SciFi Hallway with Substance Designer
polycounter lvl 9
I made this sci-fi hallway this past week and learned a ton in Substance Designer. Thought I'd share my workflow and discoveries.
I didn't go off a concept for this, rather designing as I went, although I did have reference of sci-fi doors from games and other artists that inspire me. Once I was content with the shapes and overall design, I modeled high poly versions of the elements.
I then modeled and unwrapped the final low poly meshes that would ultimately be imported into UE4.
I broke apart the various meshes, both low and high poly, in to more granular sizes for baking purposes. This also supported the iterative process for this pipeline.
In Substance Designer, I baked the normals off the high poly meshes and stitched together the granular pieces utilizing masks baked from the UV shells, creating the normal maps.
I used the same method to generate the material ID maps. (I had to go back and apply the vertex colors to the low poly meshes. I realized it probably would have been easier if I applied the vertex colors before modeling the high poly so that I could get the appropriate colors off of details in the HP version. This is something I'll have to experiment with in the future.)
Next, I setup the texture material networks with temp materials that represented the various surfaces that I would need to create.
At this point I turned to Unreal, imported the meshes & temp textures, compiled the materials, setup the scene, and created the light rig.
A friend gave me a critique and said they weren't enthusiastic about the door, so I hopped back into Maya and whipped up something a little fresher. (new left / old right) Because of the pipeline work I did, this caused almost no issues and everything baked quickly.
Then it was time to texture. I created various materials like steel, painted metal, plastic, etc, and blended them using the material ID maps. After much iteration, I was able to begin layering symbols, scratches, wear and dirt on the textures.
Exporting and importing the textures between Substance and Unreal was fairly easy and allowed for quick creative decisions and iteration. I had to go back to Maya a few times to fix UVs and other issues, and mostly, it wasn't a painful process thanks to the non-linear workflow.
Finally, I "finished" the scene.
I could definitely take it further, and probably will at some point. This is about 40 hours of work. Very open to feedback on the final piece and/or the process.
Thank you,
David Ballard
I didn't go off a concept for this, rather designing as I went, although I did have reference of sci-fi doors from games and other artists that inspire me. Once I was content with the shapes and overall design, I modeled high poly versions of the elements.
I then modeled and unwrapped the final low poly meshes that would ultimately be imported into UE4.
I broke apart the various meshes, both low and high poly, in to more granular sizes for baking purposes. This also supported the iterative process for this pipeline.
In Substance Designer, I baked the normals off the high poly meshes and stitched together the granular pieces utilizing masks baked from the UV shells, creating the normal maps.
I used the same method to generate the material ID maps. (I had to go back and apply the vertex colors to the low poly meshes. I realized it probably would have been easier if I applied the vertex colors before modeling the high poly so that I could get the appropriate colors off of details in the HP version. This is something I'll have to experiment with in the future.)
Next, I setup the texture material networks with temp materials that represented the various surfaces that I would need to create.
At this point I turned to Unreal, imported the meshes & temp textures, compiled the materials, setup the scene, and created the light rig.A friend gave me a critique and said they weren't enthusiastic about the door, so I hopped back into Maya and whipped up something a little fresher. (new left / old right) Because of the pipeline work I did, this caused almost no issues and everything baked quickly.
Then it was time to texture. I created various materials like steel, painted metal, plastic, etc, and blended them using the material ID maps. After much iteration, I was able to begin layering symbols, scratches, wear and dirt on the textures.
Exporting and importing the textures between Substance and Unreal was fairly easy and allowed for quick creative decisions and iteration. I had to go back to Maya a few times to fix UVs and other issues, and mostly, it wasn't a painful process thanks to the non-linear workflow.
Finally, I "finished" the scene.
I could definitely take it further, and probably will at some point. This is about 40 hours of work. Very open to feedback on the final piece and/or the process.
Thank you,
David Ballard
Replies
As the environment goes I'll drop in some main points on criticism.
- The lighting is very flat and comes off very dull when you could be leaving the outskirts quite dark and the centre of your environment lit to give it a better atmosphere/mood to your scene.
- You mentioned that you went off and designed as you built the environment... to some extent I do this myself but never straight off the bat, more like I start with a concept/reference and seeing issues with the original concept that I didn't like and then decided to add something else in myself that I thought would bring more dynamic shapes to the composition. In the process of building as you go you need to keep in mind that your environment needs purpose as right now I don't see any to this... Truth be told that it is indeed a sci-fi corridor but it doesn't give you any story telling as to where this corridor leads to or what it's connected to.
- Materials in the scene are quite hard to read e.g. the texture on the floor on either side of the metal panelled floor meshes... I'm going to assume it's metal since everything else in the scene is metal but the actual detail itself looks like it could be a type of grungy concrete but the roughness value makes it feel marble... I'd just suggest spending more time on material definition on these.
- Again to pick at the lighting I feel the balance between emmissive lighting in the scene is quite conflicting to the eyes, your focal point is obviously the door-way at the end of the corridor but the ceiling lighting is overly blown out and draws my eyes towards that more than anything else.
- Based on what we see here there aren't many assets that can tell me how big this corridor is in scale, It could seem very small or very big... the only thing I can relate to is the door but even that doesn't give you much to grasp on, it's necessary to have small scale items in a scene to help you grasp some sense of how big the environment actually is... something as basic as railings or panels with buttons on the side or regular door ways in shot to aid the heroic style doors as well.
Either way, keep rolling with this one
Great points about lighting and scale. As for the surface you pointed out, I was going for a concrete texture.