In this article, I'll guide you through how I crafted a stylized medieval game environment using Unreal Engine 5 (UE5), Maya, Substance Suite, and many more pieces of software. Halfway through this project I decided to learn Blender, so all the props we're created using that instead of Maya.
Introduction
Hi! My name is Gordon McConnell. I am a 23-year-old Graduate Environment Artist from Glasgow, Scotland. During my time at Glasgow Caledonian University, I studied Computer Games: Art & Animation for four years before graduating with a 2:1 (with honours).
Since graduating, I have discovered how much I love creating stylized environments and since then, I've been pushing my knowledge and expertise in whatever way I can. So from this project, I aimed to achieve a strong portfolio piece that showcases my love for stylization, whilst utilising techniques such as trim sheets, modularity, sculpting, and more.
The Aim Of This Project
Before starting this project, I wanted to set myself some goals:
Gain experience using trim sheets
Practice with modularity
Work from concept art
Medieval environments come in all shapes and forms and I thought this is a great concept to build on for stylization with the large overhanging buildings.
Medieval Architecture & Inspiration
Prior to jumping into Unreal, I like to do a little preparation, gather some inspiration, and visualise what it was I wanted to create. During this stage I like to read articles and watch plenty of videos on breakdowns, and how other people go about their work to pick up some helpful techniques that might be useful to me later in the project.
Here you can see how I broke down my research stage and gathered an image reference that I really liked. (Ignore my horrible handwriting). This helped me visually break up the scene to make it easier once I started creating.
Following this, I jumped into Unreal Engine and began blocking out the initial composition and how I wanted it to be laid out. I usually don't spend a lot of time on this and just aim to get a quick feel for the scene and lighting setup. However, it was important I captured the scale of the buildings and the feeling of them hanging over.
Creating The Materials in Substance Designer
To begin with, I created a series of procedural materials in Substance Designer. Creating materials first helps to start breathing life into the scene from an early point and sets it up nicely to begin modelling.
Stylized Plaster
It was now time for the fun stuff... creating the materials in Substance Designer. I began with the plaster material that is used as a base for the majority of the modular pieces of the buildings.
Stylized Cobblestone
Followed directly after I created the cobblestone path material, however, this was done in a slightly different workflow so that I could re-use the rocks as a model in the scene (as well as a texture).
To do this, I created a collection of initial base meshes in Maya based on reference photos and took them into ZBrush where I then used Dynamesh to sculpt high-poly stylized rock detail as seen below.
From there I used decimation to export the rocks at a reasonable poly count and took them back into Maya where I then began placing them onto a plane (with tiling in mind), to then be baked in Substance Designer.
In Substance Designer, I added additional details such as rock detail, height variation, smaller rocks in crevices, and much more to create the final outcome.
Stylized Moss/Grass
Next to come was the moss material. I started by modelling some basic blades of grass with the help of Maya's bonus tools, which were perfect for creating irregularity within the blades. I then prepared the grass in front of a sub-divided plane to allow for a successful bake in Substance Designer.
From there I got my baked maps and began creating the final moss material.
Modular Building Kits
To do this, I wanted to make use of a trim sheet, which was sculpted in Zbrush and baked/textured in Substance Painter. Learning to sculpt with tiling in mind was a big challenge, and had a fair bit of trial and error, however, it was worth it for the end result.
With the help of the trim sheet, I could then easily model various modular kits to use for the buildings, including walls, floors, attics, windows, and more. From this point, I could start piecing together the buildings in the scene and really start to get a feel for the environment.
Vertex Blending
I used vertex blending throughout the modular kits to create a worn and distinct look on the plaster material -- this was also later used to add moss and bricks to the stone objects.
Through this method, I used a complex node graph which allowed me to carefully paint the vertices on the mesh, introducing subtle variations on the surface to give off natural wear and tear. This process brought modular pieces to life making each piece unique in the environment.
I began creating props, a lot of which made use of the trim sheet. Other's were individually sculpted and textured. The key props in the scene based off the concept art are:
Wooden barrels
Fruit & fruit baskets
Fruit stalls with cloth simulation
Part of the reason for using a trim sheet was the minimise time consumption during the prop creation phase, and so I wanted to make sure the number of props I created used this.
The fruit and hanging sign followed a slightly different workflow as they had to be personally taken through the sculpting, unwrapping, and texturing process.
Lighting & Rendering
Lighting the scene was a back and forward process, I couldn't decide whether to go for a more washed out scene that matches the concept art more, however, I decided to stick with a vibrant stylized look.
The lighting setup was very simple and made use of:
Directional sunlight to cast the overall light direction of the scene
Skylight to bring more overall light into the scene.
Very soft additional directional light (no shadows) to brighten up the darker shadow areas.
Small spot lights to brighten up some focal areas.
Lastly was the Post Process Volume which I used to add a bit of bloom, adjusted the temperature, colour graded, and other fine tweaks.
In Summary
There we're plenty of hurdles to overcome when creating this stylized medieval game environment, particularly for me who has never created modular kits and entry level trim-sheet experience.
For that reason these we're the areas that took some trial and error to get working. Knowing the correct dimensions to use for modularity and how they will line up in engine is a lot easier said than done.
Trim sheets on the other hand was a steep learning curve, particularly during the sculpting stage. Making sure it was tileable when sculpting (by using symmetry) was quite difficult.
Overall, I really enjoyed creating this scene and I felt I learned a lot that can be applied to future projects.
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