Assignment 05 - Surfacing for Real-time PBR

The theme of this assignment is to practice concepts of physically-based shading to surface assets for industry-standard, interactive applications. Maya may be used as the digital-content-creation (DCC) package (3DSMax is common in this industry as well), although you may not even need to use Maya depending on your chosen assets. Whatever you choose, ensure that assets have a reasonable texture layout completed.

Substance Painter will be our primary 3D painting application, as it models physically-based attributes in its painting and rendering tools and has rapidly become a standard tool in game development and other productions. One Designer material is a requirement, as procedural shading is also highly used in modern productions. We will ultimately bring our assets into Unreal Engine, a leading game engine used in AAA development as well as many other interactive and real-time applications. Final rendering will be completed using Sequencer in Unreal Engine to export a short movie of cinematic camera movement that demonstrates your project.

Read the following to prepare for a more physically based workflow:

• Using microfacet models and their related concepts for shading and rendering leads to more accurate images. The Substance Guide to Physically Based Rendering Volume 1 demonstrates these concepts at an intuitive level and also how they affect ideas for shading with this workflow. Volume 2 goes on to discuss more detailed ideas of workflow that you may find useful. The Trowbridge-Reitz/GGX normal-distribution-function is used for rendering in Substance and Unreal Engine; its development/re-discovery and micro-facet models are discussed in Microfacet Models for Refraction through Rough Surfaces. (Blinn actually referred to this distribution in his 1977 “Models of Light Reflection” paper that you read, but it did not get widely implemented until the last several years). Chapter 9 in your Real-Time Rendering text also has more details on physically based shading and simulating real-world materials.

Objectives for Assignment 04:

• Create an appealing and cohesive scene that has detailed surfacing as well as real-time rendered cinematography by Thursday, October 11. Attend class prepared to present your short movie created in Unreal Engine Sequencer.
• By cohesive, the elements should be arranged in a “scene” where some story-like environment (whether just a simple floor and wall or sky-box) is arranged, one “hero” character or prop, and at least one other asset at a minimum. More may always be added for a project extension.
• Your “hero” character or prop may be one of the Paragon assets (available on the Unreal Engine Marketplace for free, exportable by right-clicking and choosing move and export to fbx options) or one that you have made (even if for another class or project) as long as you are surfacing it for this project. Other assets could come from “The Animator’s Starter Pack,” TurboSquid, or HighEnd3D.com. Choose assets with texture layout completed, or complete a texture layout yourself for more practice.
• Choose a directed artistic style that fits with the models that you have chosen and design ideas for surfacing your assets with this in mind.
• Import your fbx files into Substance and paint detailed, layered maps that fit the materials and your chosen concept.
• Paint your maps with physically based maps and considering differences for conductors and insulators (metals / di-electrics), following the concepts from the linked material.
• Complete at least one surface using Substance Designer. As an extension, photograph a real-world surface or paint a design and attempt to match your concept in your Designer network.
• Export your various maps to prepare them for Unreal Engine.
• Create a New Project (Blank, No Starter Content) in Unreal Engine 4. Build your scene with your chosen surfaced assets.
• Link your maps to the materials on your surfaces.
• Light the scene within Unreal Engine.
• Submit screenshots of your models meshes, your UV layouts, your working space in Substance Painter, your working space in Designer, your materials in the Material editor in Unreal Engine, and a render of your scene in Unreal Engine. Also submit a short movie file of of at least two cinematic shots demonstrating your scene in Unreal Engine. Consider a wider, establishing shot that tracks or trucks followed by a close-up shot that alternates with the movement but at a similar speed and duration.
• Submit your Unreal project folder. (This should be small if you chose the blank project with no starter content).
• Submit a short written description, containing your screenshots of progress, briefly detailing your decisions and workflow.
• Come prepared to present and critique on Monday using all of your screenshots and movie file.
• Submit a lastname.tgz or .zip file to Canvas containing a movie, your document with description and screenshots, and another zip/tgz containing your entire UE project folder.