Week 08:

Further Updates/ Prop Population

Having acquired a time machine this is me posting from the previous couple of weeks...

Starting this week I aimed to create further set dressing elements. My scene has been looking completely barren and devoid of any life. Thus what better place to start than books, no scene is ever complete without them: personally owning an ever growing collection of old tomes I thought it would be a good opportunity to use some SubstanceSampler's image to material function (and validate me buying more)

Black, H. and Diterlizzi, T. (2008). Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You. New York: Simon & Schuster.

For this process I took a photo of the spine and front cover of each of the books (ideally I would include a back but for the sake of efficiency and texture space optimisation I decided to go purely for a copy of the front (most players wouldn't notice this and any books that need the back could be textured as such)

This was a relatively simple process, editing the photos in Photoshop to remove them from their backgrounds and some colour alteration, concluding with laying out the textures in the form of an Atlas, eventually bringing that it into Sampler. Using the "Image to Material Function" and changing the values allowed me to create the desired level of bump to the normals giving that believable level of realism. Finally I created a simple book in Maya which when unwrapped I placed the UV's to be aligned with the Atlas. Resulting in some pretty believable high quality book props that can be placed around the scene.

Using the same technique I created scans of the pages from my copy of "Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You" A book that was truly my most prised possession as a child. Containing the stunning artworks by Tony DiTerlizzi that felt only fitting to include in my scene. These then used a very flattened version of my tiling wall texture creating a bit of normal detail (which is still slightly too strong in these screenshots but helps breakup the light on affecting the surface).

The inevitable goal with this is to sell the slightly tortured naturalist character-esque feeling to the house and scratch some of the cluttered itch that could only have been achieved if I had gone for the attic instead.

Alas onto my next classic prop! A plant...

Using the exact same process I took photos of my own monstera using a very high-tech cut pizza box to block-out the background making later cropping easier whilst not harming the plant. For the actual plant I made a couple stem variations using the single texture, a few leaves and roots utilising the rest of my Atlas. Whilst this plant still doesn't read as nicely as I would like it does look "unhappy" which is the vibe I wanted having to suit a slightly rundown manor house.

Once in Unreal I applied a simple wind offset node setup to the material; providing the slightest intrigue and dynamism to the scene.

Overall these props will greatly help bring my scene together and whilst using someone else's work for the pages/ books wouldn't be suitable for a published game title instead you should be creating your own textures entirely (as I did for my Diagon Alley shop) for a student university project it seemed acceptable.