Following on from my previous blog post, I made a start on improving the ‘two_story_open,’ ‘aisle’ and ‘barrel_vault’ tiles. I started with the ‘two_story_open’ tile while referring back to my “nave moodboard” which was also shown in my forth blog post “St Albans Cathedral and Modelling The Nave.”
I started off by adjusting the scale of the tile, by making it considerably higher than the first version, and then adjusted the width to fit with the new height. I also made the piers wider to make them more bulky, as well as extending the pier structure upwards to the clerestory. I then added in more detail to the voussoir, which forms the shape of the arch. This included a new section so I could add in some more texture details, as well as extra edges to smooth out the curvature of the arch, which would also make it easier to texture. Then finally, I adjusted the capital forms to suit the reference photos better.
I also used this moodboard to improve the ‘aisle’ tile. Firstly, I adjusted the scale of the tile to fit the ‘two_story_open’ tile, as well as the capitals to match the ones on the ‘two_story_open’ tile. Once I connected a cornice-like structure from one capital to the other, I also added in a window above this, to again suit my reference photos.
Lastly, I adjusted the ‘barrel_vault’ scale to connect to the top of the ‘two_story_open’ tile. I did this by duplicating the ‘two_story_open’ tile, rotated it 180 degrees and snapped the floor edges of both of these tiles together. I then snapped the center of the barrel vault to the center of these two tiles where the floors meet. With the pivot point in the middle, I then scaled the ‘barrel_vault’ tile so that each side would reach the top edges of both ‘two_story_open’ tiles. I then added another section in the arch for some texture details as well as connecting more edges of the barrel vault arches like I did with the ‘two_story_open’ voussoir, to make it smoother and easier to texture.
After the modelling was finished, I moved onto the UV mapping. I decided to entirely restart the UV’s for each tile because I was sure I’d be able to lay them out more efficiently than the previous tiles. While arranging my UV’s and setting material ID’s, I considered what would be more efficient for both texturing in Substance Painter and assembling materials in a game engine. I found out that while texturing my previous tiles, it would’ve been easier to to lay them out in a different way, such as lining up certain parts, placing similar parts together in a sensible order, or having UV’s in one texture set that need only one unique material if possible, such as ‘stone’ or ‘glass’ rather than multiple materials. While working on this method, I also wanted to try and reduce the number of materials, so that it would take up less time and space in the game engine, when it came to assembling materials. Once I was finished with each tile, I had one less texture set for the ‘two_story_open’ and ‘aisle’ tiles, while still having the same amount for the ‘barrel_vault’ tile. I was pleased that I could reduce the amount of texture sets, especially as I have added in more detail.
After finding some new materials on Substance Share, I started texturing the ‘two_story_open’ tile. I started by using a material by Andreas Gebert called “Church tiles” and I adjusted the size according to my photo references, as well as making sure it would be seamless with other tiles. In the photo below, you can see a screen shot of the texture before I changed any parameters. The parameters are found in the ‘Properties – Fill’ tab in the bottom right hand side of the screen. As I textured more of the tiles, I adjusted some of these colours to work with the rest of the materials.
I moved onto the walls of the tile and used the ‘Concrete Simple’ material that is provided in Substance Painter. I used this as a base material for the walls, to create a stone-like effect. I then moved onto the voussoirs of the arch. Because I added in extra edges to the mesh, this allowed me to use the polygon fill tool to fill in darker sections, creating a chevron-like pattern that you can see in some of my reference photos, used commonly in Romanesque architecture.
I then carried on with more detail for the walls and found another texture by sramauge_1 called “Industriel-bricks Corig.” By disabling the colour map of this material, I could use this as an overlay for the “Concrete Simple” texture I used as a base. I scaled this material to suit my reference photos again, and lined it up to fit the corners of the piers. I then adjusted the colour of the “Concrete Simple” material and added layers on top of the stack to achieve the desired hues. I then filled in a few of the bricks, with different hues and saturation, as well as varied metallic and roughness values to give the bricks more of a weathered look.
Rather than adding in extra geometry to the mesh, I added in details to the voussoir by using an alpha brush with a height and normal map. I used the “Medieval flower bell” alpha that Substance Painter provides, and stamped this around the voussoir. By having the height map enabled, this gives the illusion of the detail popping out in 3D by adding highlights and shadows, while the geometry is still flat.
Finally, I worked on the columns and capitals where I used the same process as above, by using an alpha with a height map to create more details. I used the “Medieval cross heart” and “Medieval flower bell” alphas on the capitals, and the “Cross rounded” alpha the for cornice structures, which are all provided in Substance Painter. I then went through the same process with the columns as I did with the walls earlier, making sure that the bricks on the columns lined up with those that were on the walls.
I textured the ‘aisle’ tile and ‘barrel_vault’ tiles in a similar way, using the same materials and alphas as I had used in the ‘two_story_open’ tile to keep the textures consistent, while also creating contrast between the tiles. In the renders below, you can see the final tiles that will be exported into Unreal Engine.
