Simple Crate and Barrel Part 2

 

Baking High-Res Mesh to Game Mesh

1. Sculpted in ZBrush and decimated a high-resolution mesh, then imported it to Maya. Rendered with Arnold:

2. Low-Poly Model (Decimated in ZBrush because of PC crash/lack of time, thankfully it worked enough for the bake!) ):

2. Baked High-Poly Information to Low-Poly in Substance Painter:

3. Camera match with reference:

Game Animation

 

IK Retargeting in Unreal Engine

1. Character Animation Instances with custom ROM, Mixamo Animation, and custom jump animation using my own rigged Archer character and "Brady" from Mixamo:

2. Archer and Brady IK Rig:

3. IK Retargeter:

4. Separated all the Archer and Brady imports into different folders:

5. Level file path:

(c:\Dev\Cohort22\Students\Jocelyn.Fayola\Tech Art\JocelynFayola_HW\JocelynFayola_HW6\Content\JocelynFayola_HW6\JocelynFayola_HW6.umap)

3. 

Prop Perspective

 

Candelabra

Arcane Style

Final Pass:

3D Blockout (Base Colors):

I added some basic materials and textures in Maya to render a simple color pass, which will help me figure out how to stylistically draw over the shadows and highlights in 2D. Additionally, it served as an easy way to pick out color combinations for the prop.

3D Blockout:

3D Wireframes:

References:

Perforce:

Simple Crate and Barrel Part 1

Proxy Barrel

1. Beauty shot rendered in Maya's Arnold:

2. Establishing scale in Maya and importing the first iteration proxy to my Unreal Engine project:

3. Creating an image plane within a camera to ensure the correct proportions with reference. I modeled the proxy barrel with relatively low poly, as my reference is very stylized. I kept some of the edges using the crease tool, and later, I plan to smooth them down in ZBrush.

 

4. Reimported the finished proxy mesh into Unreal Engine and applied a basic gray material to the mesh.

Barrel Reference Comparison:

Basic Rigging

 

Archer Rig

1. Created the joints for the mesh and renamed it as shown in the lecture (To allow easy retargeting for UE). I created an extra arrow joint to help with the weight paint of the arrow props:

2. Created FK controls for the joints (except arrows) and parent constrained them after match transforming to locally position them in the correct orientation and place. My controls are nestled in a pad group and an offset group that are used to create a cleaner control rig. For example, the pad group holds the translation and rotation values from the match transforms (which can be zeroed out to go to the world position origin easily if anything goes wrong). The offset group is currently a clean null group that I can add set-driven keys to so that the actual NURBS curves won't have double transforms when I create set-driven keys for them:

3. Created a layer for the geometries and joints for easy access during grading; they are in reference mode when the file is opened. Final deformation test:

Extras:

1. IKFK switch:

I created an IKFK switch for the arms and legs. Usually, I would make sure the hands and feet were in world position, but since we aren't focusing on IKs this week, I let them remain in their local orientation, and later, I could add a world-local switch attribute. I'm also not fond of how the IKFK control rotates with the arms, so next time I'll limit the transforms or use a point constraint instead.

2. Stretch attribute:

The IK controls for the limbs have a stretch attribute created using matrix math nodes. They actually changed some of the math nodes in the Maya 2026 updates. For example, "addDoubleLinear" is now "addDL."

In my rig file, there is a hidden group called "deformation_grp" that holds the joints and systems. It keeps the IK and stretchy systems, making it easier to export the skeleton mesh to Unreal Engine in a later process and to better organize the rig overall.

Perforce:

Basic Lighting

 

Dracula

Arcane Style

I chose Chandler's Dracula design to go to the next step of our concept art process. I focused on the painterly look of Arcane and its sharp edges when creating the final render. I also imitated Arcane's dual side/rim lighting style that is often seen in their concept art.

Basic Lighting

Close Up:

Reference:

Perforce Proof:

Modular Environment in Unreal Engine - Part Three

 

Sculpting and Render Sequence

Stones Reference:

ZBrush Render:

Importing from Zbrush to Unreal (Nanites):

Adding Complexity to the sequencer (animated location, focal length, and focal distance):

Movie Render Queue Set Up:

(I don't know why the diamond is spinning so fast; it looks normal in the level. It might be the frame rate, and I'll have to change the speed in the blueprint to fix it.)

High Quality Screenshots:

Intro to Blueprints

Treasure Chest

1. Exported a treasure chest asset from FAB. Created a rig and "open chest" animation in Maya. Imported it into my project as a skeletal mesh and an animation.

2. Created a montage from the imported animation. Disabled the enable auto blend settings so the animation would stop playing once over. 

3. Created an animation blueprint to control the skeletal mesh animation.

4. Created a blueprint for the chest. Added a "G" keyboard input so that when the "G" is pressed the chest animation plays.

5. Created a widget blueprint using the user interface. I ended up not liking how it looked, so I created a different way to pop up a text using the Niagara System, paired with my custom text asset (which I converted into a material), to achieve a pop-up in the level on top of the chest instead. I chose to do the Niagara system because I want the text sprite to rotate with the camera. I kept the widget pop-up in the level blueprint for documentation purposes.

6. Create a collision box to act as a trigger box (as learned in class) so that when the player gets close to the chest, the text pops up (the Niagara system activates), and when the player moves away from the chest, the text goes away.

7. Next, I created a translucent glow material for the chest so I could make it emit an outline. Since the chest poly count is low, it looked weird, so I duplicated and then subdivided the static mesh of the chest in Maya. In the materials, I made the outside of the mesh transparent and the inside glow using a "twosidedsign" node paired with a lerp node. I added an offset to the world position normals to create the outlined effect.

I created a scalar material node in the blueprint and connected it to a new timeline so the material would "blink." The timeline has 3 keyframes where its value goes down, up, then down. I created a Boolean variable to determine whether the outline is active based on the actor's position relative to the trigger box. I connected it to the existing On Component Begin Overlap / On Component End Overlap events. I used the same variable for when the chest is opened ("G" is pressed), but with a "Set Visibility" node to ensure it completely disappears when the chest is opened. 

8. Next, I wanted to fix the "G" input event so that it would only work when the player is inside the trigger box (I created a platform in the scene that is the same size as the trigger box to show when "G" event can occur). Additionally, I modified the text pop-up so that it would only appear when the player is in the trigger box. I used the same method of creating a Boolean variable and getting its set node to determine when and when not to activate the event. 

9. Finally, for my dynamic material, I connected it to the press "G" event's animation montage so that after the chest opens, a pearl with an emissive material would gradually start to glow. I used another timeline node with a glow track to animate the emissive.

 

This is how the final BP_Chest ended up looking:

How it looks in the game scene:

Better Quality Video:

Directory Structure:

1. I created a new level in our <YourName>_HW2 previous project (//CLASSES/Cohort22/Students/Jocelyn.Fayola/Tech Art/JocelynFayola_HW/)

2. Created a new level named HW4Blueprints

(//CLASSES/Cohort22/Students/Jocelyn.Fayola/Tech Art/JocelynFayola_HW/JocelynFayola_HW2/Content/TechArt/Maps/HW4Blueprints.umap)

3. My BP_Chest is in a separate folder under the Content/TechArt folder

(//CLASSES/Cohort22/Students/Jocelyn.Fayola/Tech Art/JocelynFayola_HW/JocelynFayola_HW2/Content/TechArt/MyBlueprint/ChestBP/BP_Chest.uasset)

4. All other assets used are in this Tech Art folder. The original treasure chest static mesh should be under the FAB project folder.