Hey,

I've started a new personal website: https://petedimitrovart.com/

I wanted to put all of my blogs and writings from the last years into one place. Previously they were scattered in all kinds of different places.

I'm hoping to also release tutorials and guides that are more in-depth over there.

If you are interested in Environment Art, Tech Art and Props, make sure to check it out.

https://petedimitrovart.com/

Thanks,

Pete.

Hey everyone! I decided to try out video format for my latest personal project. Watch above to see my art pipeline inside of Blender and UE5.

I hope you find it interesting. Let me know what you think.

https://petedimitrovart.com/p/amarantos-001/

My new post in a brand new series is out. You can find it in the link above.
The past months I've been working on a new environment scene and this blog entry is about the beginning of that.

In it I talk about game prototyping, initial influences, Houdini and VATs.

I've tried to include as many insightful screenshots, videos and links.

https://petedimitrovart.com/p/amarantos-001/

Hey everyone,

I wanted to quickly share with you something I am immensely excited about. The project I've been working on for a while now, at Rebellion, finally got its reveal trailer. NDAs lifted, finally (well at least in small parts).

I've had lots of fun and got to work with many super talented individuals on this game. It's been a blast in creating and learning and I hope everyone gets just as excited by the trailer.

Sniper Elite 5

If you would like to know more, follow this link that my colleagues have set up: reb.to/SniperElite5

Have a great day,

Pete.

As some of you might have seen through my portfolio, The Neon Graveyard is finally finished.

I wanted to make this one final post, to wrap up the last eight entries of the series. I want to do that so I have the opportunity to sort of mark and number the entries, as blogs can sometimes be a bit chaotic, and it might be hard to keep track.

You can see a gallery with the finished work over at my portfolio.

There are quite a few videos over there, so if you haven't already, make sure to check it out.

Index.

The making of everything seen above is documented in eight blog posts, that I wrote between January and May of this year. If you haven't read them, now is your chance! I'm sure there would be some intriguing insight in there.

The Neon Graveyard - Part 1 - Idea and Research

The Neon Graveyard - Part 2 - First blockout props 

The Neon Graveyard - Part 3 - Mausoleums

The Neon Graveyard - Part 4 - Landscape and Bricks

The Neon Graveyard - Part 5 - Cyberpunk Caskets

The Neon Graveyard - Part 6 - Textured Casket

The Neon Graveyard - Part 7 - Neon Signs

The Neon Graveyard - Part 8 - Atmosphere

Special thanks to anyone who was reading through the process. If anyone is exploring the links right now, I hope you enjoy it.

Pete.

If you remember the scene from last time, you would probably notice that it looks completely different. That is, looking at the atmosphere, at least. The layout is more or less the same.

Mist.

I had this idea, of having mist just above the surface, since the very start. I purposely postponed it until now, though, as I didn't want to get crazy with tweaking volumetric fog settings, alpha and fog cards and putting crazy amount of time in it, whilst not having the basic layout figured out or any of the props ready. But now, when nearly all of the props are ready, I had the time to sit down and work on vapor and smog.

For anyone wanting to recreate this, the ground mist is just a very large Particle Emitter. Its tied up to a Clouds texture, pans a tiny bit, has a pretty short lifespan and is spawn cylindrical. After that its just a matter of tweaking your Volumetric Fog settings in your Exponential Height Fog volume. I'm pretty sure the guy in Epics video (14th minute mark) about Volumetric Fog in the Engine quickly recreates something very similar. The only part I added myself, is how I placed it in the world. It's just below the surface of my Landscape. And that's how I made it look like ground mist. 

Stained Glass.

Another, very important addition since last time, is the Stained Glass material that I created. It's made from scratct in Substance Designer. What you see here is version 2.0, as the first one I created, I abandoned after a bit, as I though its shape was too simple. It had a diamond pattern going for it, and I wanted something more intricate looking than that.

My main approach to it was creating a base pattern and then picking up different areas of it and applying a few individual Flood Fills. Each Flood Fill is turned to Color and then the hue, saturation and lightness of each shape that the Fill has picked up is randomised. The tricky part was giving it a shining look afterwards, in the Engine. If you look at just the material "ball" in Substance, it doesn't look like much on its own. To give it that emissive look, I masked just a small portion of the whole patter. I applied another Flood Fill (by now third) and gave it sharp, stained masked noise with a Slope Blur.