As I’ve not used Unreal Engine for the purpose of exporting Substance Painter textures or applying materials, I used a tutorial by Jayanam to learn this process. (Jayanam, 2017) To export the textures, I selected the Unreal Engine 4 (Packed) option in Substance Painter’s export window. I went into the configuration of this preset and removed the Emissive map as I wouldn’t be needing this for my assets. All I needed was a ‘BaseColour’ texture, which hold the diffuse and opacity maps, an ‘OcclusionRoughnessMetallic’ texture, which holds the ambient occlusion, roughness and metallic maps, and a ‘Normal’ texture which holds the normal maps. After exporting, I created a blank Unreal Engine project and imported the three FBX files of the meshes, as well as all of the textures for these meshes. Before creating a material, I made sure that the ‘sRGB’ was disabled within the ‘Normal’ and ‘OcclusionRoughnessMetallic’ maps, because otherwise the textures will look too shiny in the game engine.
I then created a material for each texture set and opened them up to apply the textures. To do this, I created a Texture Sample for each texture within the material blueprints. In the photo below you can see that the ‘BaseColour’ Texture Sample connects to the ‘Base Colour’ slot and the ‘Normal Texture Sample connects to the ‘Normal’ slot. These two textures are fairly simple compared to the ‘OcclusionRoughnessMetallic’ map, which contains three textures in one. For this material, the red channel connects to the ‘Ambient Occlusion’ slot, the green channel connects to the ‘Roughness’ slot, and the blue channel connects to the ‘Metallic’ slot. This is all relevant to how Substance Painter exports the textures.
When applying each material to the mesh in the scene, I saw that the window texture wasn’t transparent. After reading a few forums with similar problems, I discovered that I would need to make a separate material for the windows. This means that when I change the Blend Mode of the material to ‘Transparent’ it would only effect the part of the mesh where it was needed, instead of all of the texture set, where some parts need to be opaque. So to fix this, I went into 3DS Max to assign a separate material ID to the windows of the ‘two_story_open’ and ‘aisle’ tiles. I could then reimport the FBX into Substance Painter and fix the textures, ready to export to Unreal Engine. These textures could then be imported/reimported to fix the problem.
After some polishing, I duplicated the tiles in the scene to create a nave area of a cathedral. I tried uploading these tiles to Sketchfab but the textures wouldn’t upload correctly to the mesh. I tried this a few times but it still wasn’t correct, so I will be trying again next week. To view my Sketchfab models, click on this link - https://sketchfab.com/alicebaker/models
Below are the final renders of the nave scene, which are much more realistic and better designed compared to my previous tiles.
Post Mortem
The aim of my project was to produce a set of modular assets, which would be quick and easy to use to create versatile environments. These environments would be based on research about Romanesque architecture, to create a modular cathedral. The assets would be textured in Substance Painter to demonstrate a PBR workflow. The deliverables that I had planned to submit was a 3DS Max 2018 file containing all environmental assets, textures for these assets, renders of the environment built in Unity and a user guide to accompany the final assets.
By the end of the project, I was able to create a set of modular assets, which are relatively easy to use, but don’t allow for much versatility. Due to over scoping my project, I was unable to create the number of tiles that I originally set out to make. I started with a number of 61 tiles to produce, which then reduced to 43 when I was half way through my project, then finally down again to 39 tiles. Almost half of the tiles I planned to make weren’t produced either because I didn’t do enough research into Romanesque architecture, or because I didn’t have enough time to complete them. I was able to finish all of these 39 tiles within the time I had left, but they weren’t up to the standard they should’ve been. Instead of spending more time on particular structures and details within the meshes and textures, I was more concerned with finishing the assets according to my original plans at the start of the project. I have realised now that this wasn’t important and I should’ve focused on producing high quality assets that would stand out in my portfolio.
If I was to embark on this project again, I would allow for more time at the start of the project to conduct thorough research. By not having enough time at the start, this meant that I had to take time out of producing my assets to do more research. Looking back on the amount of work I set for myself, I can see this was an unrealistic goal because I didn’t give myself enough time for texturing or polishing assets, or for any problems that could arise. If I planned this project again, I would reduce the amount of assets I would need to make so that I had enough time for these other tasks. With more time to spend on textures, I would’ve put more detail and polish into the textures, aiming to make them more photorealistic. I have proved to myself that I’m capable of doing this, as I’ve been able to create new and improved assets within the last week of my project, which are more suitable for my portfolio.
In conclusion, I have thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and I have gained a lot of knowledge throughout. I have gained an interest in architecture which I had never researched into before. I have discovered clearly what I am capable of producing within a certain time frame and will find it easier to set goals for myself in the future. I have gained more knowledge in Substance Painter, Unity and Unreal Engine which I didn’t know before this project. Overall, I’m very proud of myself for creating some high quality assets and I am planning to carry on with this project through the summer. I’m hoping to redesign all of my assets in order to produce a completed high quality set of modular tiles, to create versatile and easy to use cathedral environments.
In the photos below, you can see the before and after renders of the environments I’ve created. The first photo shows the first set of tiles, and the second photo shows the new and improved nave area of the cathedral, consisting of the three unique tiles that I have discussed in this blog post.
Bibliography
Andreas Gebert (2016) “Church tiles” [ONLINE] Available at: https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/505 [Accessed 17/04/2019]
Jayanam (2017) “UE4 Import Substance Painter Textures” [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=71&v=3itc2p6C3ic [Accessed 17/04/2019]
sramauge_1 (2016) “Industriel-bricks Corig” [ONLINE] Available at: https://share.allegorithmic.com/libraries/3290 [Accessed 17/04/2019]
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