Aztec Altar
This was my final piece during my time in Gnomon. The mood I was going for is early dusk setting in the forest. The challenge I faced was lighting. In the end, I used HDRI to achieve what I wanted. As mentioned in my previous projects, I reuse some of the assets that were created. I wanted to reuse them as much as possible and challenge myself to create different types of environment with it.
I use Megascan assets for ground materials and foliage atlases. I used PCG (Procedural Content Generation) to randomly place my foliage. I created a trigger box to block a path that PCG would spawn. Finally, I created a falling leaves effect from niagara particle system.
Models: Maya, ZBrush and SpeedTree
Textures: Substance Painter and Unreal Engine Materials
Unreal Engine: PCG (Procedural Content Generation), Volumetric Fog, Real-Time Virtual Textures and Niagara Particle System
Rendered in Unreal Engine 5.3
Foliage Atlases and Ground Shader were provided by Quixel Megascans
Breakdowns
Asset Breakdown | Structure
I sculpted everything except the plate which is, I believe, is an Aztec calendar. The plate was modeled in Maya. Everything was textured in Substance Painter. The combination of extra pillars were assembled in Unreal Engine.
Asset Breakdown | Foliage
Foliages were created in SpeedTree with the use Megascan asset for atlases. I created these without the intention of utilizing nanites in Unreal. All of the models have 3 LODs and billboards included. Further materials adjustment were used and created in Unreal Engine to customize the color, subsurface and roughness.