Backyard slice- Japanese Onsen

My second 3D brief for term one is to make a backyard lice using a PBR workflow and with the use of a new software to me- Substance Designer. I am looking forward to learning the new skills required to generate textures through node based workflows as this is something that I have never tried before. I am not particularly strong at using node based functions so this will be a good way to improve my skills. I will start by composing a range of references and inspiration boards using relevant images of ideas I have already been thinking of. I want to create something which utilizes a range of interesting textures and depths so I can challenge myself within substance designer and develop my skills using Unreal. I feel as if my skills in this area are lacking therefore I plan to add in some unique elements such as water for example to push my understanding a bit more. I think it is very important to get a good composition down, consisting of interesting varying depths and surfaces. I will also be putting my model into unreal very early on into the project so that I can start getting my lighting scenario down and then adjusting my textures from unreal in substance designers in a trial and error manner. I think this will be a good way to efficiently combat my mistakes and ensure that my final scene looks professional and clean.

Collecting References

To start off I decided to collect as many refences as I could of Japanese Onsens so that I would have a basic ideas of some assets that I want to include and how I can make a good start to my blockout in unreal. I collected a range of images mainly of outdoor onsens as this is what I want my backyard slice to be based from. The main asset that I saw after collecting these images was rocks and lanterns. Therefore I will make these a key point in my design as to convey a more convincing interpretation of a hot spring. I would also like to have a go at making a water shader in unreal just to push my backyard slice project and add a more dynamic and alive feel to it. I will also refer back to this board for my colour pallet and for refences to shape language within the scene as a whole or specific assets. 

3D Blockout- Unreal

In order to achieve a strong composition I made a 3D blockout of my scene on unreal using the basic geometry in the engine. I wanted to focus on including a range of assets with varying shape language whilst thinking about what materials they would be made from and what I could include on trim sheet, tile sheets and basic asset uvs which I would take into substance painter, rather than designer. For the brief we had to include a plaster tile sheet along with 2 more of out choice made on designer. The main wall of the building will be made using texture however I might have a look at some more complex tutorials to maybe make a texture with brick underneath the plaster as it is peeling away.  From the blockout I was really thinking about what textures i needed to prepare and the best possible ways to make them. I wanted to include different levels into my blockout as this will create some interesting elements of shade and add a more dynamic effect into my lighting set up. Through looking at my reference boards I came up with this base blockout (as seen below). Lots of the choices I made are heavily reflected through my research as I wanted to make my Japanese onsen as convincing as possible whilst also having elements of creativity. Some common assets which I noticed from my research and then brought forward included boulders around the hot spring and many of the springs had wooden shelters over them. I thought this would be a nice thing to add not only for the variation in the textures but also for the difference in height and contribution to the lighting setup. 

I decdied to draw over my blockout so that I could get a more accurate idea of what I was going to start builidng in max and if i needed to make any compostional adjustments I could do it in the earlier stages with ease. I decided to add some colout to this draw over to get a basic idea of what tones and mood I would be going for. i decided on a light and pleasnet atomosphere for this piece as most of my previous 3D pieces of been more on the moody side, so I thought this would be a nice change and challenge. 

Once I was happy with my block out I decided to start doing a basic sculpt in 3DS max and start getting some of the assets in. I wanted to make all my substance designer retextures first so that I could start getting this into unreal quickly. I think this workflow will help me achieve a better unreal set up if I'm able to tweak the scene as I go through the project. I am not entirely happy with how this is looking as I think the actual silhouette is looking too blocky and plat. I may consider adding some more dynamic shapes in to add a more striking and eye-catching aesthetic to the slice. As this is only my initial idea in 3ds max I am going to refer back to some references and add in some more elements. I will also be taking some of these low poly assets and throwing them into zbrush in order to sculpt a high poly asset for them for example the shrines. For some assets that don't need sculpting but only need a high poly I will, be using high poly sculpting techniques to achieve more smoothed edges to create the illusion of a higher poly asset. Also I have made a plane with the correct parameters in order to be ready for measuring my textual density when I start unwrapping my objects as this is one of the key points to our brief. 

Substance designer textures

As previously mentioned I wanted to start off by making my textures in substance designer so that I could put them into unreal engine as quickly as possible and tweak them as needed. This was my first time using substance designer therefore it took my a while to get my head around what I was doing. I started off by making my bamboo texture using reference from a stylised bamboo tutorial online (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IuYM_EFXTY ) and changing it to make it my own and to make the texture fit my particular style and project better. As this was my first texture using designer setting up all the masks was tricky for me so this texture took me a long time. However from doing this I was able to understand what each node did and when to apply them within a texture to create a desired effect. Originally my bamboo texture didn't have enough noise and felt a bit too stylized and plain to be part of a semi realistic scene. From feedback from my lectured it was suggested that I added in some fibrous normal noise which I did. This made my bamboo texture look a lot more dynamic and realistic. 

