Bird House Modular Environment
This is an environment made from modular pieces I created for a class assignment to create a modular environment based on a concept. This project is based on a concept by Jordan Grimmer (concept: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/qJbNe ) . I created the materials in Substance Designer and created the models in ZBrush and 3ds Max. The scene is lit and rendered in Unreal Engine.
Modular Breakdown
To break down the concept into modular pieces, I created a breakdown over the original concept image to separate the pieces into 4 priority levels. All assets that need to snap together have dimensions based on powers of two so they snap together easily.
Priority 1 and 2 Assets
Priority 3 and 4 Assets
Vertex Color Masks
To create variation in the scene, I created some tileable materials in Substance Designer and blended them on various assets using vertex painting. On the left is one of my materials where two sets of textures are blended by using the vertex color of the the mesh and a texture mask. This allows me to be able to create more interesting, diverse looking assets without creating custom texture sets for each asset.
On the archway the stone and tarnished stone are combined using the vertex color of the mesh . The cyan on the last image indicates where the tarnished stone material appears.