I started this project as an experiment, as it had many 'firsts' for me. This was my first time doing texture animation, in-depth foliage creation, imitation of a real-life place, and waterfall particles. The outcome was this, Mushroom Mansion!
I created this using Unreal Engine 4.25.1, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, Maya 2019, and Photoshop 2020. The music used is by domo ( https://soundcloud.com/1207domo/nbsp ) and the video first shown was made using musicvid.org. Everything else was made by me!
I began by taking images and videos of my inspiration. I walked around the grounds, capturing it with multiple angles. I also took images of objects with repetitive textures (like the tiles and rocks). I edited the texture images with Photoshop to make them seamless and to create normal maps. Here are some examples:
Next, I blocked out the building and objects in Maya. The different colors indicate the different Unreal materials I used for things such as glass, and repetitive materials I created in Photoshop. The building itself is broken into six pieces to prevent the pixelation of the textures.
Here, I brought most of my models into Unreal:
And I started to do my more complex textures with Substance Painter and Designer:
I brought all by textures into Unreal. Then, I started to adjust the lighting maps, lighting, post processing, and fog.
While doing my lighting, I searched for reference images of projects that had the lighting mood I wanted to capture (please click on images for credit to the original artists):
I also created my particles and water effects:
By this point, I felt something was missing. I've done much, but I wanted to have a focal point of the piece. I then remembered that the area of my inspiration had a sound system hidden all around the backyard, and I thought I could integrate the music physically into the piece! To add to the whimsicality of the piece, I thought some musical, glowing mushrooms could fit right in.
I wanted to time both the glow effect and a boom box "boom" effect with the music. So my mushroom textures were animated using a Material Parameter to key in my sequencer. I also used material instancing to change the base color of the mushroom top for different mushrooms.
Here's one of my final beauty shots!
