WIP | Japanese Festival Street [Temp Title]

[Updates from top to bottom]

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Canopy Asset:

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Texturing:

Here are the textures for the mascot statue model:

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Moving Over to Blender and Starting on Mascot Statue Model:

I'm finally back from a 2 week vacation and ready to conitue working on the project. I've started working in Blender now instead of Maya so it'll take a bit of time to fully get comfortable again with modelling. I've also started working on the mascot statue model that'll sit outside one of the shops.

I commissed my friend Khaled Samara (https://www.artstation.com/khalidsam) to design the character for me, here's the character sheet:

Here is the high-poly:

Test renders of the high-poly in iRay

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Here are some screenshots of the updated scene:

Koinobori HDA in Scene:

I've tweaked the HDA a bit like having the poles only spawn on curve points and added paramaters like changing the size of the poles, here are some clips of the HDA in my scene:

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A test of the HDA in UE5

Here is the final result in Houdini. I've created parameters that control the amount of koi on the rope, the koi seed, how much the rope droops down and the curve that drives the HDA:

Koinobori HDA (Houdini):

A clip showing some of the parameters in Houdini

I've decided to create a Houdini HDA of the koinobori aset as it'll be easier to arrange it for the scene, it's also an excuse to finally dive into learning Houdini:

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Substance Painter test renders

I quickly created some seamless koi scale patterns in Substance Designer:

Koinobori Asset:

I've started working on the koinobori asset:

Maya blockout and Zbrush highpoly

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I might do another texture variation but here is the first one:

Substance Painter test renders

Freezer Asset:

I've started working on the freezer asset:

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An update of the scene in Unreal:

I've added two additional nobori blag variations:

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Texture variations:

Substance Painter test renders

I've started to work on the vending machine bins and crate assets:

Maya and Zbrush

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I quickly created a white variation for the smaller vending machine as it gives off more of a vintage vibe and more variation if always good. I also created another set of variations for the drink bottles:

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Experimenting in UE5:

Unreal Engine 5 got officially released today and I decided to test out the new Lumen lighting features. It looks a lot nicer with minimal effort so I'll continue working on this project in UE5.

UE4 default lighting, UE5 default lighting and UE5 Lumen

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An update of the scene in Unreal:

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Test renders in Iray

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Cowl Vent

Substance Painter Iray test render

Here are the UVs together:

I decided to have the cowl vent asset take up the rest of the UV space from the nobori flag model. I've started working on it here:

Maya and Zbrush

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Nobori Flag

Substance Painter Iray test render

I've started working on the nobori flag banner asset:

Maya low poly and Zbrush high poly.

I still have some UV space left over so I may share it with a smaller asset.

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Utility Pole

Render in Substance Painter iRay:

The cable was baked onto two intersecting planes:

I've started working on the street utility pole asset:

Maya, UE4 test and Zbrush high poly.

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Placing Assets:

After importing all the assets and textures I've begun dressing the first building on the left. I will create the textures for the building exteriors at a later time.

Next I will be creating the assets for the second building on the left.

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Here are the assets all textured:

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UVs and Texturing:

I've split the assets into two UV sets: The small assets and large assets. I've started on the small assets UV set.

The assets together in Maya

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String Flags:

I've created the string flags asset for the shop entrance:

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Pipes/Gutter Segments:

I've created modular pipe and gutter pieces that'll be placed around the roof area of the buildings:

Shop/Advertisement Signs:

I've created the main shop sign for the first building on the left as well as the vertical advertisement signs for both buildings. The signs will be a lot more colourful and filled with inscriptions once it's textured.

Viewport (Left) and Test Render (Right)

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Quick assemble test and render:

Test render in iRay (Top) and viewport (Bottom)

Roof Segment Aseet:

I've started creating the roof segment asset:

Roof segment asset. Maya blockout and layout (Top) and ZBrush highpoly (Bottom)

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Here is the small beam asset:

Test bake in Painter viewport (left) and quick render (right)

I'll be modelling the list of assets first before doing any texturing as I'll want to combine as many assets as I can onto a single UV sheet since these are smaller assets.

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I haven't had much time this session so I've done a quick low poly model and bake test in Substance Painter to see how it looks. The bake came out pretty well so I may just keep this and keep working on the texturing.

Test bake in Painter viewport (left) and quick render (right)

Wooden Beam Asset:

I've started off by sculpting the high poly of the big beam in ZBrush. I've sculpting all sides so I can use the same beam model and just rotate it for variation in the scene.

High-poly sculpt in ZBrush

I've made a little list of modular assets to make for the first building on the left. This includes:

• Small wooden beam

• Big wooden beam

• Triangular flags

• A big shop sign

• Paper posters

• Pipe segments

• Roof segments

I'll start off with making the big wooden beam.

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After a bit more iteration I think this will be the final composition:

My next task will be working on the first left-side building. I will create a small list of modular assets for it like wooden beams and windows and piece them together with the render mesh.

