Creating a Storytelling Street Corner Scene with Painterly Effects

Introduction

Hello, everyone! I am Leo YuanLi, a 3D Environment Artist from Shanghai, China. I have one year of experience crafting 3D art. Currently, I am working as a freelancer, making 3D assets for stylized PC games.

When I was a kid, my dream was to be an artist. I loved drawing weapons and characters. The background paintings from comics and animated movies always amazed me. Art was planted in my body but awakened after years passed.

I worked in a creative company where I got a chance to work closely with a lot of talented illustration artists and designers. The art dream got lit again. I tried 2D painting and followed a bunch of artists online, then Blender came into my world. I felt 3D can be a cool way of creating my own art. Luckily, I have a friend who is a great Environment Artist who recommended me to learn Blender. Then, my art journey started with a Donut. 

I learned 3D skills online. After enrolling in a tutorial on Udemy, I mastered the basic workflow and toolset, and then I stepped on the road of creating my own art. I also searched for tutorials to solve the problems during creation. In this way, the learning curve went much smoother for me.

Archway. The first of my own art.

SolarPunk

Goal and Reference of the Corner 

In November, I participated in the Bi-Monthly Environment Challenge hosted by Polycount. The concept of Corner by talented artist ZC WANG immediately caught my attention. I have always liked the abandoned corners in cities. The color scheme and shape language would be a big joy for me when creating it in 3D. Besides, the pickup can be a good modeling challenge, as well as a 3D creation, when it comes to modern topics. 

I wanted to make a storytelling environment by adding details and my personal touches without betraying the concept. Therefore, I went bold in this project and made it into a completely easy fun, mostly about texturing. 

For reference, I used PureRef; it works perfectly. To avoid being drowned in the data ocean when collecting references, I stayed focused on a few components. I won’t make reference collection 100% ready when doing personal projects; I allow myself to finish the basic part and then fix the details while working. This way works like painting or building a 3D environment: Block out-Add details. 

Composition

I chose a sort of high-angle shot, a bit higher than the concept because it makes the environment more dramatic and dynamic; it also helps to express the feelings of vulnerability/being dominated, et cetera. The camera angle can tell the emotion in a hidden way. 

I wanted to make sure the hero prop stays in the center like in the concept, then used other props as guidelines. The height difference among props, the point direction of props, and the signs of newspaper on the floor try to tell players where to go. There must be something going on around the pickup. It is probably a new clue to pass this level!

To get better focus, I also used some primitives for cast shadow and a slight vignette in the camera post-process setting. 

Blockout

I used primitives inside the engine to do this job. In this phase, I focused only on the right proportion and camera setting and the first pass of lighting. However, for an environment with simple elements, I would suggest doing a more detailed blockout. 

The camera here was 45mm, almost close to how human eyes observe (50mm), with no distortion. However, when looking at the concept, there is distortion. So, the focal length might be 24mm-35mm, which is being used in city photography a lot, making the environment more dynamic. In this case, I switched to 24mm after all props were ready.

Modeling

About pickup modeling, I started with a box in Maya and then got the proper shape by adding loop cuts, extruding edges, and moving vertices. After done with the body, extrude the edges to get a fender, extract it, and then mirror it after finishing the texturing. In this way, the fender and body can look more integrated without wasting time and texture. As for other small components, such as mirror/light/wheel, I made each one and then mirrored or duplicated them. 

I also deformed the shape a bit to make it more dynamic, breaking straight lines to enhance stylized look. Simply moved vertices in soft select mode by pressing B in Maya. 

I did details like rust, damage, and scratches in ZBrush. The brushes I used are from Orb. I basically used the same workflow for other props. 

Textures

This is the most interesting part of 3D creation for me. As I mentioned above, I went bold on texturing this time. I enjoyed adding outlines and a lot of painterly effects in Substance 3D Painter. I want them to look dirtier rather than clean. Just make sure the color picking stays in the same tone as the main color. 

A good time saver for Substance 3D Painter is Smart Material. I create one material for one prop, store the folder as smart material on the shelf, and then use it for other props. All I need to do is adjust the parameters. The method of achieving this look in this project is Base Smart Material + Hand-painting Details + Hand-painting Effects + Dirt + Outline.

• Basic Material: Base Color-Lighten & Darken Curvature - Gradient from Top & Bottom (using Position Generator as Black Mask) - Light Generator - Dirt Variations by using textures.
• Hand-painting details: Just enjoy painting with the help of a Mask. Then, erase the painting a little so it looks uneven or clean.
• Hand-painting effects: Mask Editor (try with different textures) — Slope Blur — Manually add where you want. Feel free to use the level to control the mask area.
• Outline: Simply draw it like we always did in childhood. If the prop is bigger or more complicated, a Curvature generator can be a time saver; just make the color dark grey. Hand painting an outline can also fill the blank where post-process material can’t reach in an Unreal Engine if drawing a thicker outline. 

Hand-Painting Details

I made some tilling textures for walls and floors in Substance 3D Designer. As the concept shows, the wall has more volume. Therefore, I made the plaster layer thicker and gave the edge more bevel to bring out the volume. You can do it by adding Blur HQ and Level to control how much you would like to bevel. Because the wall is quite close to the camera, I made more details on the surface, such as cracks and uneven edges. To make the modular wall’s edge not sharp and straight, I added a bevel and moved some vertices in Maya.

Shader

The Shader setting was quite simple. I didn’t want to spend too much time making one all-powerful master material or material function, so I made a master material for props and used a limited number of parameters. Try to get game assets done correctly before importing them into the engine. The textures I used were Base Color, Normal, and MRAH (Metallic/Roughness/AO/Height). You can merge the channels you need.

One more master material is for vertex blending. I used height lerp in this case to gain better results. I added some extra nodes to control the world position of UV. 

Finalization

All the assets were done, and it was time to play around with Unreal Engine. The lighting in this project is dynamic. I used two directional lights: the yellow one is for illuminating the scene, and the purple one is for lighting up the shadow. Then, I added a few cubes above the scene to cast a shadow. There is a purple variation in concept, so some purple point lights were used to light up the corner to gain more variation and improve the grayscale of the scene. Since this is a small scene, I also used a local fog to bring scene a bit color tone difference from the bottom. 

In the post-process setting, I only added an outline material. I prefer to localize the camera post process than play around with general settings. For the main shot, I slightly increased the bloom value as well as the film grain intensity. This is my preference in Photography: Soft and Grainy. It makes the scene old and comfy, in my opinion, as if the picture here is not from a digital camera but an expired Kodak 135 film. I did a bit of color grading in Photoshop to make the environment more saturated and cheerier. 

Conclusion

This project didn’t take much of my time; I only spent about half a month finishing it. The main challenge in this project was pickup modeling and enhancing modern props' stylized performance. I learned a lot from great artists from the Polycount Forum. Their feedback helped me better understand stylized art.

During the entire creation, I couldn’t stop thinking about Miyazaki Hayao; I couldn’t understand why he was so happy and enjoyed everything when creating Porco. But through this Corner project, I have understood that feeling. When you don’t care about anything fancy, there are no eyes full of expectations behind you; it is the pure enjoyment of just using what you have mastered, creating an interesting story without any interesting technique but a heart full of joy. This mindset will take me further in my art journey. This is also the most important thing that I have learned from this project. 

The advice I can give to beginner artists is to learn while creating and always celebrate your accomplishments, even if you just learn how to make a donut.

If you have any questions or opportunities, feel free to reach out at ArtStation. I would be pleased to help.

Leo YuanLi, 3D Environment Artist

Interview conducted by Gloria Levine