Hey, long time no see. It has been a while since I posted. I went on break a little early and got back a few weeks ago. I have been back on the grind to completing this project for the past few weeks. I have been learning Houdini thanks to my friend Alex, who without I would have been hopelessly lost, but I have figured out with her help, and we got destruction on the side building and front building and the pillars to look as accurate as possible. I have also created a load of decals for this scene, all of which I made through Substance Designer and Photoshop, which has been fun to learn as I have never made my own decals. Next, I will make the Moss texture for the main building and a few more decals. I am trying to learn edge damage decals, then the texture for the ground, and work on the gazebo and the last few things. But it is all coming together.
Week 11/15: Foliage Shader and Lighting
I just finished my vegetation shader this week, so when I do the rest of my foliage, I can plug in the texture maps. Thankfully, I found a great tutorial that taught me everything I needed to know about this. Now it's all set up, so when my foliage is all done, I can plug it into the shader and get these fantastic results. I included a little test picture below, and they turned out great. I have also been playing with the lighting; I'm getting closer and closer to matching the concept, and after this week, I will take a little break from foliage and overhaul the textures and decals. I will use shadow cards for some of the areas on the first floor and possibly work on the deteriorated portions of the environment. I will see where it takes me.
Week 11/7: Foliage
This week, I learned how to make Trees in Speed Tree and tried to match them to the ones in the concept as closely as I could make them. I also did my first pass at the ones in the back with leaves. I still need to make the one with the fall leaves, and then the next step that I am currently working on is the vegetation shader one, where I can plug all my foliage textures in and make sure subsurface scattering works. After that, I will move back to my textures since I will have taught my class a foliage tutorial by the end of the month, rework all my textures, and then move to Houdini to work on my building destruction and pillar destruction. After that, I will teach myself how to make decals.
Week 10/31: Speed Tree
This past week, I have been working hard on SpeedTree and watching whatever tutorial I can get my hands on to learn as much as possible, as I have to teach a class on it at the end of November. My next step is to finish my base tree. That way, I can plug and play what I need and then make whatever edits I need to make to fit into my environment. The sooner I finish with Speedtree and my lecture, the sooner I can go back into textures and Substance Designer and rework all of my textures for this scene.
SpeedTree Foliage: First Iterations
Vines: First Iteration
Simple Maya Branch
Week 10/16: Base Textures
Sorry for the late post. I missed last week due to fall break. I did work on my environment over the break, tweaking some models to match the concept more. After getting things to a good place, I started my first round of base textures, all subject to intense change as these are just the first iteration of my textures and a starting point. Thankfully, I could use a bunch of my old designer textures. I edited them slightly to match the base of my textures, saving me a lot of texturing time. Still, unfortunately, I have to pivot here and start onfoliageages. I have to teach a class on it at the end of November, so I have to become, at the very least, knowledgeable on Speedtree and possibly Houdini. Still, I am excited by my progress, and things are progressing smoothly. Once some foliage is put into the scene, things will start to shape up in the environment.
Week 10/1: Detailed Low Poly
This week, I posted a little late due to life just getting in the way and grad school taking over my life. Still, I have been able to make a significant jump in my modeling with a majority of the detailed low poly done, so now I can focus on repositioning certain assets to fit more in line with the concept and then move on to doing my basic textures first and getting started on foFoliages I suppose to teach a class on foFoliaget the end of next month so the more I can learn about foFoliagey then the better. After the seventh week, I will jump into Zbrush and Houdini to get the damaged detail and test it in the scene. Still, for the week of the seventh, I will be finishing up the low poly and getting everything ready for the next steps that I need to take to make this a complete environment. 
Modular Kit: Second Iteration 
Hero Asset Chair: First Iteration
Week 9/23: Low Poly
This week, I have worked on my low poly and slightly on the directional lighting and skybox. For my low poly, I just did a basic modular kit. There is nothing serious in detail for my first iteration, and there is significant room to grow with the modular kit, which I will show week by week in the weekly update. I have also been playing with the lighting and messing around with the volumetric clouds, which I have never done. Still, I have found some exciting tutorials and used unreals other volumetric cloud presets. I changed the source angle for the directional light to eliminate many of the giant shadows. I also added rectangular lights to brighten the top two floors while the bottom is slightly darker. I will go more in-depth with the lighting as I get more done with the modular kit and start getting things into better places.
Week 9/16: Blockout
Hi, I am an aspiring environment artist and Graduate Student at the University of Utah in Games in the Game Arts track. For my last year, I wanted to challenge myself when it came to environment art and make an unbelievable piece for my portfolio that tested my skills as I was going to do everything on my own with no external assets. This project, I have set the entire school year to get this all done and look perfect. So, I appreciate you taking the time to read my blog as I update weekly.
Concept by Luc Fontenoy
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/rlEJPe
This week, I have just worked hard at the Cine Cam in Unreal and Blocking out this environment to prepare it to take into Maya to begin my Low Poly modular kit. I did have significant trouble with the Cin Cam in Unreal as getting the correct FOV where everything in the block was not matching up, but with the help of FSpy and for the first time in years, I got it to work tooling around with that. After several redos with the camera in unreal, I got a very close match. After that match, it was just the simple task of blocking out the main scene and ensuring all my buildings matched up perspective-wise. I like to give them all different colors so that when I do my low poly, it's easier to remember which little thing I might be working on and what I need to work on next. That is my progress for this week, and I will update you with more progress next week.
Blockout & Overlay
Post Process Cine Cam Material
Fspy
../Marvelous Designer Sand Bags
Substance Designer Puddle Generator 
