Deva Throne- Exploring a new nanite pipeline
An in-depth breakdown of the full experimental nanite process introduced to me by Infinity27, a lot of the process was documented in my pure-ref for ease when requesting feedback, I decided to keep the first few dev phases displayed this way in chronological order.
The purpose of this task was to create a throne prop to be used by the character Deva, this prop is intended to be used in a boss room and therefore would be visible in cutscenes, this directly impacted the decision to learn the new nanite pipeline as this is seen as a Hero asset. While I know nanite is not necessary or completely stable in its optimised use yet, I always push to learn something new, and it seemed like a great opportunity to learn from the tutors at Infinity27.
I researched visual symbolism, shape theory and scale reference before moving on to some silhouette concepts, I documented every development phase and consistently sought feedback in art dailies to ensure I was pushing every element to the best it could be.
Overall I am really happy with the outcome of this asset, while I am still unsure whether the nanite pipeline was really necessary, I do see it has its place and can definitely elevate the quality of a piece. If I were to do this again I would explore a more traditional 1-1 baking method to see if I could create a more optimised mesh while retaining the high-quality finish.
UE5 Render, Custom backdrop and lighting setup.
UE5, Custom backdrop and lighting setup
UE5, Custom backdrop and lighting setup
UE5, Custom backdrop and lighting setup
UE5, Custom backdrop and lighting setup
UE5, Custom backdrop and lighting setup
Initial Research- Using a combination of real-world photography from a friend, real artwork and AI imagery from Google.
Initial sketches- Exploring shape and composition, as well as scale reference to the intended scene in Maya
Development Phase 1- Blockout, refinement of curvature in that Blockout. As well as exploring alphas in advance.
Development Phase 2- Midpoly, really pushing the hard-surface curvature and defining the silhouette.
Development Phase 3- Highpoly sculpt in Zbrush.
Development Phase 4- A combination of Zremeshing and manual retopology in Maya to achieve an accurate shape that has clean topology for subdividing again, as well as clean UV's at the correct texel density for the rest of the game.
Development Phase 4- The highPoly mesh is projected onto a subdivided version of the previous mesh which is then decimated again to a reasonable level for nanite implementation.
Material and Decay Research
Dev Phase 5- A brief insight into the build of my velvet texture and how it developed through constant feedback.
Phase 5 Continued- Each of these materials were built from scratch in Painter, all 3 have procedural decay via masking or use of custom stencils.
Development Phase 6- Lighting and rendering was relatively simple, I made my own backdrop and used the Studio Tomoco HDRI as my base. From there I added 3 simple rect lights and a spotlight.