Creating Assets & Architecture for Game Environments
From Maya & ZBrush to Unreal Engine 5 With Giovani Magana
Description
Discover how to build a game environment in Unreal Engine 5 using assets created in Maya and ZBrush. Senior Environment Artist Giovani Magana shares various techniques from his professional workflow, focusing on efficiently building assets and architecture for game environments using an essential modular approach.
This workshop is intended for intermediate-level artists with some prior knowledge of working with Maya, ZBrush, and Unreal Engine assumed. Giovani begins by sketching initial ideas in Photoshop before building a modular asset kit in Maya. He discusses his approach to creating tiles, trim sheets, tileable textures, and tileable meshes and then demonstrates how to create other assets, such as rocks and props, using ZBrush.
To conclude this workshop, Giovani builds the final house and environment in Unreal Engine 5. He also assembles a corner of the environment to demonstrate his full process for creating organic landscapes, providing tips for finishing up a full environment using Unreal Engine.
The workshop focuses primarily on making the assets needed to build a game environment; Giovani’s Substance Designer and Unreal material graphs are shown in the workshop but are not detailed step by step.
Duration: 4h 10m
Format: HD 1920x1080
Giovani Magana
Senior Environment Artist at Respawn Entertainment
Giovani Magana has been working professionally in the games industry as an environment artist for nine years, with credits including The Walking Dead, God of War Ragnarök, and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. He is currently working on another AAA game in progress. He is passionate about fantasy and sci-fi-style environments where he can take reality to the next level with his imagination. He enjoys making large architectural and organic elements of game environments while also enjoying creating small props that tell a story through their unique details. He primarily works with Unreal Engine for world-building. For organic sculpting, hard-surface modeling, and material creation, he utilizes Substance Designer. He enjoys working with Houdini as a flexible tool for creating detailed assets and streamlining workflows when needed. Giovani finds that being an environment artist gives him a greater appreciation for nature and has taught him to pay closer attention to how things work in the real world.
