Hey Everyone:)

I just wanted to give you all an update on the train environment that I have been working on. In my last blog post, you will be able to see that I made two Substance Designer materials and placed them into marmoset to see how they would look together. The project is now starting to come together and there has been a lot of progress since my last post. In this blog post, I will show you how the project is currently looking and I will breakdown some of the assets. 

First of all, I have made a quick video fly through of the level which you can see below. 

You can also see an image of the exterior and interior below.

So as you can see, I now have the two substance designer material (the platform and the train tracks) in a UE4 environment with my train model. At the moment, I am currently in the texturing stage of the project, I have done a first pass of the exterior texturing and I am currently working on the interior. None of the textures are final at this point and I want to keep improving them. 

I have been using Substance Painter to texture the train, but the plan is to export out all the masks that I make inside of Painter then make a master material inside of UE4 so that I can control parameters such like the train colour, amount of rust and dirt and so on. This way I will be able make each train in the environment different and make a more interesting and realistic environment. I did a quick test of this method only using base colour which you can see here: 

The downside to this method, is that it takes a while to set up as you are practically re-texturing the train and you end up with a lot of masks from Substance Painter. However, once this is set up, I will be able to change each train using material instances rather than re-texturing things inside of Painter and ending up with lots of different textures. I can then use graffiti decals to make each train more unique.

 Moving on to the assets. So far I have only modelled the train which is set up in a modular way so that all the pieces snap together, I still need to model all of the surrounding area on the platform and model some filler assets to go in and around the train such as trash. If you read my first blog post, you will see more about how I modelled the modular pieces but in this post, I will show a few of the textures that I have made. Please bare in mind that these are all WIP and could change. 

The unwrapping stage of the project took a lot of time! There are 8 texture sheets in total, this may seem a lot just for a train but I wanted to get the train looking as good as possible and this is a train that you can walk through so it's like an environment within itself. Once I have set up the master materials, I can have loads of different variations from the 8 master materials. 

You can see two examples of my unwraps in the images below.

The first one is the unwrap for the doors and door frame modular piece and the second one is for all the undercarriage. 

• Finish Texturing the train
• Add graffiti decals
• create a snow material and vertex paint this on top of the train or use world position to do this, I'm not sure yet.
• Model surrounding area
• Create master material for each modular piece

That's all for this blog post and I will keep you updated on the progress.

Thanks for reading!

Hey Everyone:)

I just wanted to give you a quick update on the overall progress of my train environment that I have been working on over the last few weeks. 

I've finally finished making my train tracks and platform materials and I've done a few quick tests of what they will look like rendered in marmoset which you can see below. 

I've now to finish texturing the main train and place this into the environment. Once I have done that I can start making extra assets such as trash to go around the platform and I can start placing everything into Unreal. 

The main train is taking a while to texture as it's both the interior and exterior and I am doing a few variations for different trains. 

So far, I am quite happy with the progress and I will keep you all updated on my progress. 

Thanks for reading!  

Hey Everyone, 

I just wanted to share with you all a recent work in progress shot of my current Substance Designer material that I am making during my dinner hours at work. 

This is a train track substance and you can see an earlier work in progress shot in my previous post. 

Below you can see a few images.

Things that I still have left to do are:

• Fix the mask for the pebbles and fix a few clipping issues
• Finish off making the base colour and roughness maps
• Add leaves
• Add more surface detail to each element to make it more realistic
• Make renders in Marmoset

This should be the last Work in progress post I do before I post the final in the new week or two. 

If you have any feedback or ideas to things I should add, let me know:) 

Thanks for reading! 

Hey Everyone:) 

It's been a few weeks since I gave an update on how my train level is coming along so I just wanted to do a quick post to let you know how the project is going. 

At the moment I am currently working on a train track substance that you can see below. 

I'm still currently working on making the height map for this substance and the things I want to add are:

-mud buildup around the  planks

-bits of old rubbish that people have thrown on to the tracks like crisp packets etc.

-add more pebbles and refine the ones that are currently there

-add more bolts and panelling to the tracks

-add leaves on to the mud floor

I'm working on this substance in my dinners hours at work so hopefully it will be fully finished in the next week or so.