I'm particularly happy with this approach, and it gave me one thing I didn't anticipate and wasn't aiming to achieve. If you look at the texture up close in Unreal (the screenshot above), the emission mask is distinct and clear (white magenta bits). As you start going further away from it, though, the Engine shrinks the texture quality a bit, which blurs the emissive pixels. Those pixels then, start to work together with the Bloom settings of the scene, and fill the whole glass surface with a dark, electric, blue color.

(As I described, you can feed an outline of your pattern towards a Flood Fill. You can then use a Flood Fill To Color to randomise the HSL of each generated shape. You can see all of that in the screenshot above.)

If you are making a strained texture of your own, I would suggest experimenting with emissive mask, but also pay attention to your Bloom settings in the Post Processing Volume. A good combination of both, always makes for exciting results.

For the pattern of the texture, I was in parts inspired by Matthias Schmidt's techniques, which he shares over in his blog. Check that out too.

Other things.

Most things are ready by now. I still have a few objects to put textures to. The boxes that you can still see are placeholder for hopefully some statues of something looking like a weeping angel. I want one or two of those, to contrast the very straight shapes of the rest of the headstones. 

I'm also still working on the details of the main gate that you can see in the very first shot in this post. Facade details around the big window too.

Making this project has been quite a fun journey. I think this will be my last post about it though. As long as it goes about approach explanation at least. My next one 'hopefully' will be a gallery to showcase the final result. I'll be working on the video, to showcase the casket as well.

(Casket as seen from a few posts ago, as I have a feeling some of you probably don't even remember it. It's still here! Going to animate it for a final video.)

One of the reasons I started this project a few months ago, is my University. As such I'll be submitting it as a thesis in about a week now. So that's the deadline by which you will hopefully see the final result as well.

(Some of you know I'm a fan of progress GIFs, so here is a very compressed final one.)

Thanks.

To those of you who you stuck with me through the whole journey, and read all of the previous entries (about seven), I want to say thanks. I hope you found them useful and intriguing.

Pete.

After finishing the casket prop, I've had time to go back to the overall scene and continue working on missing props and details for the landscape. The other thing is refining textures and figuring out how exactly I'm going to tackle making the neon signs. Previously, my neons were just simple alpha cards with an emissive text. Although in its core that's what neon signs look like anyway, I wanted to put more attention and detail into them than just that. Possibly build a more complex material shader.

As the last two posts were about the casket, it's been a very long while since we've last seen the scene as a whole. As such I am just going to show you at what stage I am right now, and then we can talk about how I created the different bits.

The scene.

And just as a reminder - this was we had before (three weeks ago or so):

Neon signs.

From close up, this is how the "Personal Eternity" one looks like:

And a few GIFs to show the animations I've put in the signs. (gifs are heavily compressed as Artstation caps the file size at a very low amount).

I intend to make some even more dynamic, by having letters flick. The metal mounts of each sign still lack textures, but that will be for later.

The text that's lit up is in Russian and reads the same way as the English one next to it "Backup your Consciousness". It's going to be a play on words as well, which I will animate for the final video. The idea I have in mind with that is about the text in Russian, appearing lit up fully at first - "Сохраняйте свое сознание". The whole sign then flicks on and off a few times, as if short on electricity. When it powers up again, its left with just "охраняй сознание". First and last two letters from the first word are off, second word is entirely off. And what we are left with reads from "Backup your..." to "Guard your Consciousness".

Making the signs.

At some point, I made the alpha cards of the neons into 3D objects. I made a few of the texts into actual geometry, but then when I inserted them in, you couldn't really tell from afar that they are dimensional and 3D. Going up close to them, most still looked relatively the same - flat. That's why I decided that there is no really point into turning them into expensive on memory 3D.

Plain text with an emmisive material was flat as well, and as such I went into trying to figure out another way to make them look better, more dimensional, and more neon-ish. That's when I though of trying a transparent text with a border. I then put a second border to that said border. The inner border, I assigned bright color together with emission. The outer border, I left dark. The fact that they are transparent from the inside, boosted the illusion of "neon". What I discovered then, is a trick I made up which turned them actually dimensional (sadly probably not very well seen in the GIFs due the small image size). I duplicated the text as it is in the world in the engine. I then offset its position by a few pixels backwards from the original position. To that second copy, I then applied an instance of the original material. In that instance, I can change the previously exposed parameters such as the colors of the inner and outer borders, as well as emission level of the glow. Then, by changing those colors, to ones completely different from the original, I managed to create an illusion of depth. The result is best seen when you move the camera while looking at the signs from a side. The secondary colors, from the text copy that is behind, leak and bloom softly. They contrast so well with the front text, that whilst you move, they make the whole text appear as if an actual neon, with dimension and shifts in the value and hue of its color. That effect is apparent even from the static shot seen above, that showcases the "Personal Eternity" neon.

