Rendered Walk-through
Introduction
The goal of this project is to create a realistic environment with all the assets created by myself from modeling to the environment setting up in Unreal Engine. The theme of the environment was two versions of organic materials, so I decided to choose food ingredients and cooked food as the choices for my objects per my personal flavor. I specifically paid attention on the translucency of the materials to simulate the visual features of the organic materials based on the different characteristics of the different materials. I also utilize it to practice my skill in Substance Designer and Painter software. The tools and software I used for this project are Autodesk Maya, Substance Designer, Painter, Unreal Engine, and Premiere Pro.
Reference
Since I decided to make the material style of this project as realistic as possible, I collected the real-life photos as the reference for my project. The choices of my objects are garlic scape, bread (dough and baked), sliced mackerel fish, and whole mackerel fish. Based on the purpose of this project which is to practice my skill in the material creating, the detail level of the reference pictures is important.
Modeling
After I collected the suitable reference pictures, I started to work on the modeling process for my project. I modeled all the required assets of my project in maya, then unwrapped the UV of them. To make sure the resolution of the textures been utilized well, I deleted some of the UV shells that won’t be observed by the camera.
UV Layout
Setting up the Scene in Unreal Engine
With the models ready, I imported the assets into Unreal Engine to set up the environment and the cameras. The camera route and the lighting has been considered carefully in case to present the detail of the material with the maximum potential.
Material in Substance Designer
All the materials in this project are made by me in Substance Designer then painted in Substance Painter. This is also the most challenging and time-consuming process in the entire workflow of this project. When I am working on the material in the Substance Designer, the interpretation of the material in real life is important. By understanding how the patterns and scratches are formed, the material creating process can be much easier and the results can be more ideal.
When I was working on it, I separated the material into the features of basic visual pattern, surface noise, roughness, and surface height variation.
To replicate the visual pattern on the reference is the first step. When I’m working on it, I usually start with the basic shape, then subtract or add different shapes together, like the parsley leaves on the potatoes. After that, I will use the warp node mix with combined gradient pattern to distort the pattern to make it looks more natural. Then I will connect them with the tile generator or sampler, to create the general surface pattern with the density that matches my requirements.
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The sliced mackerel meat is different. Because of its complicated organic structure, I need to do it by composing different sections. My method in a summary is finishing the basic section, then replicate it and compose it with the previous section together with opacity mask apply on the blending to block the unnecessary part. By doing this multiple times I can achieve the desired result of the basic visual pattern of my material.
All the materials in this project are made by me in Substance Designer then painted in Substance Painter. This is also the most challenging and time-consuming process in the entire workflow of this project. When I am working on the material in the Substance Designer, the interpretation of the material in real life is important. By understanding how the patterns and scratches are formed, the material creating process can be much easier and the results can be more ideal.
When I was working on it, I separated the material into the features of basic visual pattern, surface noise, roughness, and surface height variation.
To replicate the visual pattern on the reference is the first step. When I’m working on it, I usually start with the basic shape, then subtract or add different shapes together, like the parsley leaves on the potatoes. After that, I will use the warp node mix with combined gradient pattern to distort the pattern to make it looks more natural. Then I will connect them with the tile generator or sampler, to create the general surface pattern with the density that matches my requirements.
The sliced mackerel meat is different. Because of its complicated organic structure, I need to do it by composing different sections. My method in a summary is finishing the basic section, then replicate it and compose it with the previous section together with opacity mask apply on the blending to block the unnecessary part. By doing this multiple times I can achieve the desired result of the basic visual pattern of my material.
With all the fore mentioned steps are done, I start to work on the roughness and the normal map for the material surface. Usually they are related to the basic pattern. AO map can also be determined in this step to contribute on a more ideal visual look of the material.
Substance Designer Network Screenshots
Material in Substance Painter
When the creating of the material in Designer is completed, I import the material into the Painter and start to work on the blending of the materials along with the details of the surface. I used multiply layers to adjust the surface color details and the variations of the fish skin.
Besides the color, I also utilized multiple layers that are separated for the height, normal, roughness channel individually so I can have more control on the detailed changes on the mackerel’s back scale and the other surfaces. The turned-out result looks ideal.
For example, when I was working on the material of cooked mackerel fish, I separated layers with different height parameters for the different material types on the fish skin such like the fish eyes are dried after the fish came out from the oven but still smoother than the fish skin, the spices such like cajun mix and grounded pepper has a higher height compare to the fish skin, and the charcoaled areas on the fish skin has higher roughness, also slightly higher than the regular fish skin.
Some of the material may have changes on the surface when they are changed by the condition like got cooked or decayed. To achieve this feature, I applied a separated height layer to hand paint the height information to replicate the variation of the surface.
Export Textures
After the material painting is completed in Substance Painter, I can export the texture maps and have ready to be put in the Unreal Engine. It requires different settings to export the material with subsurface scattering in caser to simulate the translucency features of the material like meat or plants.
By doing that, I need to add an individual output map channel, and set it to Grayscale. Then I need to drag the scattering map from the input maps to the channel. With this done, I can export everything just like how I do it for the regular PBR materials.
Import into the Unreal Engine
With the material maps exported, I can import them into Unreal Engine. Most of the process is the same except some of the tuning need to be done on the material setting and connection.
The type of the material needs to set as translucency to let the scattering map work. After everything is imported into the Unreal Engine, create a new material add drop the maps into it then connect them like the screenshot.
After everything is set, it should work as expected. The color and lighting may still need to be tuned to reach the perfect appearance of the environment.
Rendered Screenshots in UE
Conclusion
From working on this project, I learned the process of creating PBR materials at Substance Designer from scratch and applying them for the assets in the Unreal Engine. It was a great improvement for me. I got familiar with the process of utilizing Substance Designer and Painter, also understood the workflow with the material creating in Unreal Engine thoroughly and clearly. In the close future, I will keep working on more environment projects in Unreal Engine. By practice more, eventually I will master every process of the game environment art creating in the Unreal Engine.