3D Video Game Environment Art Bootcamp

You have three tasks for your upcoming homework assignment due next week.

Part 1: Complete the Environment Artist Story Template

Complete the worksheet, and write out your second draft story from the environment you decided on creating.

Part 2. Complete your second pass Purref Board

Open and complete the second pass Purref board template and complete the blank sections.

Part 3. Complete three preliminary blockouts of your chosen environment

This can be done in your 3D package of choice or exported to Unreal Engine 5

- All forms should be identifiable on sight (they aren't just boxes)

- Play and experiment with 3 different layouts

- Keep the composition tight and small.

- Add cameras and start playing with your constrained camera angles.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Start a new UE5 scene that is a third-person blueprint.

Start a new file (map) based on the time of day template.

- Use online asset repositories (Turbosquid, CG Trader, Sketchfab) to collect proxy assets for all the props you create.

- Every asset you plan to create must be represented in the scene.

- Build your modular set. Walls, Floors, and Ceiling must be their own assets for optimization purposes. Keep the pivots in the corners.

- If you are doing an interior scene, the space must be completely enclosed to prevent light leaks from the exterior.

- Create your organized folder structure in UE5 before you start to import any assets into the project.

- Add colours to your objects to represent the materials you plan on creating.

- Your scene should include a humanoid figure for scale reference (UE5)

- USe the FBX of the character for scale reference

Keep up the excellent work!

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Mission

You have two objectives:

You are to re-light one of the free environments from the Epic Games launcher (Learning Tab) and create first-pass lighting on your own environment.

1. Re-light A free environment from the Epic Games learning tab or marketplace.

- Collect references from a movie and replicate the lighting and mood from your reference.

- Use a free environment and convert it to a UE5 project.

- If you don't know how to convert a UE4 project to UE5 use this tutorial.

- Delete all the lights in the scene and using Lumin lighting recreate your lighting from reference.

- Take some screenshots with the "high-resolution screenshot option" and post them to your Artstation portfolio

2. Create the preliminary lighting pass on your environment.

- Work with a post-process volume in your scene and disable the eye adaption by adjusting the min and max (0.5, 0.5) under exposure settings.

- Collect references from a movie or game and replicate the lighting and mood from your reference.

- Start with the largest lights first (Usually Atmosphere and sunlight.)

- Move on to the artificial lights in the scene (if any).

- Under project settings search for "Shadow Maps" then, under the "shadow map method" dropdown, change it to virtual shadow maps (beta)". This will improve your shadows.

You have two tasks this week:

Walls, Floor, and Ceiling are to be final modeled and textured to 100%

1. Final Room Assets

- All walls, floors, and ceilings are to be final models. Please replace your blockout meshes with the final versions.

- Make sure your pivot point is on one of the corner vertices.

2. Room (Walls, floor, and ceiling) fully textured

- Using tileable textures, you are to texture your room.

- Be sure to use proper texel density, making sure your assets are consistent.

- 4k (4096 X 4096) is adequate For tileable textures on the walls floor and ceiling. You might even be able to get away with 2K (2048 X 2048) depending on how much it tiles.

- Make sure to always use a power of two textures (128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096)

- Be sure to source textures from Quixel Bridge. They have a lot of really high quality scans. I would dissuade you from creating one from scratch in Substance Designer as it will take too long.

- If you are falling behind for whatever reason, this week you really need to put in some extra time to catch up. Treat this like a job with a hard deadline.

Keep working hard!

The rewards come to those who persevere through the trial.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Mission

Here is your assignment due next week.

You are to determine what is your hero prop in your scene and work on it until completion.

High to Low poly models and bakes, fully textured, lit, and presented as a portfolio piece.

You will submit the asset as an Artstation post.

You have one week, from Monday to Friday to complete the asset. In a triple-A studio, you typically get 2-3 days to complete an asset. For a hero prop (depending on scale and complexity) 1 week to 2 weeks.

The purpose of this exercise is not only to complete a high-quality asset for your portfolio but also to work on speed.

Not only do you need to be talented at creating game assets, but you also need to be fast.

1. Complete Hero Prop

- Modeled high poly

- Modeled low poly version of the low poly.

- Optimized UVs (tightly packed)

- High-quality bakes

- Asset Fully Textured to the best of your ability.

- Asset lit and presented in a real-time engine (Marmoset Tool Bag or Unreal Engine)

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Things are really starting to heat up now! I'm sure you feel the crunch and anxiety of falling behind.

I want to let you know that it is expected at this game stage.

Keep in mind that you are undergoing a trial of sorts; this is the test. At this point, you have to dig deep inside yourself and cut out distractions and time-wasters. Re-focus, come up with a list of outstanding tasks and get it done.

Here is your assignment due in a week's time.

You have two tasks:

1. You are to complete the largest asset in your scene (aside from your hero prop)

Now that you have completed or are in the process of completing your hero prop, now you can work on your largest assets and work your way down to the smaller ones.

2. A second, more refined lighting pass.

Take another pass at your lighting. This time identify any super dark areas in your scene and add fill lights as necessary.

Take another look at your references and do another detailed lighting pass.

God-speed. This is challenging, but you can do it!

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

This is a critical point in terms of prop delivery, at this point it is easy to fall behind if you don't employ some strategies going forward.

One of them is thinking about your prop work as "passes" instead of completing each prop to "perfection."

Think of the way concept artists do it. We've all seen those progress gifs of concept art where they approach it in passes. You'll see the first pass is a color and shape-blocking pass followed by multiple other quality or beauty passes.

So when you are doing your prop work and you approaching a deadline set by the Bootcamp. Stop working on it, submit it and call it a first pass with the intention of returning to the prop for more passes later.

This way you can meet your deadlines and then return to the assets during the polish phase at the end of the project.

This week you have one task:

1. You are to complete the next largest asset in your scene (Third Prop)

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

Kindly be aware that the information provided here constitutes bonus content derived from another course—Advanced Environment Mastery. While certain techniques may or may not directly apply to your specific environment, it's essential to recognize that these methods adhere to industry standards. Familiarizing yourself with these practices can be valuable, offering a broader perspective and enriching your knowledge base.

This week you have 2 tasks to complete.

1. Do a third pass lighting on your environment

Take another look through your reference.

Make sure you are using high-quality lighting (check Global Illumination section in your post-process that the quality slider is set to at least 4)

If needed, and you are not happy with your lighting, consider scrapping it and doing it again from scratch.

2. Medium-Sized Assets

Continue with the next largest assets in your scene always working your way down.

Try to use this as an opportunity to practice Photogrammetry techniques and see if you can make 1-2 assets using this workflow.

Consider what assets you can source from Quixel Bridge

Remember the rewards come to those who finish. watch out for distractions.

If you are finding it hard to get back on track, consider doing the next small asset in your scene to completion and posting it on Artstation to give you a boost of motivation.