3D Environment
Artist
Preparation
For this environment I wanted to pay homage to one of the main influences that made me want to make environments for video games - Mirror's Edge. The style of this game had me entirely engulfed in its world. The graphic realism was like nothing I'd ever seen before in a video game.
I wanted to make something in that ballpark of style but with a leaning in realism. This was also a huge exercise in creating tileable PBR materials, and the main focus.
Geo + UV's
Utilizing Unreal Engine's vert painting heavily, having enough geometry was incredibly important. That geometry being neat and precisely UV'd even moreso.
Keeping clean, even mesh allowed vert painting to work as well as possible when painting layered materials so it wouldn't look splotchy.
Material Set-Up
My materials were all initially set up as material layers, allowing me to stack them and vert paint in each respective RGB channel for each layer.
Going this route required creating multiple variations of each material - a clean/bare version, dirty, and damaged, as needed.
Subway Tile Graph
Trim Sheet Graph
Substance Graph Examples
My go-to plan of attack with building materials in Substance Designer is to begin with a basic shape or pattern, then build on it in layers and blends to create compelling materials, as well as firstly working off of a good roughness map before adding any color.
