Adam Galles
Environment Artist
The Alleyway
The original concept already intrigued me with the mysterious and painted Alleyway. I wanted to change the lighting and make it feel magical. I also fully optimized this piece utilizing tillable textures and RGB masks to ease the texture load.
This project came to life when I added custom brushstroke meshes and foliage. I hand painted the murals and decal assets to fit the scene.
I made some major modifications with the artist bench, hanging props, lighting, and water effects to bring the piece together.
Concept
Original Artwork by tobi 泳
Process
I started with the walls and the sculpts, at first matching the concept 1 to 1 but then adding layered storytelling elements later on. The most important development was the style read, from there it was a matter of layering and adding my own twist to make the space feel intriguing and lived in.
Materials
Most of my materials I focused on subtle color and normal maps to fit in that nice middle ground between stylized and slight realism. These tileables were the foundation of my project, modified in unreal with their strengths and tints.
Most of the hand painting came through in the RGB painting instead of the materials.
Kits
Objects such as the close up walls, doors, and stairway were sculpted in Z-brush then topologized in MAYA. High poly bakes were created in substance painter and both normal and RGB masks were exported into Unreal Engine.
Other objects were simply modeled in Maya and then painted in substance painter with RGB masks if necessary. The Decals were created in photoshop then compiled together and adjusted in Substance Designer.
As stated before, a major part of my process began and was centered around texture optimization with RGB masks, trying to limit my textures and achieve the hand painted look through layers and RGB masking. The masks on the objects can be seen below.
Most of the effects I created in Niagara or shaders. The moving water was created with simple panning textures on planes. The fog rolling down the walls however is Ultra Dynamic Volumetrics in Unreal.