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Changing Up Scene Composition:

I've decided to change the scene a bit so it feels more tightly packed, which is what I'm more so going for, I've also imported the assets I have previously made and placed them into the whitebox locations. I may adjust this camera angle a bit later on but for now I'll stick with this general angle.

I really like this angle but it's a shame that one of the building fronts isn't visible anymore as I quite liked the motif I built up for the whitebox, though on the bright side it means less work so I can finish this project a bit sooner.

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Return From Hiatus:

After well over a year of sitting on this project (and working in the industry as a junior environment artist) I have finally returned to finish this project, more motivated (and hopefully more experienced) than ever. I also plan to use this project to brush up my skills a bit, especially with zBrush and texturing in Substance Painter and Designer.

It's been well over a year since I last worked on this project...whoops! (For reference it is currently Dec 23, 2021)

I began collecting more refereces and whiteboxing the actual environment that I wanted to create in Unreal 4:

New references that I have collected

The whitebox blockout will act as a sort of checklist which will make the project a lot easier to manage.

The initial whitebox blockout of the scene

I have a few assets already made (they could be lower-poly and more optimised but I'll leave them for now). I'll be creating more assets that'll be used in the scene, for the texturing I do plan on creating a handful myself but I may end up using some megascans just to save time.

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Spent a bit longer than I wanted to on the vending machines but I ended up learning a bunch of new stuff. Here is a quick progression:

Big:

Small:

Updated Renders:

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Bake:

Progress:

Low poly vs high poly

Slab Stones:

I was debating wether I wanted to include some slab stones below the vending machines and I eventually decided to include some. Some examples below:

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Renders:

Bake:

Smaller vending machine (left) and bigger variant (right):

The main differences:

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Smaller Vending Machine Progress:

As I've mentioned before I'll be creating two vending machines, a big and a smaller one. This will add some variation to the scene. It won't be too work intensive as I'll be using the first model as a base mesh.

Comparioson of the two, with the new smaller one on the left:

The main difference will the bottom grill, a rearrangement of the buttons and a new cover behind the buttons. Smaller changes include the machine being thinner and a bit smaller as well as there being 7 drink slots instead of 12.

Quick render Test:

I kinda regret having 12 drink slots per row as there isn't enough drink variation, though this will do for now. It should better fit my smaller vending machine though as I plan on only giving it 6 or so drink slots per row. I'll be finishing the second vending machine model before giving these a proper render as I need the inside lamp model. I'm also planning on giving each vending machine a different colour varation, for example I might make a blue variation of this vending machine.

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Texturing update:

Pretty much done with the texturing, the process was more mask heavy than anticipated so I ended up spending a lot of time in Photoshop making all the labels and text etc. I made most of the simple labels but there were some that I took from:

Texturing progress:

I regretabilly completely forgot about the inside lamp that's suppose to light the inside drinks. I'm planning on including this lamp on the smaller vending machine's uv map (as I've already done too much work on this model's UV map). This will unfortuantely mean that this model will have an extra material but since this is more of a portfoilio piece, it shouldn't matter too much.

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Drinks Update:

Here are all of the drink variations:

Extra label variations:

The display window designs:

The rest of the labels, I just did these in colour and projected it as it was way faster:

All the drinks finished, I might do extra variations if I feel like it's necessary:

Drinks progress:

I've done around half the drinks. Most of the time has been spent creating the alphas in Photoshop but it's kinda fun:

Alphas:

Again, most of the Japanese is using random lorem ipsums.

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Bake:

The grill came out pretty well, I did the bake on 8k just to make sure I capture as much detail as possible, this will be downscaled to 2k of course:

Model progress:

Low-poly vs High-poly on the grill. I think the most important part of the bake will be this grill on the bottom

Low-poly and high-poly

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Drinks Update:

Low poly, high poly and bake. The three uncapped bottles will be sharing the same cap as the first bottle.

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Some progess:

The next prop will be the vending machines. I'll be making two variants, a regular one and a wider one. I'll also be basing them on older style machines to keep them in style with the rural theme.

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Display Cover Variants:

The extra display poster variation is much needed, I also have a black frame variant

These posters were quickly thrown together in photoshop using past work, the japanese is mostly gibberish using a japanese lorem ipsum. I threw on some noise and blur filters to make them feel more vintage.

Quick test of my first two props in engine [UE4]

Renders:

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The transparent window is supposed to look a bit more cloudy and dirty but Marmoset didn't pick this up as well, this is how it looks in Substance Painter:

Substance Painter Render Test

Progress:

I changed the shape of the machine after finding a reference which better represents the Japanese variants:

Progress so far on the capsule machine:

References:

The next props I'll be making are the vintage style small capsule machines.

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Renders:

Bake:

High-poly:

Low-poly:

The first prop I'll be creating is the sake barrel, I'll be stacking these on top of each other.

My references:

For my next environment I want to create a rural japanese street set after a festival. This gives me a chance to work with buildings, props and debris.