substance to texture, since I have multiple objects in one texture set, I have to give each of the objects ID Maps so later on in Substance I will have an easier time texturing different materials. I assigned different colors to the objects that has the same material in Blender by changing the base material color.




4. Substance Painter

Finally, I moved it to substance painter to texture which was my favorite part after all the technical stuff out of the way. However, I sometimes still face a problem in baking, it would have weird stretch from the uvs, or something else.

I made the resolution for all my assets either 2k or 1k, never 4k because it wont be optimized and my laptop would diiie.

After successfully baking the high poly to the low poly, I usually start by assigning a material/smart material to my object. Since I already assigned ID maps, I added a black mask and use color selection to color drop it.




After having a base to work on, I start adjusting it to my needs like the tiling, opacity, changing the base color, etc. One trick I used in all of my wood assets to make it realistic is to add a metal edge generator with a warp filter, to mimic the chipped wood effect:




When texturing the workshop table, I want it to look messy, old, and used. Before texturing in substance, I sculpted some knife marks in the table, but I later enchanced it more in substance.




I added dried paint marks on the table because this is where he will be making his puppets and painting them, so it definetly wont be clean. I also made a glass stain effect from a tutorial. I used warp and blur too so it wont be uniform.




For the performance table, I thought it would be nice to have some kind of decoration instead of it just being a brown wood. Since my puppet show's color palette is red and white, I made the board red too, and hand drawn some patterns. Then, I used the eraser brush and lightly chip away some of the elements to make it realistic.


For the backdrop, I tried making the rips using opacity map, but I dont know why it doesn't work? So I used a fabric tear brush instead. I also use the same technique to create rips for my curtains. It's not the best and took a long time but it'll do.



One of the struggles that I faced  with all my assets when using substance painter is that the colors would look darker when rendered in blender. Because of this, I had to constantly go back and forth both softwares to adjust the color. I also had trouble oon choosing what colors to pick since most of my material is wood. I had to use different hues of brown so it doesn't look the same.

For the floor planks and wall, I created 6 variation of colors, making sure the back side is different from the front, so that when I arrange them in Blender, it doesn't look repetitive.



Puppets

For the puppets, I sculpt them in Zbrush and used vertex paint in blender to texture instead of substance because I did the puppet towards the end and I didn't have time to learn retopology and moving it to substance. This definitely isn't the best way but I didn't have any other choice.

   
Curtain & Rope
Making these two assets was the hardest thing for me, I wasn't familiar with cloth simulation in Blender, so I had to watch so many tutorials on how to create it. I spent the whole day trying to make the curtain tied together like in my concept but It doesn't work and my laptop keep crashing. Frustrated that I couldn't do it and my time was running out so I had to stick with this instead.

I followed another tutorial to create the rope and spent half of the day creating it, there were trial and errors and uv unwrapping it was painful, but I got help from a friend and solved it.




Paint Tints

I imported a picture of vintage label paint cans that I downloaded from Pinterest in the asset tab and pasted it as a texture. After applying it, the lines look too straight and unrealistic, so I used the eraser tool (Mold brush) and lightly erase some of that harsh line and the picture so it looks more worn out and chipped.

I also downloaded other pictures for my other assets like the paper and photo frames, and applied the same method.

Before

After 


Tools

When texturing the tools, I made sure that it isn't clean. For me personally when I'm painting, the stuff around me somehow also get paint on, so I made the tools with different color of paints, and I used a stencil to make a hand print on the tools to show storytelling. I also used different roughness maps on the paint so it has variation.







5. Rendered in Blender

After making all my assets, I arranged it according to my liking and concept. Before that, I had to join every asset that had the same texture set and used only one material so that my laptop wont die rendering every material.

Despite optimizing it, my laptop still couldn't handle rendering the entire room at the same time, so sadly I couldn't render the whole room..




Final 3D Shots


Backstage Area







Workshop Area







Asset Breakdown



Call Out Sheets




Reflection

This task was very fun. I faced a lot of problems when making the assets, mostly on the technical side like UV Unwrapping, and making the assets in Blender. Like I've said before, I have never made assets in blender or used blender because last semester, I used purely ZBrush, so it was frustrating at times. I solved these issues by watching tutorials on youtube, asking ai on how to solve it, and asking a friend. After I'm used to the workflow, it was way easier for me. I really enjoyed texturing the assets the most, because it's the stage where I can see it come to life. However, there are a few things I didn't get to complete because of the limited time we had on 3D compared to concepting, which sucks..I didn't get to make the rolled backdrops and the curtains. But overall, I am satisfied with the results and I learned a lot in this assignment, like Uv unwrapping, making assets in blender, texturing, etc. I hope I can further improve in the future and make my work more better.












Comments

Post a Comment