ARCHIE GARCIA - Enivronment Artist
Antwerp Train Station
-Unreal Engine
When looking for a new interior environment to create for Unreal Engine, I tried to find something that involved a lot of repeating structures so I could practice a more modular workflow, which is a typical way of creating an interior and even exterior environment for games. I came across different train stations while searching online, and found one that I particularly liked called the Antwerp Central Train Station in Belgium.
Finding really good reference was a very important process. Luckily I was creating an environment that replicates an actual location in the real world, so finding many photos of the interior was not too difficult. Google Street View was also very helpful as I could virtually place myself inside the station, and pan around the camera as if I were there. This made it easy to see all the different textures and structures that I would need to recreate. Not only that, but having images with real people in the environment helped to give me a sense of scale, which made modeling structures accurately that much easier. One trick I always do is I export the default mannequin from Unreal Engine, and place that in my Maya scene as a scale reference.
Understanding Unreal Engine's unit system in relation to Maya's was important in creating the structures in a way that they would easily snap to each other and also to the grid within Unreal. Doing this from the beginning with each element made recreating the scene inside Unreal Engine a smooth process. To make things easier, after each model was done, I created its UVs before moving on to the next asset. Not only was this project an exercise on modularity, but also on optimization as well as creating assets with reusability in mind.
Most of the textures in the scene were created in Substance Designer to easily create tileable textures. I tried to create all the textures to closely replicate those that are in the actual station, as they were good reference and nice guide to follow. While most of the textures are from Designer, there are also some elements that required custom textures with designs or sculpted detail, such as the pillars at the bottom of the stairs. For those I used Marmoset Toolbag to bake high poly details onto a normal map, and used Substance Painter for the remaining bakes and custom texturing.
Bringing all the assets and textures into Unreal Engine was time consuming, but a smooth process. Making sure I had an organized folder system with all my assets, textures and material while also creating everything with grid snapping in mind, recreating the scene was no problem. After everything was rebuilt and textures were set, I then started lighting passes until I got a good lighting representation. After that, I started acquiring a library of decals to add to my scene to break up some of the tileabe textures, such as cracks in the walls and floor, and also dirt patches. Finally before rendering my demo reel shot for this piece, I added in a dust particle effect to add to the atmosphere of the scene. The final shots can be seen below.