The borders, I created in Photoshop using Blending Options - Stroke. To keep everything optimised, I suggest making those masks into a single image. In the image above, I've put the two different borders, onto two channels - one on Green, the other on Blue. In the material shader, I simply take those channels and assign them color and emission value.

I've showed you how I do this with a single text - "Personal Eternity" taking a whole bitmap of 512x512, but for this project, I actually keep every text and neon design, into one single image. In a 2k texture, you can fit much more than you would think, and using every channel - R, G and B - allows for even more effects and optimisation.

Headstones and other props:

In Zbrush, I imported low-poly models of headstones that I created in Maya. I turn them high-poly by dividing the geometry with smooth off. I then sculpt detail on that and when I am happy with the result, I create a new, low-poly version, by decimating the typology. For that, I use Decimation Master, that can be found in Zbrush.

The headstone seen below, I decimated from 2.3m tris to 2k using Decimation Master. When you go to poly that low, you can freely take the model in Maya, and UV map it by hand. 2k tris is not too much, and as such the automatic mapping in the newer versions of Maya does quite a good job. It takes most of the flat surfaces and gives you whole UV islands, and it leaves just a few weird triangles here and there, that you can quickly sew back in place. Small edges with lots of damage on them, usually get mapped weirdly too, but you can go over those and fix them with relative ease.

Later on, I'm thinking of giving the weird letters on the headstones, actual metal mounts and have some cables run towards them from the ground. Right now they sort of give the vibe of magical runes.

Other things.

For the landscape I've scattered some detail using small rocks, broken pavement as well as some cables. I've created the cables as a spline system, and although it took a bit of time to place as many copies as I've done, it was very fun to do. Obviously, I tried having them glowing at first, but decided against it as it was getting a bit too much in the way. Their texture might still need some more work though.

The cathedral in the distance will still need some more attention. I'm thinking of some decals and props to scatter and give variety and detail both to the roof and to the walls. The windows will have stained glass material to them, with an emissive mask. I'm hoping to achieve some electrical whimsical colors, to fit the Cyberpunk vibe. I've left them for this late on, as I already have plans on how to create them in Substance Designer. Working on materials like that is probably one of the things I enjoy most in 3D, and frankly said, that's why I am keeping them as a treat to myself after I get the rest of the important things done.

Hope you found this post insightful and interesting. Until next time,

Pete.

P.S. My abilities in the Russian language, are limited to the few lessons I've had years ago, back at home in Bulgaria. As such I want to thank Alexey Shiyan for double checking my signs, and assuring me, that my whole idea behind the play on words, actually works. : )

Last time I showed you a just completed as far as it goes in terms of geometry prop. The weeks after that I've spent on creating materials for it and actually texturing it. I've done a few changes on the overall scene as a whole too, but this post will be once again mostly about the "Cyberpunk Casket".

The Casket in Unreal.

It's been a slow process as I've been making everything from scratch. I've been building up my own "library" of materials as well as alpha masks for shapes like the writings, protrusions, retrusions, labels and more decals of such style.

When I build scenes in Unreal, they rarely consist of props made to be scrutinised from very up close. I knew from a long time, though, that I want this model to be the focal point of my showcase video. I want to tell a story of sorts, and this prop will be my main actor. That is why I've went quite higher in detail (both in geometry and texture density) than I usually do.

Right now, the prop sits at a bit less than 17k of geometry. I'm quite happy about that fact, as I though it would be much more costly. The fan piece is understandably expensive (500-600 tris), but its instanced and as such is loaded into the memory only once. I call it into a custom Blueprint to animate it so it spins around.

Another GIF:

The screenshots you see are from Unreal. There, I've made my own light set-up, which is still not final, but is getting there.

Materials.

Here are previews of a few of the materials I created for this prop. Some are actual final materials with full bitmaps channels for PBR, but a few are just patterns I created and then used in Painter to blend more normal and height detail into the prop (an example would be the dotted pattern).

First material is the one I used the most. Its a plastic with a simple anisotropic noise to give it a better feel. Taking it into Painter, I've duplicated it, changed its color to lighter, changed the direction of the anistropic filter and I've put a smart mask on it. The result is not seen here, but can be seen further up, in the first screenshots. I've build up the fan material like that. Second is a triangular pattern I used to give some visual noise. Most of the time it might not be noticed as I've put it to around 20-30% opacity. Just enough to build up some interest. Dots are what you see on the servers, and the last one is electrical tape for the cables.