Bamboo texture

This is how my bamboo texture ended up looking in substance designer. I added more noise to the individual bamboo sticks and added some green grunge in between them as to look like moss or mould caused by the amount of steam coming form the hotspring. Overall I am happy with this texture however I think the rope could have done with having more fibrous texture to it too. 

This is my node set up for this texture.

When I put the bamboo texture on the wall in unreal after unwrapping and checking the texel density It didn't look they wat I wanted it to (this screenshot was taken before i added the noise). The actual shape of the whole wall looked highly blocky and infective. I therefore went on to adding some geometry to it in order to create some more naturalistic dimension as it was looking too static. 

It still wasn't looking how I wanted it to as the top of the bamboo looked much to choppy and unnatural. I decided to see if I had any left of tris at the end of the project I would go back and add even more geometry to it to further bring out the bamboo texture.

Update:

It is now the end of my project and I have a very little amount of tris left however I do have enough to add some more geometry as this part of my project is really bothering me since it is such a big asset. It looks a lot better now that I have done this. Ideally I would have added even more however I do not have enough budget left since I added so many assets. It is not perfect but i tried my best to improve it from its previous states.

Plaster texture

My next designer texture was a plaster with a brick wall under. I wanted to have a kind of rustic looking wall where the plastic had flaked off in areas to reveal the brick underneath, caused by the constant dampness and rising steam from the hotspring. Throughout this project I was thinking a lot about how textures and areas would react differently to the environment, such as adding moss and wetness in areas where they would be damp. This texture was very complicated as it was made using the 3 masks for the cement, plaster and bricks which I did find very confusing. As a refence I used this video as I liked the way he had constructed it however I added my own ways of doing things in to make the texture my own.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAM3MQUgNY0  

This is the node setup for this substance texture. After some formative feedback from my lectured they suggested that I reduce the noise of this which i did end up doing and it looks a lot less noisy and less out of place. I used a levels nose to effect the amount of normal noise there was. 

Cobblestone texture

This texture took a long time for me to get looking ok as I kept messing up the shape of the cobblestone slabs and it started looking way too stylised for the look I was going for in this project. I eventually was able to create a mask that was more fit for this project. For some reason I also struggled to get a nice colour pallet with this and when I was importing them into unreal it wasn't looking right. It took me quite a few reimports to get it to a nice looking colour in the actual game engine itself. As you can see I added some wetness to some of the slabs to mimic like they have gotten damp from someone getting out of the hot spring. Please see below a final update.

I was eventually really happy with how this was looking in engine especially with the variation in roughness maps to create wet looking floor. It also added a sense of narrative to my piece which was something that I had been focusing on throughout. I wanted to make it clear what my backyard slice was and how people would use it. I wanted it to have a purpose and a clear interesting concept.

Here is the node setup for my cobblestone texture. Its a little bit disorganised as for this texture I neglected the organisation of my file which was not good. this is something that I wont do again as it is hard to go back to the texture and know what it going on. 

Rust pipe texture

This was a texture I made on designer towards the end of my project quite quickly. I was going to texture the drain pipe on painter however I realised I could just use a tillable designer texture so I came up with a quick node setup of some rust over a painted black metal base. 

It is a very simple setup however the asset is quite small and I think this texture does its job well for what it needs to. 

Assets

For this project I made my assets using a range of hard surface high poly modelling in 3Ds and in zbrush. Some objects that didn't need sculpting on to achieve a high poly were made on 3ds and then chamfered accordingly to make the high poly model instead. Any kind of wood plank or lantern was done in this way. Any natural forms such as rocks I took into zbrush and sculpted then retopped to make a low poly. Below I will include some screen shots of my assets in substance painter one they were baked and textured. I really enjoy using substance painter and I think some of my strongest work is using that software. 

My final lion texture and bake. This took me a few attempts to get it looking nice in unreal as at first It was too noisy and not clean enough. 

This was the start of my lion sculpt. I did it with zspheres and then unified it and began building up the base shape. Then going up in subdivisions I added more and more details to it. 

After retopping my lion in 3ds max and baking the finished high poly on this is what it looked like. I was very happy with how this baked. I used a range of refence images to sculpt my lion however this was the main one as I liked how cute they looked.

My lantern was not sculpted in zbrush however I did make a high poly version in 3ds max so that the edges were more rounded. 

I was really pleased with the texture on this. I wanted to make it look more worn away than the actual lion itself as it is close to the ground and will have been touched and eroded away by the steam coming from the spring. This was also sculpted on zbrush.

I only made 3 versions of rocks and duplicated them and resized them in unreal. I also put them at different angles. 

I was originally going to make my roof in substance designer however I decided to base down a high poly on top of a low poly and add in some geometry in order to make it look less flat. Baking this took my quite a few attempts since the high poly I had made in 3Ds max was a bit complicated and it was baking down well onto the very basic surface. Adding in the geometry definitely helped me achieve a better bake. I made 3 versions of the roof to accommodate for the different areas where they would be. 

