Block in for a new scene – riverside view. Going for the wider format this time. It took a long time to find some inspiration but at least I’ve made a start.

Simple scene in Vue with some Vue library bricks and a steel plate (flattened cube) UV’d in Blender and textured with the textures exported out of Substance Designer. Vue’s materials are not PBR so experimentation needed to get it to look approximately correct.

I think this is called diamond plate metal. Continuing with Substance Designer tutorials, getting the hang of it all. Quite like it really. I’ve come to the conclusion that texturing is the part of 3D graphics that I like the most. I really enjoyed Leigh’s workshop on Environment Texturing, and the recent one on Photogrammetry had a significant texturing component.

I’ve been thinking about what one person can achieve. I find game art, especially environments, really interesting. At the moment I’m replaying the original Witcher, more to have a good look at the environments than for the gameplay. The models and textures are all fairly low-res, but creating all the models and all the textures would still have taken a team quite a while. So, how to optimize my work to get the best possible results?

I’m thinking that creating a small library of very reusable high-poly assets, with good textures, is the way to go. This could be used in creating a lot of very similar scenes, or at least scenes in a single environment, so that the modelling and texturing produces the maximum number of good images.

Tiles, sculpted in ZBrush (although you can hardly tell that) with some basic texture maps, and then maps worked over in Substance Designer. Starting to get the hang of that application. Cube modelled and UV’d in Blender.

Seems that however much I learn there is always something else I need to know to achieve what I want. At the moment I’m wondering how to deal with the fact that most game environments (the ones that look interesting) have an enormous amount of detail. Seems beyond my ability to model that much.

So I’m exploring modular design, which is used a lot in games I know. More work up front I guess but pays off in reuse. I need enough reusable assets to attain critical mass, and I’m not there yet. I should review all the assets I’ve created over the years and make sure they’re easily accessible.

I really need to get my head around Substance Designer and Substance Painter too. I might have found a good tutorial for the former on one of the sites I seem to be paying subscriptions to. Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?

While looking for inspiration, I’m impressed with the amazing detailed modelling of most environment scenes. Lots of it is just plain old-fashioned poly-modelling, perhaps with sculpting enhancements, so I’ve decided to work on building up my asset collection by modelling lots of potentially useful stuff. Pretty much where I started with 3D about eight years ago.

Still exploring lighting and materials. Have done some set dressing (flowers, candles). Lots more to do.