Making an Office Environment Tutorial
In this tutorial, I create an office environment from scratch, drawing from over 15 years of experience in the games industry (on games like Overwatch, Starcraft II, Insurgency).
The tutorial contains my ENTIRE process recorded, every single click and technique, so you can follow along and learn some of my secrets.
I used timeless and proven techniques in the games industry, such as modularity, trim sheets and blockouts, to create this entire environment in about 27 hours of work. That's right, from start to finish, in only 27 hours. You too can learn these blazing fast techniques by following along!
The same techniques can be used to create any kinds of interior environments. Your imagination is the limit!
Some of the topics covered:
- Modular environment design, and how you can speed creating by reusing pieces smartly.
- Creating simple PBR materials in Photoshop. If you are familiar with Substance designer or Quixel Mixer, you should have no problem integrating it with this workflow.
- Baking tiling textures from simple high poly meshes.
- Creating simple props by using the same materials and trims.
- Lighting and Post-Processing.
- My thoughts on environment creation.
Software used: Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop, Unreal Engine 4, XNormal.
Note: If you are familiar with other 3d packages, like 3ds Max or Blender, you should have no problem at all following along. The techniques are fully compatible.
I hope you enjoy, and I'm here for any questions you might have!
- Thiago
Release Notes
As you might have noticed, Quixel dropped support for nDO recently in favor of their most recent texturing offer, Quixel Mixer. While the move makes sense from a business perspective, it kills a powerful workflow, especially for creating Sci-Fi and Hard-Surface normals.
But fret not! I created some simple Photoshop actions that allow you to do MOST of what nDO did... and even a bit better in some cases ;)
These actions allow you to create perfect 45-degree normal bevels from selections, so you can quickly build normal maps just like I do in the tutorial but in an even faster way. While you don't get the fancy curve options you got with nDO, these actions have much better performance since they create normal Photoshop layers instead of complex groups.
They are included in the tutorial in the file "NDO_Replacement."
Enjoy!