Iray renders.

Here are some screenshots from renders I ran in Painter. Bit fizzy here and there and with quite a few white pixel artifacts, but this will do for now. I will make better passes at the end.

Tell me how you find it so far.

Until next time,

Pete.

The view from the main camera. Started putting the brick textures from the last post in. Also created a metal trim to go on the mausoleums roofs.

Cyberpunk Gravestones.

My idea from the very start of the project, was to create a spacious environment and then showcase it in some interesting video with nice camera movements and maybe even some basic animations. While working on the layout and general mood, I was thinking all the time on what I want to do with the gravestones themselves. I knew I wanted to turn them in some weird, cyberpunk devices that serve a purpose.

At first look they appear ordinary (apart from the neon signs, and the disc looking device) but upon close inspection you see there is something that might be going on with them.

The concept.

The holes of the gravestones will look like any ordinary ones. The camera zooms into one though and some movements starts. The entire hole, in which a casket would go, starts moving up. Pressure release sounds plays and some vapour particle systems triggers. With the upward movement we suddenly see the side of the "coffin" and realise that there is something weird to it. Lots of wires run through it, connecting cooling systems and servers together. Lots of small lights flick on and off.

The middle prolonged shapes (seen in the picture above), I want to give the look of as if they are storage space (digital ones, of course). Hopefully I will find a nice way to wire up the gravestones with some cables that go towards the cathedral itself. If that is visible from the main camera, the viewer could have a hint towards those gravestones way before the camera zooms in and the whole sequence I described plays.

At the very front of the "casket" I put a terminal. Going to have some fun animating the screen with some weird numbers and code showing later on. Also, texturing that keyboard should be quite interesting too.

I want to have this whole prop be quite more detailed in both geometry and texture, compared to what I ordinary do. In a way that its obvious that its a prop, meant to be inspected from very up close in a first person game. I'll still do my best with optimisation too, nothing is going to be too crazy (the spinning fans, which are the most heavy on geometry objects, would be an instance of a single object, and I will animate them to spin in the sockets).

I've UV mapped a big chunk of it already and I hope to have some interesting stuff to show next time. In the meantime, tell me what you think of the idea and the general look of this "casket" so far. Hoping to bring it to life with lots of cyberpunky lights and wires.

Until next time,

Pete.

The past week has been kind of slow as I've been busy with a few other things (like playing Apex Legends... :P). I did some work on detail pieces and protrusions on the cathedral. Then I had a go at making some initial textures in Substance Designer.

I put in a tessellated landscape blending material in, ready to take on a few more textures when they are ready. The muddy one you see is one I created for my Feudal Japan project. I think I like the wet, reddish look though, so I might keep it like that but give it more variety with a second texture.

Facade.

I did figure out how I am going to approach the facade of the buildings though. Or at least those of the ones in the distance, still not certain about the mausoleums. I decided I will make some basic brick textures, make a few variations and vertex paint detail on top. But that will be kind of too flat and boring. As such I am going to make some decal planes to go on top, and those I will model in Zbrush, the bake between two flat planes in Substance Designer and color/texture them. If I manage to make some interesting stone ornaments and create a good normal map out of it, it should give plenty of definition.

The blue bits are where the alpha cards/decals are gonna go. I'll most likely scatter more than what is seen above, but that is just an initial sketch of the idea to guide me along the way. The photos you see to the right and left are what I will try to sculpt and place on those alpha cards.

And here you can see the brick texture I quickly made in Substance Designer. They are famous, brick textures, aren't they. Or I feel more like infamous. Everyone, pro or amateur alike always has a point of their career where they make one. I guess this is another one of mine going down in the records.

I did a parallax occlusion shader for the bricks in Unreal. It gave it a very good dimension but then I decided I don't want to bother spending ages making a vertex paint blending material that is also parallax occluded. Not only will it be super expensive performance wise, but also from the distance shot I am going for, you can't really notice the detail it gives. It was a nice exercise nonetheless.

I think I might spend more time in Substance Designer, making a few more brick variant textures. A few maybe quite different than the ones above. More smooth, with jarring whitish color and greater variety in roughness. I'll then blend those on patches on top to give even more variety. And if it still looks flat I might even invest in a few patches of brickwork that is actual geometry. I'll make them sort of modular/kit bashing in fashion and then scatter detail with them on the facades. 

Until next time, when I hope I will have more exciting than now progress,

Pete.