Deva Throne Environment

The purpose of this environment was to showcase the stretch goal assets I produced for Infinity27 in tandem with the throne and some strong ethereal, dreamy theming. The core modelling of the architecture was done in Maya and Zbrush and was completed during the BootCamp, however there were UV issues that couldn't be resolved in time. So it's worth mentioning the use of Blender to allow me to transfer clean UVs to the nanite meshes featured in the ring and arches, the detailed patterns are actual geometry on detachable planes, this would allow for variation in the future, but the final decimation method caused warping on the clean UVs due to the fact they are flat meshes. Blender allowed me to transfer my clean UV data across on multiple assets to achieve an outcome with no warping and good UVs.

I really liked the detail brought in on my nanite ring and arches, but I felt tiling textures alone washed this out, so I went back and added a 2nd UV channel to all of the architecture pieces, I then remade the UVs for this channel to fit inside of u1v1, and baked my normal curvature and AO detail. I was also able to make use of a previously made deferred decal trim directly in painter, to add crumbling variation to the edges of the steps. I then blended the UVs in unreal engine to make use of the baked data and the tiling texture at a higher texel density.

The majority of foliage in this scene is from Megascans, however, I did take the time to make the interior framing tree using Treeit, which I then imported into Maya and used MASH to procedurally place the custom-made branch clusters in a natural way. I also used mash to produce the fringe on the carpet, I found it much easier to use the placer node on assets like the carpet and tree, as it really sped up the process of using so many repeatable assets.

I decided to stay strong with the use of nanite, as it's worth exploring the new technology. I found making a blend material for the ground via Quixel Bridge blending to be ineffective as there was little to no control over nanite displacement, so I created my own blend material using 3 megascans textures, which I was then able to vertex paint in the right places to reveal roots and moss breaking through the tile. I found I couldn't add a puddle layer with opacity as the shading model is not supported by nanite, so with lots of learning curves to overcome, I used decalchamp to add puddles into the damper areas around the fountain as the solution.

I knew I needed to breathe some life into the video renders so I started by bringing in a previously made procedural water texture, which I was so excited to see in ue5 as I had originally made the material in ue4. I was able to adapt each instance to my desire for the different types of water included. I also chose to bring in a previously made cascade system for falling leaves, all I had to do was replace my old texture with the new maple leaves I had made from a megascans atlas. I then went on to create a simple Niagara system for fireflies, adding to the final dreamy feel. I pushed myself to create a more complex system when I made the butterflies surrounding the throne, this took a lot more trial and error with velocity and exposing my animated material parameters inside the system. I loved the butterflies so much that I decided to use my original animated texture to create a butterfly spline blueprint, allowing a singular butterfly to fly through the scene, setting the tone for the fantasy elements grounded in realism. I then chose to create a matching rigrail for my camera to follow the butterfly along with, though looking back I could have made improvements to this by using a rig crane attached to the original spline.

I also created a lumen sphere blueprint, allowing me to duplicate emissive spheres around the scene for additional fantasy-style lighting, with each sphere's colour and emissive intensity directly editable in the details panel. Following the logic of rapid repeatable assets via blueprints I decided to make a candle blueprint, that allowed for completely custom scale, rotation and brightness of the flame, I also added the ability to randomise this to create a more natural finish to the excessive amount of candles in the scene.

Overall I am really happy with the vast range of techniques I have learned and implemented during the development of this piece. There are of course many things I would do differently if I were to do this again, but I am happy with my adaptability and creative thinking throughout the development process.