I added a slope to the roof once it was baked and textured. as I found that baking it down when it was flat was a lot better.

I had a lot of fun making these little onsen signs, I made alpha stamps on photoshop and then imported them into substance painter and stamped them on to my wooden planks using height to create the illusion of paint and carvings. 

I made by shoji screen by doing a drawing of a Japanese temple with mount Fuji in the background using fine liner and then scanning it into my computer. I then made an alpha with it on painter and stamped it onto both my texture and the emissive alpha as I didn't want any light emitting from the drawing since no light would pass through it. I really enjoyed combining elements of my traditional art skills in with my 3D to create this part. 

Progress

I split up a lot of my assets into ones with the same textures however I made sure that I was using the correct texel density sheet for each one. I also made sure to make sure of as much of the texture space as I could by packing my UVs logically. 

At this point in my project I wasn't happy with the original shape of the building as it looked very flat and didn't have enough depth or layers to it. I then decided to change it to this layered stricture where one half has been elevated. This would overall create a more interesting silhouette and make it look less static. However I still wasn't happy with the overall shape of the roof therefore I wanted to add a bit of variation and by looking at some more references of tractional Japanese roofs i decided to change the top roof to be a triangular shape. 

I was a lot happier with this shape as it adds a variation of shape language within the piece. 

I decided to collect some refences at this point in the project as I was starting to add all my smaller assets into my scene and I wanted to keep my backyard slice as close to a real like onsen as possible to keep the narrative convincing. Here are some of the further more refined images that I collected. 

Lighting

I initially struggled when I was lighting my scene in unreal. As I had consistently been throwing things into unreal and messing about with the lighting setup I wasn't actually sure what I wanted it to look like. I started off with a daylight scene however after doing some more research i found out that most people use Onsens at night, therefore I decided to switch to a nigh time scene as to further push the narrative of my backyard slice. Furthermore since one of the key features of my piece was the many emissive maps on the lanterns and windows having it in a daylight scene would take away from the possible atmosphere that I could create. 

I started out with this dusk type lighting however I could not work out why my sky sphere was bright even though I had set the sun to be as low as it could be. It did not look like a night time scene at all and the lights weren't popping out either. I wanted to create a lot of dynamic shadows. I must note that many of my assets had not been textured at this point so the whole thing looked very plain and plasticky. 

I did some research on why my scene was so bright and I ended up learning a lot about the use of 'post process volume' and how I could implement it in my scene to make it look darker and more like a dark nigh time scene. I played around with a lot of the other filter setting and found that I could do a lot of things to the overall tone of the project. However I decided to only use the post process brightness setting as I didn't feel as if the others were relevant to this particular project. 

My project was incredibly dark and I needed to start adjusting the volumes of any point lights and other light sources I had to reflect what was going on in the scene. 

Water shader

Since my project is a Japanese hot spring one of the key elements to this was the water. Up until now I had been using a blue plain just to show me how the scene will kind of look however I have made a water shading using a tutorial I found on YouTube and editing it to my needs. The YouTube tutorial (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyBfsVF6y0Q&t=1462s )

was not exactly what I wanted as it was more relevant to a lake water texture rather than a small pool so I edited the speed of the waves and also the frenal effect along with the water colour. Here is my node set up that I used. It was my first time making a water shader so I messed around with all the settings in the instance for quite awhile to create an outcome that was appropriate. The normal maps for the waves i used were ones already available in the engine.

Decal

For my decal element I wanted to make something relevant to the narrative of the onsen therefore I decided to make a temperature sign indicating a warning and the water temperature. These are typically seen in hot springs. I used some images from online and heavily edited them to come up with my own onsen sign which looks like this. I added some filters so that it would fit in with the colour scene of my scene more.

I also made a normal map for my decal using the feature on photoshop which can generate one for you. i was very satisfied with the result of this.

Finally an alpha channel was made.

I applied the decals in relevant places on my mesh.

Final results

Overall there are elements of this project that I am very happy with and elements that I think can be improved. since I think one of my biggest weakness with 3D is anything to do with node based functions I wanted to push myself a little bit during this project by creating 4 substance designer textures to try and make myself a little bit more comfortable with the software. I did end up making these textures however I think there is a long way I can go with improving my skills using these programs to make the textures look better quality. I also made a node based water texture which I think also helped with pushing my skills out of my comfort zone I am happy with the objects and atmosphere I was able to create using lighting and my texturing skills on substance painter and I think my use of lighting has definitely developed since the start of this project as I was working from unreal from the beginning of the project rather than adding all my assets in right at the end. I was able to really refine my lighting concept by doing this. I was going to add foliage into this project however I think some of my assets ended up taking up too much of my tri budget so not only did I run out of time I also ran out of budget. These are considerations that I will make next project.