The train itself is coming along slowly due to the unwrap. I originally unwrapped the train so that I could just texture it in substance painter. However, I am thinking about going back and unwrapping it more to suit tile-able textures, that way I can set it up inside Unreal engine to change the parameters that I expose inside substance designer on each material. That way I can get a lot of reuse of the train in the level and it's a bit more modular. 

I will keep you updated on this project as in the upcoming weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Hey Everyone:)

I just wanted to write a blog post to share with you some recent substance designer work that I have been creating. 

I have spent all weekend getting together loads of marmoset shots of five different materials that I will be uploading in the next few weeks. Four of the five have been done at work so I need to get their final approval before posting. 

The main material that I have been working on in my spare time is a Aztec Jungle floor pattern. I've still got some work to do on it but you can see my progress below: 

This is the basic stone floor pattern that I have finished today, I now have lots of different elements to layer on top to make it a bit more realistic. 

This includes:

-Primary Roots

-Secondary Roots

-Mud 

-Leaves

-Pebbles

I have started making the primary roots shapes and quickly blended them together which you can see below:
  

I still have some testing to do with how to blend the ambient occlusion and height together so that the roots sit on top of the stone rather than being dug into the surface. 

In my last blog you will see that I am also working on a train environment. To give you a little update with that, I am almost finished with the unwrap and ready to start texturing the train. I'm hoping to have some more images to show you of the train at the end of the month. 

I am still quite new to Substance Designer so if any one has feedback on ways to improve this, let me know!

Thanks for reading:) 

Hey Everyone,

Welcome to my blog:)

First of all, let me start by introducing myself, my name is Dom, I’m 23 years old and I am currently an Environment artist at a VR studio called ‘Immotion’ in Manchester, England. Throughout the past few years I have been working in the games industry, working at places such as ‘Microsoft Studios- Rare LTD’ working on a game called ‘Sea of Thieves’ and I then went on to work on a game called ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’ at Rockstar Games.

I have not updated my Artstation page in a while as I only like to post finished projects on my page, so I’m hoping to use this blog as a platform to show you work in progress shots of the current personal projects that I am working on. I plan to post every few weeks with updates on how the projects are going and hopefully give you a little insight in to my workflow.

Throughout the next few months I will also be adding a lot more environment work that I have created whilst at work including a lot of substance designer materials and more prop work.

So, the current personal project that I am working on a is a New York train modular kit. I have just finished the high poly model today and I now plan to move onto unwrapping and texturing stage of the project. You can see some images below of the current level

The reason that I have chosen to model a train is because I wanted more hero type props in my portfolio and I thought that this was a good way to practice both modelling a hero asset and a good way to gain more environment work at the same time.

You can see the way that I made the modular pieces below, at the moment some of the pieces such as chairs and doors are copied within the scene but when I come to prepare the scene for the engine I will only texture and import one of them. I decided to break the train up in to a main window piece, a small window, the door frame and the front of the train. I also made a piece for the front of the interior and then made the wheels and undercarriage separately.

After I finished the interior, I went on to render the interior of the train in Keyshot as I wanted to learn some more Pre-rendered techniques, you can see this image below.

I plan to split this project in to a few different avenues and reuse the train in a few projects. First of all, I am going to texture the train and present it in marmoset as a prop, I will then move onto rendering out a Keyshot version of the interior like the image above but with the new textures that I make.

After this, I then want to render the scene out in unreal engine 4 and add a few props in the interior to show that someone has been living there. Hopefully by doing this I will be able to create a few more assets for my portfolio. You can see an image of the current level below.

The next element of game art that I feel like I need to improve on is foliage and more organic modelling such as rocks so I wanted to do a level that would allow me to make these things but still show of the exterior of the train. I decided to go for an overgrown, abandoned train that you can see below.

Here you can see a quick concept that I have painted over the unreal engine block out. 

So in summary, the order of this project will go:

• Train Prop presentation
• Train Interior Keyshot render
• Train interior- Unreal engine render
• Train Exterior

I know that this is a lot of work to complete and it will take me a few months to do in my spare time but I’m hoping to stagger the posts and give myself small deadlines for each of the projects.

I will do another blog post once I have finished unwrapping and texturing the train and you should start to see more Artstation posts from the work I have done at work in the upcoming weeks.

I'm also more than that happy to get any feedback from the work that I show on this blog, so if you have any, please go ahead:)

Thanks for reading!