Blue Town

Update 4/26: I'm happy to say that this project was featured on Autodesk's Max product page: https://www.autodesk.com/products/3ds-max/overview?term=1-YEAR&tab=subscription&plc=3DSMAX

A personal project I started after being inspired by Thiago Klafke’s Spanish Town tutorials (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUmiAdqMhD8). Always been a huge fan of that guy's work since back in the old Polycount days.

I challenged myself to make a bit of a larger environment than normal for my personal work. I began with design blockout, moved into architecting and color blocking, then spent a good while finishing and refiguring things that didn't work! This was far from a straightforward project since I was learning new things about UE5 and constantly redesigning so I revised it a ton.
The main goals here were to find the fun in executing and to spend longer on both the design blockout and designing the art. I didn’t look much at pre-existing concept art for this because I wanted to push my design skills using photo reference only and creating my own concepts/ideas to build from.

I greatly reduced my workflow complexity and increased my iteration speed by using fewer programs. For this project I cut down to 3 main dccs: 3DS Max, Substance Designer, and UE5.

Modeling: All modeling was done in Max only. One Megascans asset is used for rubble piles. It is not a nanite scene; all models are pretty simple low polys, boxes, etc. Gratuitous usage of edge normal decals: (https://www.artstation.com/artwork/l3wwa)

Texture: The scene is almost entirely textured with trims and tileables, including props. 99% of textures were made in Substance Designer (with some help from Clip Studio Paint for making a few fancier masks or hand drawn masks).

Level Art: Heavy use of UE's level prefab system. Heavy use of modular building. Heavy use of vertex paint. Not much nanite here; just rubble piles.

That’s all, folks. Thanks for reading and hope you enjoy. 🙂