Here's a detailed breakdown of my recent project "Abandoned Apartment". In total, production took 10 weeks during which I used these tools: Maya, Substance Designer, Substance Painter, and Unreal Engine. Everything shown was created by me excluding foliage and decals (graffiti, wall deterioration, etc.) which were Megascans sourced from Quixel.
Before touching any software, I started with a pre-production phase (for about a week). This was the time when I was looking, brainstorming, and sketching. I settled on two different concepts that I pitched to my professor/art director for approval. Once settled on the abandoned apartment idea, my research became a lot more focused. For lighting and stylistic reference, I went to ArtStation as well as gathered real-life examples of what I wanted to emulate in my project.
Once the "pre-production phase" was over, I jumped straight into Unreal to roughly block out the space I'd be working with. I tried to keep this initial pass fairly loose as I knew I'd be receiving plenty of feedback that would guide my later iterations. The main critique I got at this point was that the apartment was way too big (and would be outside the scope of what I had pitched for the 10 weeks). From there, I started cutting down on the size and amount of rooms I'd include in the final environment.
After that first round of feedback, I started working towards the Beautiful Corner. I'd create small batches of assets in Maya (based on level of importance: hero asset, prop, etc.) and then would bring them into Unreal to start really building out the bedroom. This was the time I would play around with different relationships and arrangements of objects within the environment. Throughout this back and forth (Maya to Unreal), I'd regularly put my in-progress work in front of peers for further critique.
First, pass into Unreal.
Secondary pass after more feedback.
Third asset pass with some lighting.
Fourth pass with even more feedback and lighting changes.
The first major milestone in this project was the Beautiful Corner which took place during week 5 of production. By this point, I had the bedroom set dressed, textured, and lit. While this was halfway point in production I knew that this room wasn't to the level of quality I was aiming for and the feedback I got reflected that as well. The main things I got from this round of critiques were: bring in the plants, fill the walls, add more elements of personality and storytelling into the space.
With the Beautiful Corner behind me, I was working towards the Advanced Render milestone (at week 8). At this point, my focus was polishing the bedroom and starting progress on the living room area. This did mean re-scoping a bit to accommodate doing both of those things simultaneously. For the bedroom, I started implementing changes based on the very direct notes I received; starting to bring foliage in through the windows, adding more clutter and story elements with papers on the wall. My approach for the living room was the same as the bedroom, model assets in batches and bring them into Unreal. This time with the advantage of having reusable and modular assets from the bedroom.
Living room area is blocked out with final assets and some lighting.
First pass at living room textures and more lighting.
The second and last major milestone was the Final Render (at week 10). By this point, I was fully in the refinement and polishing stage for both rooms. My focus was on decals, lighting, and any other details that would really help pull the environment together. Even this close to the end of production, I was still seeking out fresh sets of eyes on a very regular basis to look over my work.
I can confidently say that in these past 10 weeks I've learned a lot. Over the course of this project, I cemented a workflow that's effective for me and is easily scalable from project to project. I got the chance to work alongside a large group of extremely genuine and hard-working artists from varying disciplines within game dev. I've gotten to see this philosophy of "nothing great is made in a bubble" in action with my project as it developed with feedback from my community of colleagues and peers. I'm excited to take all these things with me into my future projects!
